Sunday too

8.  Combative mood today, wonder why

• The atmosphere in the United States remains poisonous. Critics claim that stoking in the public is being done on purpose -- to create a false narrative that not only is Trump supposedly a "threat to democracy," but that his more than 74 million supporters are, too. Others, however, claim that the real threat to democracy is actually these serial liars, violators of the Constitution and falsifiers of information.

• The right to challenge and criticize, which is an integral part of the freedom of speech guaranteed by the First Amendment, appears seriously threatened. The right to defend oneself against charges also appears threatened, and the legal profession dangerous to practice.

• Expressing doubts about the November 3 election is now a liability. Substantiated reports show that it was far from perfect. The American economist Peter Navarro, in his private capacity, drew up three meticulous analyses: "The Immaculate Deception," "The Art of the Steal" and "The Navarro Report". They have been zealously disparaged -- many think unjustly.

• Some authors describe what is happening as a slide towards authoritarianism. They note that many Americans and corporations, while behaving in an increasingly authoritarian manner, accuse their opponents of being authoritarian -- in other words, blaming their opponents for what they themselves are doing.

  
  

• For more than three years Trump was accused, without any evidence apart from a fake "dossier", of being a Russian agent. The accusations eventually proved baseless, but not before $32 million of taxpayers' money were spent in what the prosecutors knew from the start was a fraud. They also tried to frame, incriminate and send innocent people to prison. The exercise was, at bottom, nothing more than an attempted coup d'état.

• Throughout his entire term, Trump was faced with threats, abuse of power and unremitting attacks. Even though Trump is no longer president, the war against him continues.

• If H.R.1 becomes the law of the land, it will entrench those "very things that made the election of 2020 such a mess". These include, among other things, the flooding of states with millions of unsolicited mail-in ballots, failure to verify signatures, no chain of custody of ballots, same-day voter registration, and ballot-harvesting -- many of which are invitations to commit fraud. As a bipartisan report in 2005 from the Commission on Federal Election Reform, chaired by former President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James Baker III, concluded: mail-in ballots "remain the largest source of potential voter fraud." If H.R.1 is passed in the Senate, countless ways of demolishing election integrity will be set in cement.

7.  Quick one on Blogger woes for Scriblerati

This might help some of you if Blogger is too daunting.  Thing is, strange coming from me, but Blogger is not in the same league of hell on earth as new WordPress.  So this below is for Blogger only and though it applies to Scriblerus matters, same can be used for any image.

Step 1: Click on Blogger icon to bring up dashboard:

2.  At the same time, go to Scriblerus site or take the url from here, plus download for yourself the badge/icon:

https://martinscriblerus.com/

You might wish instead to take Julia's version at her place:

http://thylacosmilus.blogspot.com/

All right, have those at hand.

3. Click Layout lower left on dash, it comes up not unlike this:

4.  Click Add a Gadget and it brings up a panel:

5.  You want Image, not Html, nor Text, nor any of the other offerings:

5.  Choose File from your computer [the Scriblerus badge], also put in the Scriblerus url, being careful not to have two https-es in there, then left click and drag [you're over on the right now] the Image down to where you want it in your sidebar - this could take some adjusting and the nice thing is it can be done front page as well in Blogger - it does have some reasonable features.

6.  Hint - it will give you the chance to click Shrink to fit [below the image itself] - you do want that clicked so it fits neatly within your sidebar.  Another hint - all this is best done on laptop or somewhere using a mouse, better than a touch screen.

7. Once you're sure it's in the right place, click Save.  Done.

That's about it.  Any issues, email me.