Among supporters, is there ambivalence to the whole EU idea? (Assuming there is no such uncertainty among euro-skeptics.) Is it just the end of the EU honeymoon of the 90's? Is there a lack of mesmerizing political talent in EU politics? Are people presently focused more on pocketbook issues with the economy the way it is?

Our last presidential election really meant a lot to many of us here. Obama could not have been elected had it not been for the anger over Bush's War, and the lies his administration told to ignite it. I haven't seen anything like this since Nixon was forced out of office in the 70's.

I don't even know if the European Parliament (any such institution is one I'm all for, btw) has enough juice to conduct policies that could get Europeans up in arms. That could be another factor. Is the EP merely a debating society?

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As for WordPress, I like it. After trying two other blogging apps (drupal and typepad), I set up my own installation as well as took advantage of the free WordPress.com installation for another which I use as a backup. Traffic at both blogs is extremely modest, but has been picking up in the past month.

One caveat: I never use the Visual editor. I know html and css so that's ok by me as I get to overcome some of the formating quirks that different WordPress themes can throw at you. Otherwise, I'm quite happy with my combination of WordPress and Imageshack. The last time, but one, that I upgraded, I wound up having to uninstall and reinstall. I never lost any of my posts, but setting up categories and my blogroll was a pain in the ass. I had set up a fairly extensive hierarchy and had lots of links prior to that upgrade, but even that has been fixed. Now there's a one-button click that does all the upgrade for you automatically. The open source crowd that put together WordPress has and continues to do a fine job.

Give it time.

"It Can't Be Just About Us"
--Frank Schnittger, ETian Extraordinaire