Very cool iPhone App: StarWalk

I love StarWalk. Instead of guessing at what I am seeing in the nightsky, I can easily look it up. Click on this little iTunes thingamagummy to get yours:

JS-Kit comments

I installed JS-Kit comments and am medium happy with it. It has some issues I would like solved, but I just discovered an ability that I love. If I subscribe to my comment feed (if I have comments sent to my email box), I can directly reply to that comment from my email, which involves far fewer clicks. This pleases me to no end.

twit this

Do you twitter? Do you read blogs?

If the blog you are reading has a TWIT installed, you can tweet your blog recommendations straight out to to twitter.

(My Dad is thinking that I am babbling by now.)

Try it. Click on the Twit This birdie down below and then all your tweetie friends will read this post and install twits on their blogs and so on . . .

and so on . . .

and so on . .

works for me: blog gadgets

Do you want some new blog widgets and have some time to play? Here is a short list of some of my favs:

I got all the coding for the peek-a-boo posts over at hackosphere.

All my pretty little icons came from famfamfam.

The coding for the rotating banners came from Vince Liu.

The very cool tabbed sidebar widgets are thanks to the very cool hoctro.

The fun "Feeling Lucky?" toy -- which is currently disabled -- came from phydeaux3(fido 3?).

The pretty label cloud also came fromphydeaux3.

The elegant and easy to install related posts widget came from Jackbook.com.

I got all the social bookmarking icons nicely packaged for me at the aptly named Social Bookmarking Script Generator.

The 3 column footer came from Technodia.

The pretty sliding photo galleries are from CSSplay.

The recent comments widget is from Hackosphere



:: one year ago today: snuggly kids and Grāpple: obscene apples
:: two years ago today: lovies - attachment parenting our older-child adoptees
:: my other Works for Me posts.

works+for+me

de-gnoming

I've been ruthlessly degnoming the blog again. It seems to load faster for me -- what do you think?

CommentLuv for Blogger is working!

It works! You have to wait for the whole blog to load, and I had to take out the Post Summary widget, but if you leave a comment CommentLuv will add to it a link to your most recent blog post.

I have to be responsible and prepare for class and feed my kids and so forth, but I do promise to degnome the blog soon so that you don't have to wait so long for a complete load.

:: a year ago today Cumin-Black Eyed Peas and growth
:: two years ago today and more

CommentLuv

fiddling with the comments, yet again

Please humor me by leaving a comment. If all goes well, CommentLuv will link back to your most recent post.


:: one year ago today: Friday Poetry: Elsa Beskow and feta pie
:: two years ago today: A Happy Day

works for me: recent comments widget

Yipee. I have finally found a great recent comments widget. All of the ones I tried had left me wanting. Using the Blogger Feed method (where you grab your comments feed and insert it into the Blogger feed widget) didn't satisfy, as I could only display 5 comments and no snippet. I tried a similar thing with Feedburner -- which has worked nicely for all of my other feed-based widgets -- but for comments it used the first line as the title which resulted in duplicate showings of that first line. Plus, if I wanted to show the commenter's name it generated weird spacing.

At last, I found Hackosphere.

It's a really easy install. You add a couple of lines of script into your template and then add a new widget the usual way and cut-and-paste some lines into it. It blends seamlessly with my blog's look and I can easily edit both the number of comments and how long of a snippet to show.

Thanks Hackosphere!



My other Works for Me posts.

works for me

comments widget

Well I gave up on Intense Debate. I didn't want to, as I LOVED the threaded comment feature but I was continuing to get complaints about lag time and browser freeze and non-functioning in Internet Explorer, so I am back to blogger now. So, comment on folks - I've been feeling a bit lonely here.

comment widget

trouble with IE & ID

It seems the ID (IntenseDebate) and IE (Internet Explorer) don't mix. This is the only drawback I have found with ID, but it is a dealbreaker if they can't help me resolve it right soon.

In the meantime, if you are burning to say something, I invite you to give FireFox a whirl.

happy birthday to me

Yup, it's my birthday. I'm 45, and yes, this is pretty much what I look like.


To celebrate, I'm going out to lunch with my mom, sis, and nieces, and then home for dinner and games with my honey and kids. Would it be okay to ask you, dear reader, in honor of my agedness, to click on the magic wand in the footer line and then leave a comment wherever it is that you end up?



