Nearly Two Years After I posted this at Talkleft what has changed?

Like a compulsive obsessive gambling addict whose lost all of his own capital as well as nearly all the money his family had, Bush the “decider” has “decided” that he’s going to “show them all” by placing one last huge bet of more money stolen from his family on one last roll of the dice, risking all for the big payoff.

He’s painted himself into a corner and he’s dreaming, or rather fantasizing, and refuses to leave the casino until he’s blown his whole load and completely ruined his family and their reputation and solvency.

Did Petraeus Part Ways With The Neocons?

The Real Story examines General Petraeus’ testimony and the contending forces in Iraq

McCain’s “war on terror” remix

The Real News Network does a first take on McCain’s foreign policy view

Way to go, Bob!

Bob Dylan receives honorary Pulitzer Prize

Judges note his ‘profound impact on popular music and American culture’

NEW YORK – Thanks to Bob Dylan, rock ‘n roll has finally broken through the Pulitzer wall.

Dylan, the most acclaimed and influential songwriter of the past half century, who more than anyone brought rock from the streets to the lecture hall, received an honorary Pulitzer Prize on Monday, cited for his “profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power.”

It was the first time Pulitzer judges, who have long favored classical music, and, more recently, jazz, awarded an art form once dismissed as barbaric, even subversive.

— HYPERLINKS —

There are two ways to put hyperlinks in your articles or comments.

These examples will display your link as blue colored clickable hyperlink text.

1) Bracket method. SoapBlox sites like this one (& Scoop sites like DailyKos) provide an easy shorthand method.

To embed a hyperlink, type both the URL and the text you want to display as a link, enclosed in square brackets, and separate them with at least one space.

&#091http://Docudharma.com  Docudharma]  

=  Docudharma

&#091http://Docudharma.com/diary/5815/  HTML Tips]  

=  HTML Tips

&#091http://www.CNN.com  CNN]  

=  CNN

2) HTML method. Other sites require HTML tags to display a hyperlink. This method will also work here.  The HTML code begins with the <A HREF=> tag and ends with the </A> tag as shown below.  The URL of the page you are linking to should be included in quotes immediately after <A HREF=>. The text that you want to appear in the link should be between the <A HREF=> and </A> tags.  

<a href=”http://Docudharma.com”>Docudharma</a>  

=  Docudharma

— TEXT FORMATTING —

To italicize, surround the text you want to italicize with <i> on the left and </i> on the right.

To bold, surround the text you want in bold with <b> on the left and </b> on the right.

To underline, surround the text you want underlined with <u> on the left and </u> on the right.

To blockquote, surround the text you want to blockquote with <blockquote&gt on the left and </blockquote> on the right.

To strike out text with a line through it, surround the text you want to strike out with <strike> on the left and </strike> on the right.

To center text on a page, surround the text you want to center with <center> on the left and </center> on the right.

To create a gray divider line in your article, like the gray lines between the sections of this Formatting Tips page, place an <hr> tag where you want the gray line to appear. The <hr> tag can be used by itself and is one of the few HTML tags that does not require a closing </hr> tag.

To create a line feed use a <br> tag. You can use two <br> tags in succession (<br><br>) to create a blank line, or multiple <br> tags in succession to create multiple blank lines. Like <hr> tags, <br> tags do not require closing </br> tags.

— POSTING PICTURES —

It’s best practice to upload pictures to Flickr or Photobucket or other image hosts rather than linking directly to a picture on someone else’s site (aka Hot Linking).  The image hosts make it easy to copy & paste the URLs of the pictures into your comment or essay.   Below each picture you will find the HTML code to include with your post.  There will be a box that says “copy/paste this code to your website” or something to that effect.  

Also be aware of copyright issues.   If you use someone else’s picture, provide a link to the page you found it on, if possible.  

The following line of code will display a picture in your article. Replace the URL in this example with the URL of the picture you want to display, and adjust the width to your preference (use “preview” to make adjustments). The height will be auto-calculated proportionally – you do not need to specify it.

<img src="http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u65/vradul/Hillobama.jpg” width="200" align=”left”>

You can set the “align” parameter to “left” or “right”, to display your picture on either side of the article page.

NOTE: Please don’t post pictures wider than 500px. Images larger than 500px wide may be removed by Site Admins as they may adversely affect some browser displays.

— WRAPPING TEXT AROUND PICTURES —

TO MAKE YOUR ARTICLE TEXT “WRAP”, (display BESIDE and BELOW your picture), begin typing the text of your article immediately following the image code:  

<img src="http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u65/Hillobama.jpg” width="200" align=”left”>START TYPING YOUR ARTICLE TEXT HERE…..

TO CENTER YOUR PICTURE and display your article text BELOW it, REMOVE the “align” parameter from the image code line, and enclose the entire image code line in center tags:

<center><img src="http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u65/vradul/Hillobama.jpg” width="200"/></center>

START TYPING YOUR ARTICLE TEXT HERE…..

