Or, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Life, Blogging, and TPMCafe.

OK, maybe not all that stuff...anyway, step right up folks.

For anyone new to the Cafe, or anyone old to the Cafe, too -- if you wanted to learn how to make links in your blog posts or in your comments here, you've come to the right place. Some directions are below, and please feel free to practice creating links in your comments, too.

Link us to somethin' good!

OK, first thing is a bit of housekeeping. You need to make sure you have the "rich text" editor turned on. If, when you make comments here, you see the icons at the bottom of the text box (similar to what you see in MS-Word...the B for bold, the I for italics, etc.), then you're good to go.

If not, you can go to "My Account -> Edit -> TinyMCE rich-text settings, and make sure it's set to "true."

OK, now to make links.

First, what I usually do is find the web page I want to link to. ("Tabbed browsing" in Firefox makes this very easy.) OK, select the URL you want to link to, and "copy" it.

Now, back at TPMCafe, type the words you want to make a link out of.

Select those words with the mouse -- when you do, you'll see in the icons at the bottom of the text box, a small, chain looking thingy. That's for "link."

Click on that, and a box pops up. Where it says Link URL, you can go to that box and "paste" your URL from the other web page.

Hit enter, and....

You have a link!

Easy, huh? And you thought all the bloggers were so cool and all, with their links. Piece of cake.

Of course, your mileage may vary. Some people may not want to use the rich text editor, some browsers may act weird, etc. Maybe you've never used tabbed browsing...? (Whaaat???)

But please use this post to try all this out, and ask questions if you need!

Coming soon...Part Two: How To Use The Tracker Views

(Note: Renamed the post...to be continued...)

I assume we'll have to wait until 2012 to find Presidential candidates that can say the words "gay marriage."

It's great that they want to repeal "Don't Ask..." and do all the other wonderful things they want to do for gay people. But a civil union is not a marriage; it's asking people to accept less than what everyone else gets.

By 2012, there will clearly and obviously be that many more people that don't think gays are icky people, and it's not even going to be an issue. Which makes the civil unions dance in 2008 a disgrace.

Oh, and speaking of, did I mention Bill Richardson...?

This:

You can think big, but remember you shouldn’t always say everything you think if you’re running for president...

sounds an awful lot like this:

They're reminders to all Americans that they need to watch what they say, watch what they do.

If you haven't noticed, the "Concert of Democracies" has been unleashed from the confines of TPMCafe's America Abroad, and is now spreading itself all over the news media.

Make it stop! Please...make it stop!!!

...also, check out this WaPo op/ed, by our Cafe friend Harold Ford Jr, in which he credits the DLC for coming up with the ideas of stopping global warming, universal health care, fixing the broken military, AND ending poverty!

Please make it stop!!!!!!

Turns out, Republicans lie. Shocking, I know.

But at the last GOP debate, they lied about U.S. job growth, the Democrats' stance on terrorists, the amount spent on tax preparation, and the cost of health care for illegal immigrants.

I'm sure soon enough, CNN will find some small error in the last Democratic debate, and do a story explaining to us how candidates from both parties play loose with the facts.

Atrios is right, in that what's public and private are being redefined, and it complicates stories about Presidential candidates' daughters. But there's a more basic reason why the Slate article is silly -- people join Facebook (and MySpace and the other zillions of social networking sites out there that are increasingly used in politics) for plenty of reasons. I might join Barack's Facebook group because I support him.

Or, I might join Barack's Facebook group because I want to see what's going on in Barack's Facebook group.

This place is going to shit, folks.

And it ain't just the software sales spammer I just knocked off the blog page.

There are a few good eggs, though. Here's to you, peeps.

Peace...