Change of plans. My Mom, sis, and nieces went to lunch. I stayed home under 7 blankets and alternately shivered and sweated. My best friend brought over a beautiful from scratch chocolate cake and I am too sick to even be tempted. Poor me: I have a birthday flu.

printer-friendly

I finally did it! Last week I added a print icon to the footer of individual posts and today I figured out how to make it NOT print the headers, sidebars, and footers and to print just the blog post, full page width. Yipee.

Not that I imagine that everyone in blogland is printing my posts and sleeping with them under their pillows, but it is possible that a few people want to print the recipes.

Anyway, I'm right pleased with myself. If you do happen to print something, please let me know how it worked for you.

blog tweaks, widgets, gadgets, and customization

I got to spend some time this evening with a niece who is crafting her first blog. Of course we ran out of time as I was trying to distill two years worth of bloggy-wisdom into an evening full of people to see, cake to serve, and children to mind. I'll post here what I would have shared, in case it is helpful to anyone else.

1. Go right now to IntenseDebates and install their comment widget. It allows for threaded comments, and that is worth the install alone, though it does offer other nice features (like the recent comments widget). It's an easy install.
2. Go sign up at StatCounter, cause it is fun to see where your visitors are from.
3. Ditto with ClusterMaps

Other then that, all my blog toy sources are in the Credits Tabwidget in the lower right corner.

Happy tweaking!





edited to add Library Thing, which I almost included in the original post but got distracted by a little muffin who had a tummy ache. Anyway, just go to LibraryThing, sign up, add some books, and then look on the far right of your personal Library Thing home page for the 'blog widgets' tab and from there it is pretty self-explanatory.

One of the things I like the most about LibraryThing is that after I loaded up a lot of my favorite books, I started to get book recommendations that were actually reliable.

edited to add this great post on how the blogger html template actually works.

how to add little pictures to your comments

Want a cute little picture of yourself that shows up when you leave comments?

1. Go over to face your manga and make an avatar (little pic) of yourself. When it is just right, save it and check your email box. Your manga avatar will arrive in your inbox from which you will save it to your desktop or somewhere else where you can easily locate it again.
2. Go over to gravatar.com and follow directions. You will enter your email address and upload your avatar so that any place where you use an email address on the web (in a comment submission, for example), your little pic will show up.
3. Come back here and leave a comment so we can admire your new avatar.
4. If you want to know if avatars show up on your comments, leave me a comment and I'll come say something on your blog and we can see if your comment server is avatar-enabled.

a new look

Well I think I have finished remodeling the blog. How about a tour?

Take a look at that cute header (made with Wordle and Picasa's collage feature). Now refresh/reload the page. What happened? Thanks to the coding I found over at Vincent Liu, we now have rotating banners: twelve different pictures from my adventures in Scotland, England, Vancouver Island, and at home.

Then there is the rotating quotes which give you something to think about while the rest of the page loads.

Next up is the nearly empty left-sidebar. It loads first and then quickly gets on to the good stuff, the daily posts.

In the posts, I'm real happy with the new threaded comment feature from Intense Debate that does NOT require you to leave the home page. To comment, just click on the comment line, and the little input box drops down from there. Everything just nudges over to make room for it, much like the neighboring houses did for the Order of the Phoenix headquarters.

From there we move on to the right sidebar, which I am particularly proud of. You know that I have a deep and abiding appreciation of blog widgets and tend to accumulate them in such quantities that the blog takes forever to load and looks cluttery. I have solved this, I think (let me know, eh Kate?). The right side-bar loads last, while you are reading posts, so I put all the 'clutter' over there and then I used Hoctro's very cool tabview widget to get rid of the clutterly look. I must admit that this was a very tricksy installation and required a great deal of modification. Someday, I'll post a step-by-step of how it works for me.

So, the right side-bar. First we have another rotating quote full of thought-provoking comments from my political hero, Dr. Ron Paul, Congressman - Texas. Then the widgets begin.

See the me! me! me! header? Click on one of those things beneath it. Cool huh? Click on another one. I've tucked into that widget all the things that a new visitor may want to have, but that old-time readers are probably getting sick of.

