The karnival of komedic klowns kontinues, part II...

The pond was shattered when it realised that it had completely failed to mention the CIA in its morning list, yet the hopes of a new Bay of Pigs are rapidly rising ...

Please take this as a continuation of the morning's missive.

Just a few errors and omissions designed not to ensure against catastrophe.

The pond had been debriefed, made aware of its errors, by sweet, sombre, soulful, despairing onetime GOP operative Nicolle, and knew it just had to at least offer a token update to celebrate all the sorrowful sighs.

This from the NY Times ...C.I.A. Sends White House an Unclassified Email With Names of Some Employees (archive)

Oops, go Uncle Leon ... got to make up for that drop in Tesla sales around the world somehow.

This from the WSJ ...CIA Offers Buyout to Entire Workforce as Part of Trump Makeover, Spy agency’s workforce receives buyout-style offer (archive)

Oops, bring it on ...

Meanwhile, Chris Hayes was having a freak-out with Charlie from The Atlantic ...Elon Musk’s Bureaucratic Coup, Welcome to the “rapid unscheduled disassembly” of the United States government. (archive)

Also at The Atlantic Ross was freaking out with the nukes, DOGE Could Compromise America’s Nuclear Weapons, The risk of messing with the wrong computer system (archive)

Not the nukes. 

Sheesh, then Lawrence O'Donnell freaked out about Clarence Thomas's lack of ethics, as if that was new, and the pathological lying and law-breaking of Uncle Leon, and Treasury lying about him having only "read-only access, thereby confirming Uncle Leon was a pathological liar up at all hours tweeting lies, and then ranting at the new White House COS as the worst in living memory. And she was shown freaking out on Kimmel ... (Colbert couldn't get enough of it either) ...

That'll teach the pond to have a slack day off gawping at the telly. The pond can't get hooked on this sort of binge viewing. Better to stick to a movie while lying in bed indulging in self-pity.

For a break and for a little light non-nuke comedy relief, try this in the archive - the NY Times' header is enough for here ...

Fox News Adds a New Host: Lara Trump, There is no precedent for a sitting president’s relative to host a show on a major television news channel.

The sly old Fox, he knows how to keep the ratings high with his sequel to that venerable sitcom All in the Family ...

The pond also realised it had left out others, like TG folk ... but realised that there was no keeping up ... 

By the time this headline had been digested ...

... and the komedy kapers swallowed kwuickly ...

... there'd be a new land above the Faraway Tree, with weird people intent on fucking the United States and the planet ...

The pond had previously reminded readers that NOAA was likely to go off line. 

The link's still up for the moment, but who knows for how long ... 

Just to wrap up, here's Luckovich celebrating the egg crisis, which at least helps avoid the sight of a Kennedy confusing chook eggs and sex, a routine repeated by about every US late night comedian known to humanity ...

Oh, and there was this FAFO moment too, and never mind the shaky screen effect ...

And then there was this - hang around for the 'kinks in the slinky' moment, and the hapless Afghani female reporter being verbally groped and dismissed by an expert in the art ... (not so much need for Jordan's routine at the end) ...

Hysteria and madness rulez ... and the pond simply didn't have the heart to fit in David Remnick in The New Yorker, but it's in archive form for gluttons for punishment ...The Madness of Donald Trump, To Benjamin Netanyahu’s delight, Trump proposes the wholesale ethnic cleansing of Gaza and the creation of a new “Riviera.”

Oh wrap it up Dave, the pond is exhausted...  there's way more the pond missed, and way more to come...

...it seems inevitable that there will be a price for all the madness. Miller cautioned that, although Trump may back away from his proposal of ethnic cleansing and Riviera creation, such a performance sends a particularly dangerous message: “It is a nod to Putin that he can keep the territory he’s taken in Ukraine, and to Xi, who might now have more confidence about establishing a blockade of Taiwan in preparation for an invasion. It all reflects the mindset of an unserious man.”

Nixon considered himself to be a profound thinker on global strategy. And yet it’s important to recall that, though he might have convinced himself that his act would bring the North Vietnamese leadership to heel, that misbegotten war ended in American defeat. Similarly, Putin’s veiled nuclear threats during his war on Ukraine, and Trump’s threats of “fire and fury” against North Korea, in 2017, hardly proved decisive, much less constructive. The President’s decision to deploy, yet again, a display of chaotic bravado—an enactment of the Madman Theory, if that’s what it is—will do nothing to bring a lasting peace to the Middle East, and brings disgrace to the United States.

Relax Dave, when it comes to wars and invading other countries, the USA has been a disgrace for decades ... not since the second world war has much of anything good come of the belligerence, and with the Donald's mind warped between his isolationism and his aspirational imperial colonialism, it was never going to get any better, what with Canada, Mexico, the Panama Canal, Greenland, and Denmark already in his sights ...