— POSTING VIDEOS —

YouTube videos are the most popular video format but there are others that will allow you to embed as well.  When you find a YouTube video that you’d like to post, obtain the “embed” code for that video by clicking on the YouTube logo at the bottom right corner of the video which will take you to the YouTube page for that video. Or click on “Menu” in the lower right corner of the video and it will display the embed code for you in the video image.

To the right of the video on the YouTube page you’ll see a box with the title “embed” beside it. Copy the code from that box and paste it into your essay or comment.

For example, most if not all of Keith Olbermann’s “Special Comments” on the MSNBC Countdown program are available at YouTube normally within a day or so of broadcast.

There is a search box at YouTube to help you find videos by searching by name or subject or keyword.

Here is Olbermann’s Special Comment on July 03, 2007 calling on George W. Bush to resign:

The “embed” code for that video (available by clicking the YouTube logo) looks like this, and if pasted into your article will display the video aligned against the left margin, as above:

<object width=”425″ height=”350″><param name=”movie” value=”http://www.youtube.com/v/-U3nhevWfro”></param><param name=”wmode” value=”transparent”></param><embed src=”http://www.youtube.com/v/-U3nhevWfro” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” wmode=”transparent” width=”425″ height=”350″></embed></object>

To post a video in your article centered on the page, simply enclose the “embed” code in center tags (the same as centering pictures, as described above):

<center><object width=”425″ height=”350″><param name=”movie” value=”http://www.youtube.com/v/-U3nhevWfro”></param><param name=”wmode” value=”transparent”></param><embed src=”http://www.youtube.com/v/-U3nhevWfro” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” wmode=”transparent” width=”425″ height=”350″></embed></object></center>

Posting that code in your article will display the video centered on the page:

You can also shrink videos by removing the height parameter in both places where it appears in the code and setting the width to a smaller amount of pixels.

<center><object width=”250″><param name=”movie” value=”http://www.youtube.com/v/-U3nhevWfro”></param><param name=”wmode” value=”transparent”></param><embed src=”http://www.youtube.com/v/-U3nhevWfro” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” wmode=”transparent” width=”250″></embed></object></center>

— ADJUSTING TEXT DISPLAY SIZE —

You can make text on screen in your browser display at a larger size any time simply by hitting ‘Ctrl +‘ on your keyboard.

To shrink it hit ‘Ctrl –‘, to return to default ‘Ctrl 0‘.

HTML Tips by Edger – edited by On The Bus

Scientists have found that all our problems can be placed under one heading: “Seriousness”.

Seriousness is the leading cause of everything from Cancer to Reincarnation.

Scientists have already discovered a new source of healing this condition.

It is a psychic energy point located between the heart chakra and the throat chakra.

It is called the Clown Chakra.

If people are feeling miserable, if they have financial problems, if their relationship situation is the pits, if they are in ill health, if they have a need to sue people, if they find fault with their brother, then obviously, their Clown Chakra is closed.

When this happens, the scientists have observed under a high-powered microscope that the cells of every organ display a sad face, and when the Clown Chakra is open and functioning normally, the cells display a happy face.  

We started way back when forty odd years ago so young and strong and innocent and loving and curious and fascinated with possibilities, and all we asked for was a world of honesty, fairness, peace, cooperation, respect for human life and people of all shapes and sizes and colors and sexes everywhere that could ask for and seek the same things… and here it is – two thousand and f’ing eight!

Two thousand and f’ing eight? Long past what I always thought was any reasonable amount of time to live.

Well… here we are. And we still have the nutbars on the run!

Heh! Read the papers or turn the TV on and what do you see and hear? Republicans and Democrats still trying to sell fear to as many people as they can.

Well… Up them! What the hell do they know? When will they ever figure out that in the long run they can’t win?

We’ve still got the music in us.

Sometimes surfing the net you find all kinds of little goodies and breaths of fresh air happening in all kinds of places you never would have thought of.

Mishima does a great job here everyday of pointing a few of them out in the Docudharma Times series, but still it sometimes seems that most of the world is going to hell as fast as it can, and that the nutbars are doing their best to drag us all down with them.

Well, I have only one thing to say to them.

In the immortal words of ShakespeareInStPaul… 😉“Fuck ’em”!

They’re losers, and we’re winners. You just never read about it in the papers or hear about it on TV.

But David Swanson did a great job, in a email to his distribution list earlier tonight, of enumerating a whole long list of “Fuck ’em”! notes about things happening all over the country in all kinds of unexpected quarters, as he extracts and lists some of the best subversions in the world from a new book out called “Building the Green Economy”. You can get it at the Free Trade Online Store (which I have no connection with, btw – this is a free plug!)

I’ve quoted his email on the flip. Enjoy!

But I couldn’t think of anything to say that I didn’t say last year on March 19 when I posted this at Edgeing, or think of anything to say that hasn’t been said many times before, and by many other than myself.