Next is you! you! you!. Those tabs have the most recent comments listed as well as a list of the posts that have the most comments. I use this tab to quickly see where the new comments are.

Then we have the posts widget. Here you'll find a list of the 15 most recent posts, as well as the linked posts (posts that someone else has linked up - your blog could be here, just find a post in my blog that you find worthy of sharing and link it up into one of your posts) and my technorati rating.

Next up is books tabwidget. What am I currently reading? reading next? regret reading? recommend that you read? reviewing? It's all there in the books widget.

Then there is shopping. Want to spend a couple of $100 dollars on me? I make it easy with my wishlist. Want to buy something for yourself and give me a little commission? Click through my endorsements or favs links and I'll earn a nickel or two for Chickadee's orthodontia fund.

Then is the label cloud which I may move into a tabwidget when I figure out how to do that, same with the bloglines reader, with which I keep track of new posts on the blogs I read, I'd like to put that into the you! you! you! section, but it didn't cooperate. And archives clearly needs to move into posts. And I still need to tidy up the stats tabswidget which is currently sitting in detention at the very bottom of the page (avert your eyes, it's not pretty).

And while we are chatting about the blog itself, it is designed for, and works best in Firefox. If you are using Microsoft Internet Explorer, it's time to upgrade to a modern browser. Web browsers all (except for MSIE) conform to a set of guidelines that make webpages look the same no matter what browser is being used. So, if this blog is not wowing you with its beauty and grace, it's time to join 621,675,859 other people and get Firefox. Besides, it's free, it's fast, it's easy to install and navigate and it has a whole bunch of nifty add-on features which I can tell you about on another day.

So, what do you think? How is the load-time? the gnomes? Is it all working for you?

twiddling

bear with me as I twiddle with the layout.

new comment widget

Okay, I took the plunge and left behind my old comment server (haloscan) in favor of intensedebate which is now up and running. It offers threaded comments for discussions and several other features which I like.

Could you all do me a favor and flit around the posts from the last few weeks and leave comments? I want to put the new widget through its paces.

Thanks!

:: edited to say "thanks" for helping me test-drive it. So far, I am really pleased with it. How is it working from your end?

Ta Da!

Thanks to Mom2Fur I found a useful new toy today, the TaDa lists, which you can view in my sidebar right under the pet pictures. I hope that this will help me remember to leave the computer and go live my life. Wish me luck.



widgets

bloggity tweakings

Yes, I stayed up too late doing this. Please let me know what you think, especially if it is doing anything strange, loading too slowly, etc. I am consolidating the script servers (just plug your ears and sing La-La-La if you are not techy) and dropping widgets right & left.

Which widgets would like to not see again?

Ron Paul Quotes

I have joined your revolution and I'm proud to be part of what you want to do. ~ Rep. Ron Paul

I finally got my Rep. Ron Paul rotating quotes banner up. I got most of the quotes from FDRS, Paul 4 Prez, and Ron Paul Fan. If you would like the coding, already loaded with quotes, here it is. Naturally, I'd sure appreciate some linky love.

