You take the lies out
and you take the malice out of him …
and he’ll disappear

Tom Ballou, the most immortal liar that ever I struck. He couldn’t ever seem to tell the truth, in any kind of weather.

Why, he would make you fairly shudder. He was the most scandalous liar! I left him, finally; I couldn’t stand it.

The proverb says, “like master, like man;” and if you stay with that kind of a man, you’ll come under suspicion by and by, just as sure as you live.

He paid first-class wages; but said I, What’s wages when your reputation’s in danger?

So I let the wages go, and froze to my reputation.

And I’ve never regretted it.

Reputation’s worth everything, ain’t it?

That’s the way I look at it.

He had more selfish organs than any seven men in the world—all packed in the stern-sheets of his skull, of course, where they belonged.

They weighed down the back of his head so that it made his nose tilt up in the air.

People thought it was vanity, but it wasn’t, it was malice.

If you only saw his foot, you’d take him to be nineteen feet high, but he wasn’t; it was because his foot was out of drawing.

He was intended to be nineteen feet high, no doubt, if his foot was made first, but he didn’t get there; he was only five feet ten.

That’s what he was, and that’s what he is.

You take the lies out of him, and he’ll shrink to the size of your hat; you take the malice out of him, and he’ll disappear.*

They saw that the ancient religions of Britain, the beliefs of the druids and like, went away when folks stopped believing in them.

Maybe if we stopped listening to lies.

Stopped reading about lies.

Stopped reporting the lies.

The liar would go away.

From Life on the Mississippi by mark Twain (Harper, New York, 1923).

rejoicing always
praying continually
give thanks in all things

Based on: Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 (New International Version)

The reverse side of the penny was no more attractive than the front.

This was not the way to work off the gloom that threatened to engulf him.

Over there was Venus, shining out in the evening sky.

This sea air was stimulating, refreshing, delightful.

Surely this was a better world than his drained nervous condition allowed him to believe.

From Hornblower and the Hotspur by C. S. Forester, New York, Bantam Books, 1963

Surely this was a better world than his drained nervous condition allowed him to believe.

That about sums it up for today doesn’t it.

alter? redefine?
To this court, answer to each of
those questions is ‘no’

In the article, Federal judge says Democrat’s North Carolina election win must stand by Sam Levine in the Guardian, Mr. Levine rights:

Richard Myers II, a district judge and Trump appointee, agreed with Riggs and said that Griffin was essentially trying to change the rules of the election after election day.

“This case concerns whether the federal constitution permits a state to alter the rules of an election after the fact and apply those changes retroactively to only a select group of voters, and in so doing treat those voters differently than other similarly situated individuals. This case is also about whether a state may redefine its class of eligible voters but offer no process to those who may have been misclassified as ineligible,” Myers wrote in his opinion. “To this court, the answer to each of those questions is ‘no.’”

How far that little candle throws its beams!

So shines a good deed in a naughty world.