Bush’s Iraq and Mid-East Debacle – Four… sorry, FIVE Year Anniversary

Tomorrow marks the four FIVE year anniversary of the attack on and invasion of Iraq as American missiles hit targets in Baghdad on March 20, 2003 in the start of a US led campaign to topple Saddam Hussein. In the following days US and British ground troops entered Iraq from the south and over the next few weeks rather quickly overcame the little resistance the Iraqi Army was able to offer.

On May 1 of that year George W. Bush, in a needlessly theatrical stunt, landed in a jet on the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, and wearing a flight suit in a staged attempt to look as macho as possible for the photo opportunity, announced that “In the Battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed”, standing with an enormous banner displaying the words “Mission Accomplished” as the backdrop for a ridiculous, deceitful propaganda event.

Since “Mission Accomplished” more US soldiers have died in Iraq than the number of Americans who died in the September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, an event that George W. Bush and the White House propaganda machine has repeatedly tried to insinuate was carried out with the backing and involvement of former Iraq President Saddam Hussein as part of their attempts to justify the Iraq invasion and subsequent occupation as being the central front in Bush’s so-called War On Terror, which I have often renamed the “War On Thinking”.

Since “Mission Accomplished” tens of thousands of American soldiers have returned home to their friends and families crippled, blinded, burned, poisoned, and maimed, or dead.

Since “Mission Accomplished” the invasion and occupation of Iraq has become known as George W. Bush’s Iraq and Mid-East Debacle.

Since “Mission Accomplished” nearly one million Iraqis, about seven hundred and fifty thousand of them defenseless Iraqi children and women, have died needlessly.

Since “Mission Accomplished” George W. Bush’s accomplishments have become “in horrible reality a cowardly War on Women and Children, a War on Asian Women and Children and a War on Muslim Women and Children.”

pfiore8 writes this morning in her essay God loves you and, btw, sex is filthy… about the dangerous disease-like spread of religious fundamentalist fanaticism through evangelical christianity (uncapitalized purposely, btw) in the body politic, the government and the military since the wackjobs installed George Bush in the WH.

…the crises we face in this country and the world are symptoms of a power structure gone wrong. Way wrong.

…

Theocrats are foot soldiers of the corporatists, a relationship that delivers a one-two punch. Social control satiates theocrats, while corporatists run everything else. And they all want it run brutally. Until the only thing left for us is the desperate hope that God will save us in the next life… as long as we subscribe to certain behaviors in this one. What a fucking set up.

But this is a problem that has been growing for much longer. Last April 2007, one of the most prolific and insightful social commentators I’ve ever had the pleasure to read passed away, and the world lost one of it’s great literary masters and treasures, in my opinion.

Kurt Vonnegut had much to say about religious fanaticism and it’s power to corrupt and pervert in his writings.

Mishima’s Docudharma Times this morning begins with one of the most interesting and heartening quotes I’ve seen in a long, long time.

After almost five years of war, many young people in Iraq, exhausted by constant firsthand exposure to the violence of religious extremism, say they have grown disillusioned with religious leaders and skeptical of the faith that they preach.

…

“I hate Islam and all the clerics because they limit our freedom every day and their instruction became heavy over us,” said Sara, a high school student in Basra. “Most of the girls in my high school hate that Islamic people control the authority because they don’t deserve to be rulers.“

This happened in Ireland. It happened and is still happening in America. It happened in Europe during the Renaissance, in many ways a rebirth in knowledge and a turning from God to man, or at least a rejection of the power of organizational thought control and a repudiation of authoritarianism and a turning towards the fundamental freedom – freedom of thought.

Throughout my whole life since I ran away from home for the first time when I was 12 years old with my bicycle, three dollars, the clothes I was wearing, and my transistor radio, through the second time when I was 14 years old and with my friend and one dollar between us we managed to make it nearly two thousand miles towards the west coast hitchhiking, to the final departure at seventeen, I’ve always traveled light with as few attachments to “stuff” and the material world as I could.

Today, at 55, I’m moving once again. I woke up at 6 AM to start packing. It’s now 8 AM. I’m nearly done packing, but the surprising thing is that once again I’ve thrown into the garbage can as much as I’ve packed, with it has gone some of the cobwebs in my mind that I find once again have collected and I don’t need, and still what’s left will barely fit into my friends SUV about an hour from now.

The strange, mysterious, and what I think shouldn’t be but always is surprising thing is that an old familiar friend who hides right in front of my nose has just suddenly re-appeared that I sometimes forget about for long periods while living in any one particular place, and looking around the living room at the stack of boxes I again feel wonderfully light on my feet with anticipation of the umpteenth new start in my life!

I’m going to shut down this computer in the next hour, but I should be back up online within a day or so, and I might even drop in via a friends computer this afternoon.

Key To The Highway