<center><div face="Garamond, Verdana, Arial,Helvetica,Georgia" style="background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 50%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial; opacity: 0.750; width: 100%;"><br /><script language="JavaScript"><br />//store the quotations in arrays<br />quotes = new Array(53);<br />quotes[0] = "How did we [Republicans] win the election in the year 2000? We talked about a humble foreign policy: No nation-building; don't police the world. That's conservative, it's Republican, it's pro-American - it follows the founding fathers. And, besides, it follows the Constitution. ~ Ron Paul";<br />quotes[1] = "I am absolutely opposed to a national ID card. This is a total contradiction of what a free society is all about. The purpose of government is to protect the secrecy and the privacy of all individuals, not the secrecy of government. We don't need a national ID card. ~ Ron Paul";<br />quotes[2] = "I am just absolutely convinced that the best formula for giving us peace and preserving the American way of life is freedom, limited government, and minding our own business overseas. ~ Ron Paul";<br />quotes[3] = "The moral and constitutional obligations of our representatives in Washington are to protect our liberty, not coddle the world, precipitating no-win wars, while bringing bankruptcy and economic turmoil to our people. ~ Ron Paul";<br />quotes[4] = "When the federal government spends more each year than it collects in tax revenues, it has three choices: It can raise taxes, print money, or borrow money. While these actions may benefit politicians, all three options are bad for average Americans. ~ Ron Paul";<br />quotes[5] = "Mr. Speaker, I once again find myself compelled to vote against the annual budget resolution for a very simple reason: it makes government bigger. <br/>~ Ron Paul 3/25/04";<br />quotes[6] = "Under the United States Constitution, the federal government has no authority to hold states 'accountable' for their education performance. In the free society envisioned by the founders, schools are held accountable to parents, not federal bureaucrats. ~ Ron Paul 5/23/01";<br />quotes [7] = "We need to understand that the more government spends, the more freedom is lost. Instead of simply debating spending levels, <br/>we ought to be debating whether the departments, agencies, and programs funded by the budget should exist at all. ~ Ron Paul 3/25/04";<br />quotes [8] = "One thing is clear: The Founding Fathers never intended a nation where citizens pay nearly half of everything they earn to government. ~ Ron Paul 7/17/01";<br />quotes [9] = "The requirement that law enforcement officials obtain a warrant from a judge before searching private documents is one of the fundamental protections against abuse of the government's power to seize an individual's private documents. ~ Ron Paul 3/15/01";<br />quotes [10] = "However, monitoring the transactions of every American in order to catch those few who are involved in some sort of illegal activity turns one of the great bulwarks of our liberty, the presumption of innocence, on its head. The federal government has no right to treat all Americans as criminals by spying on their relationship with their doctors, employers, or bankers. In fact, criminal law enforcement is reserved to the state and local governments by the Constitution's Tenth Amendment. ~ Ron Paul 5/22/01";<br />quotes [11] = "Perhaps the most onerous example of a proposal that creates the illusion of security (yet really promotes servitude) is the plan to force all Americans to carry a national ID card. A uniform national system of identification would allow the federal government to inappropriately monitor the movements and transactions of every citizen. History shows that when government gains the power to monitor the actions of the people, it inevitably uses that power in harmful ways. ~ Ron Paul 11/16/01";<br />quotes [12] = "One of the most disturbing abuses of the Social Security number is the congressionally-authorized rule forcing parents to get a Social Security number for their newborn children in order to claim them as dependents. Forcing parents to register their children with the state is more like something out of the nightmares of George Orwell than the dreams of a free republic which inspired this nation's founders. ~ Ron Paul 10/7/03";<br />quotes [13] = "I rise to urge the Congress to think twice before thrusting this nation into a war without merit- one fraught with the danger of escalating into something no American will be pleased with. ~ Ron Paul 9/4/02";<br />quotes [14] = "I have heard all the arguments on why we must immediately invade and occupy Iraq and have observed that there are only a few hardy souls left in the Congress who are trying to stop this needless, senseless, and dangerous war. ~ Ron Paul 9/18/02";<br />quotes [15] = "The best news is that if stopping suicide terrorism is a goal we seek, a solution is available to us. Cease the occupation of foreign lands and the suicide missions will cease. Between 1982 and 1986, there were 41 suicide terrorist attacks in Lebanon. Once the U.S., the French, and Israel withdrew their forces from Lebanon, there were no more attacks. ~ Ron Paul 7/14/05";<br />quotes [16] = "The best news is that if stopping suicide terrorism is a goal we seek, a solution is available