In reply to mark k..

Almost anywhere in the western world you are going to have high speed connection which will easily deliver 5.5Mb in reasonable time, and modern smartphone do not choke on it

Well, that's just not true. It's also wrong to discard the user experience of all those people without the latest iphones & galaxies who may or may not have access to high speed connections. We can only design for them properly if we keep the payload down and don't stuff it with unnecessary clientside logic.

The USAToday example proves though that most bloat does not service user experience though, the EU version of the site is vastly superior.