Ladder of the West, 28th Day of Midsommar, 526 M.E. (Helios): It was raining when I woke up this morning - a quarter inch was recorded at the NWS station in Peachtree City, Georgia. I'm glad to see the rain - the state of our drought has been reduced from "Extreme" to "Severe." But Helios is a walking day, and the forecast had showers on and off throughout the day.

Worse, different sites forecast different times for the rain. The weather app on my phone, say, said rain from 8:00 to 10:00 am, 2:00 to 5:00 pm, and 7:00 until who cares because then it's too late to start a walk. But weather.com (The Weather Channel) had the rain coming in an hour earlier or leaving an hour later than each of those intervals. On top of that, the forecasts kept changing all day.

After lunch, however, they both seemed to agree that I had an open window between 3:00 and 5:00 pm, and I got a very muggy 4.2-mile Madison in during that interval. Dark clouds made the last half mile feel like it was 8:00 pm while it wasn't even yet 5:00, but the rain held off until I got home.

However, my soggy and sullen day was brightened knowing that the Stable Genius was having a worse day. Today, a federal judge ordered him to take his name off of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and also ruled that he had no authority to terminate its summer schedule. Another judge today barred him from setting up his $1.8B slush fund, ostensibly to pay off insurgents although everyone knows he would have kept all the money for himself. A third judge threw out a law in New Hampshire that would have required new voters to provide a sworn affidavit proving their citizenship. In New Jersey, State Police will replace his ICE goons outside of a detention facility there, and an ICE goon was arrested today in Minneapolis for the shooting of a Venezuelan man. Finally, the cherry on top, one of Jeff Bezos' rocket ships blew up on the launch pad today (no one was killed).

I know my elation will turn to despair when these cases inevitably reach the corrupt Supreme Court, and Keg Stand Cavanaugh, Amy Boney Carrot, and "Uncle Clarence" Thomas reverse the lower courts in their mysterious "shadow docket," but allow me to celebate while I can. TGIF, y'all!