to us. Cease the occupation of foreign lands and the suicide missions will cease. Between 1982 and 1986, there were 41 suicide terrorist attacks in Lebanon. Once the U.S., the French, and Israel withdrew their forces from Lebanon, there were no more attacks. ~ Ron Paul 7/14/05";<br />quotes [17] = "While I sympathize with those who see embryonic stem cell research as a path to cures for dreadful diseases that have stricken so many Americans, I strongly object to forcing those Americans who believe embryonic stem cell research is immoral to subsidize such research with their tax dollars. ~ Ron Paul 5/24/05";<br />quotes [18] = "All the reasons given to justify a preemptive strike against Iraq were wrong. Congress and the American people were misled . . . We shouldn’t wait until our financial system is completely ruined and we are forced to change our ways. We should do it as quickly as possible and stop the carnage and financial bleeding that will bring us to our knees and force us to stop that which we should have never started. We all know, in time, the war will be de-funded one way or another and the troops will come home. So why not now? ~ Ron Paul 4/17/07";<br />quotes [19] = "Though opposition to totally unnecessary war should be the only moral position, the rhetoric is twisted to claim that patriots who oppose the war are not 'supporting the troops' . . . Unsound policy can never help the troops. Keeping the troops out of harm’s way and out of wars unrelated to our national security is the only real way of protecting the troops. ~ Ron Paul 5/22/07";<br />quotes [20] = "The greatest threat facing America today is the disastrous fiscal policies of our own government, marked by shameless deficit spending and Federal Reserve currency devaluation. ~ Ron Paul 4/09/07";<br />quotes [21] = "America was founded by men who understood that the threat of domestic tyranny is as great as any threat from abroad. If we want to be worthy of their legacy, we must resist the rush toward ever-increasing state control of our society. Otherwise, our own government will become a greater threat to our freedoms than any foreign terrorist. ~ Ron Paul in Freedom vs. Security: A False Choice, May 31, 2004";<br />quotes [22] = " . . . it is with the complicity of Congress that we have become a nation of pre-emptive war, secret military tribunals, torture, rejection of habeas corpus, warrantless searches, undue government secrecy, extraordinary renditions, and uncontrolled spying on the American people. ~ Ron Paul 4/30/07";<br />quotes [23] = "The American concept of independent nationhood inscribed in our Declaration cannot be maintained if we are going to pursue a policy that undermines the independence of other nations. ~ Ron Paul 7/02/07";<br />quotes [25] = "It’s hypocritical and childish to dismiss certain founding principles simply because a convenient rationale is needed to justify interventionist policies today. ~ Ron Paul 12/18/06";<br />quotes [26] = "How did we [Republicans] win the election in the year 2000? We talked about a humble foreign policy: No nation-building; don't police the world.<br/>That's conservative, it's Republican, it's pro-American - it follows the founding fathers. And, besides, it follows the Constitution. ~ Dr. Ron Paul";<br />quotes [27] = "Non-interventionism is not isolationism. Nonintervention simply means America does not interfere militarily, financially, or covertly in the internal affairs of other nations. It does not mean that we isolate ourselves; on the contrary, our founders advocated open trade, travel, communication, and diplomacy with other nations. ~ Ron Paul 12/18/06";<br />quotes [28] = "All Americans will benefit, both in terms of their safety and their pocketbooks, if we pursue a coherent, neutral foreign policy of non-interventionism, free trade, and self-determination in the Middle East. ~ Ron Paul 2/26/07";<br />quotes [29] = "Only in Washington would anyone call the creation of an additional layer of bureaucracy on top of already bloated bureaucracies 'streamlining.' Only in Washington would anyone believe that a bigger, more centralized federal government means more efficiency. ~ Ron Paul 5/14/07";<br />quotes [30] = "Freedom is not defined by safety. Freedom is defined by the ability of citizens to live without government interference. Government cannot create a world without risks, nor would we really wish to live in such a fictional place. Only a totalitarian society would even claim absolute safety as a worthy ideal, because it would require total state control over its citizens’ lives. Liberty has meaning only if we still believe in it when terrible things happen and a false government security blanket beckons. ~ Ron Paul, Security and Liberty 04/25/2007";<br />quotes [31] = "The large majority of Americans are sick and tired of being overtaxed and despise the income tax and the inheritance tax. The majority of Americans know government programs fail to achieve their goals and waste huge sums of money. ~ Ron Paul, January 31, 2000";<br />quotes [32] = "Because federal hate crime laws criminalize thoughts, they are incompatible with a free society. ~ Ron Paul, Unconstitutional Legislation Threatens Freedoms, May 7, 2007";<br />quotes [33] = "Certainly the Patriot Act would have never been passed, because it wasn’t available to us . . . It was almost 400 