mySQL and PHP

Greetings -

Right to the point:

I'm using mySQL and PHP on a webhost, and WordPress. ...and I'm very very
very new to this stuff.

Wordpress is what I'm using to make it easy for my pops to post articles.
My index.php uses some code to pull from the mySQL db (created by wordpress)
and puts the post content into a div, then p class. However, I'm noticing
that when the content contains html coding, it seems to fall out of the
class and lose it's padding. Is there some command I need to use to modify
the html code in the content when it's posted to my page?

Below is what I think is the relevant code: You can check the results at
www.meetwithkbh.com (yes, it's got a goal). If there's no html like <ul>'s
and <li>'s included in the post, it formats fine with the padding, but - if
there is, it'll drop out of the padding that i'm trying to keep.

<?php
$db = mysql_connect("localhost", "mywordpressdb", "*******"); /*no, these
aren't the real user/pass */
mysql_select_db("dbwordpress",$db);
$result = mysql_query("SELECT id, post_title, post_content, post_date_gmt
FROM wp_posts ORDER BY post_date_gmt DESC Limit 0, 5",$db);
while ($myrow = mysql_fetch_row($result)) {
echo "<div class=\"post\">\n\t<p class=\"posttitle\">";
printf("%10.60s", $myrow[1]);
echo "</p>";
echo "\n<p class=\"postcontent\">";
printf("%10.400s",$myrow[2]);
echo "...<a href=\"More.php\">Read More</a></p>\n</div><br />\n";
}
mysql_close($db);
?>

Here is the css, contained in the index.php too, which is in the proper
place in the index.php:
..posttitle { font-size: 120%;
font-weight: bold;
color: white;
background: #806C59;
padding: 3px 3px 3px 1em;
margin-top:0em;
}

..postcontent { padding-left:2em;
padding-right: 2em;
text-align: justify;
}

..post {
border: 1px solid #cccccc;
line-height:1em;
}