Eighth Ocean, 34th Day of Summer, 525 M.E. (Helios): Today is the 15-dozenth day of the year, so even if it wasn't Eighth Ocean in Angus MacLise's Universal Solar Calendar, it ought to be something. So I moved Eighth Ocean from the 22nd day of Summer in the original USC to the 34th in my New Revised USC.. 

Depressingly, Mike Allen of Axios has catalogued all the new precedents conceded to The Stable Genius by Congress this year:

• Presidents can limit the classified information they share with the House and Senate after bombing a foreign country without Congressional approval.


• Presidents can usurp Congress's power to levy tariffs, provided they declare a national emergency.


• Presidents can unilaterally freeze spending approved by Congress, and dismantle or fire the heads of independent agencies established by law.


• Presidents can take control of a state's National Guard, even if the governor opposes it, and occupy the state for as long as the president wants.


• Presidents can accept gifts from foreign nations, as large as a $200 million plane, even if it's unclear whether the president gets to keep the plane at the end of the term.


• Presidents can actively profit from their time in office, including creating new currencies structured to allow foreign nationals to invest anonymously, benefiting the president.


• Presidents can try to browbeat the Federal Reserve into cutting interest rates, including floating replacements for the Fed chair before their term is up.


• Presidents can direct the Justice Department to prosecute their political opponents and punish critics. These punishments can include stripping Secret Service protections, suing them, and threatening imprisonment.


• Presidents can punish media companies, law firms, and universities that don't share their viewpoints or values.


• Presidents can aggressively pardon supporters, including those who made large political donations as part of their bid for freedom. The strength of the case against the pardoned supporters is irrelevant.

The American government sure is a different thing than what I grew up with, and my old grade-school civics teachers' heads would probably explode if they saw what was happening now.

Republicans had better hope that a Democrat never becomes president. Imagine what an Ocasio-Cortez or a Jasmine Crockett could do with those kinds of powers. Of course, the Republicans will use those new powers, plus whatever else they could come up with, to make sure that never happens, and in the remote possibility that it does somehow, all those new precedents will, poof!, suddenly vanish, like Moscow Mitch McConnel's precedent that a Supreme Court justice can't be nominated in a president's final year in office.