pages long, and became available less than an hour before it was debated on the House floor… The congressmembers were intimidated, 'if I do nothing, my people gonna be mad, because they want us to do something'. And the people are frightened. When they are frightened, they are much more willing to give us their liberties. But giving up their liberties won’t make them safer, that’s the real sad part of it. ~ Ron Paul during an Interview by Laura Knoy on NHPR, June 5, 2007";<br />quotes [34] = "Finally, there is a compelling moral argument against war in Iraq. Military force is justified only in self-defense; naked aggression is the province of dictators and rogue states. This is the danger of a new 'preemptive first strike' doctrine. America is the most moral nation on earth, founded on moral principles, and we must apply moral principles when deciding to use military force. ~ Ron Paul in the U.S. House of Representatives, September 4, 2002";<br />quotes [35] = "The tired assertion that America 'supports democracy' in the Middle East is increasingly transparent. It was false 50 years ago, when we supported and funded the hated Shah of Iran to prevent nationalization of Iranian oil, and it’s false today when we back an unelected military dictator in Pakistan - just to name two examples. If honest democratic elections were held throughout the Middle East tomorrow, many countries would elect religious fundamentalist leaders hostile to the United States. Cliché or not, the Arab Street really doesn’t like America, so we should stop the charade about democracy and start pursuing a coherent foreign policy that serves America’s long-term interests. ~ Ron Paul, Hypocrisy in the Middle East, February 26, 2007";<br />quotes [36] = "Though many will criticize the president for mis-steps in Iraq and at home, it is with the complicity of Congress that we have become a nation of pre-emptive war, secret military tribunals, torture, rejection of habeas corpus, warrantless searches, undue government secrecy, extraordinary renditions, and uncontrolled spying on the American people. Fighting over there has nothing to do with preserving freedoms here at home. More likely the opposite is true. ~ Ron Paul, Getting Iraq War Funding Wrong Again, April 30, 2007";<br />quotes [37] = "Good morning, Mr. Greenspan. I understand that you did not take my friendly advice last fall. I thought maybe you should look for other employment, but I see you have kept your job. ~ Ron Paul during a Hearing before the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Financial Services, February 17, 2000";<br />quotes [38] = "Capitalism should not be condemned, since we haven’t had capitalism. A system of capitalism presumes sound money, not fiat money manipulated by a central bank. Capitalism cherishes voluntary contracts and interest rates that are determined by savings, not credit creation by a central bank. It’s not capitalism when the system is plagued with incomprehensible rules regarding mergers, acquisitions, and stock sales, along with wage controls, price controls, protectionism, corporate subsidies, international management of trade, complex and punishing corporate taxes, privileged government contracts to the military-industrial complex, and a foreign policy controlled by corporate interests and overseas investments. Add to this centralized federal mismanagement of farming, education, medicine, insurance, banking and welfare. This is not capitalism! ~ Ron Paul, Has Capitalism Failed?, July 9, 2002";<br />quotes [39] = "Neil Cavuto: Yeah but, you can’t, Congressman, we’ve got a pretty good economy going here, right? We’ve got productivity soaring. We’ve got retail sales that are strong. We’ve got corporate earnings that for, what, the 19th quarter, are up double digit? We’ve got a market chasing highs, I mean, this isn’t happening in a vacuum, right?<br/>Ron Paul: Yeah, that’s nice, but when you have to borrow, you know . . . My personal finances would be very good if I borrowed a million dollars every month. But, someday, the bills will become due. And the bills will come due in this country, and then we’ll have to pay for it. We can’t afford this war, and we can’t afford the entitlement system.<br/>Neil Cavuto: Look, Congressman, did you say this 10 years ago, when the numbers were similarly strong . . . <br/>Ron Paul: Go back and check.<br/>Your World with Neil Cavuto, FOX News, May 15, 2007";<br />quotes [40] = "The theory of the IRS is rather repugnant to me because the assumption is made that I, the government, owns 100% of your income and I permit you to keep 5%, 10% or 20%. You’re vulnerable, you’ve sold out. The government can take 80% if they want, which they did at one time. ~ Ron Paul during the Candidates@Google interview, July 13, 2007";<br />quotes [41] = "Our federal government, which was intended to operate as a very limited constitutional republic, has instead become a virtually socialist leviathan that redistributes trillions of dollars. We can hardly be surprised when countless special interests fight for the money. The only true solution to the campaign money problem is a return to a proper constitutional government that does not control the economy. Big government and big campaign money go hand-in-hand. ~ Ron Paul, Why Is There So Much Money in Politics?, February 4, 2002";<br />quotes [42] = "I have joined your revolution and I'm proud to be part of what you want to do. ~ Ron Paul";<br />quotes [43] = "It’s time to rethink the whole system of HMOs and managed care. This entire unnecessary level of corporatism rakes off profits and worsens the quality of care. But HMOs did not arise in the free market; they are creatures of government interference in health care dating to the 1970s. These non-market institutions have gained control over medical care through collusion between organized medicine, politicians, and drug companies, in an effort to move America toward 'free' universal health care. ~ Ron Paul, Diagnosing our Health Care Woes, September 25, 2006";<br />quotes [44] = "Do they think if we destroy our freedoms for the terrorists they will no longer have a reason to attack us? ~ Ron Paul";<br />quotes [45] = "By the way, when I say cut taxes, I don't mean fiddle with the code. I mean abolish the income tax and the IRS, and replace them with nothing. ~ Ron Paul";<br />quotes [46] = "They don't attack us because we're rich and we're free, they attack us because we're over there. ~ Ron Paul";<br />quotes [47] = "First President Bush said the New World Order was in tune -- and that's what they were working for. The U.N. is part of that government. They're working very significantly right now for a North American Union. That's why there's a lot of people in Washington right now who don't care too much about our borders. They have a philosophic belief that national sovereignty is not important. It is also the reason I've made the strong suggestion that the U.S. need not be in the U.N. for national security. ~ Ron Paul";<br />quotes [48] = "Abolishing the Federal Reserve will allow Congress to reassert its constitutional authority over monetary policy . . . Though the Federal Reserve policy harms the average American, it benefits those in a a position to take advantage of the cycles in monetary policy. The main beneficiaries are those who receive access to artificially inflated money and/or credit before the inflationary effects of the policy impact the entire economy. Federal Reserve policies also benefit big spending politicians who use the inflated currency created by the Fed to hide the true costs of the welfare-warfare state. It is time for Congress to put the interests of the American people ahead of the special interests and their own appetite for big government. ~ Ron Paul";<br />quotes [49] = "The much-vaunted Senate 'compromise' on immigration is a compromise alright: a compromise of our laws, a compromise of our sovereignty, and a compromise of the Second Amendment. That anyone in Washington believes this is a credible approach to solving our immigration crisis suggests just how out of touch our political elites really are. ~ Ron Paul";<br />quotes [50] = "We don’t get our rights because we’re gays or women or minorities. We get our rights from our creator as individuals. So every individual should be treated the same way. If there is homosexual behavior in the military that is disruptive, it should be dealt with. But if there’s heterosexual sexual behavior that is disruptive, it should be dealt with. So it isn’t the issue of homosexuality. It’s the concept and the understanding of individual rights. ~ Ron Paul Republican Presidential Debate, June 5, 2007";<br />quotes [51] = "It is not our job to remove Saddam Hussein - that is the job of the Iraqi people. It is not our job to remove the Taliban - that is the business of the Afghan people. It is not our job to insist that the next government in Afghanistan include women, no matter how good an idea it is. If this really is an issue, why don't we insist that our friends in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait do the same thing, as well as impose our will on them? Talk about hypocrisy! The mere thought that we fight wars for affirmative action in a country 6,000 miles from home, with no cultural similarities, should insult us all. Of course it does distract us from the issue of an oil pipeline through northern Afghanistan. We need to keep our eye on the target and not be so easily distracted. ~ Ron Paul, House of Representatives Address On The 'War On Terrorism', Dec. 1st, 2001";<br />quotes [52] = "The original American patriots were those individuals brave enough to resist with force the oppressive power of King George. I accept the definition of patriotism as that effort to resist oppressive state power. The true patriot is motivated by a sense of responsibility and out of self-interest for himself, his family, and the future of his country to resist government abuse of power. He rejects the notion that patriotism means obedience to the state. ~ Ron Paul";<br />//calculate a random index<br />index = Math.floor(Math.random() * quotes.length);<br />//display the quotation<br />document.write("\n"); <br />document.write(quotes[index]);<br />//done<br /></script></div></center>

Alas, when I put it in the textbox, it adds html markers for line breaks where we don't want them. Take out all the line break markers <br/> and replace them with the Enter key. Basically start everything on a new line that used to have a line break marker <br/>. EXCEPT, don't take out the line break markers inside quote 39. You need those ones.

Surely there is a better way to deal with this. Any ideas?


ron paul

cross-posted to I'm a Paulunteer!