In which the pond substitutes the banned petulant Peta with a new golden age of governmental stupidity (the one she headed is now but a dream) ....

 

The reptiles seem to have hit on an advertising gold mine...

Likely it set Gina of the IPA's heart aflutter with delight ...

Meanwhile over on the extreme far right, petulant Peta was top of the digital world ma ...

The pond is eternally grateful to the correspondents who insisted that petulant Peta be banned from the pond ... with the pond showing brave leadership by leading from behind.

Banned she is, and with the rest of the reptiles still obsessed with the budget, and the budget reply, it was left to Golding to summarise the state of play ...

With all that idle reptile budget chatter sent packing, that left only Jack the Insider standing, and the thought, roughly equivalent to that film title "The Goalkeeper's fear of the penalty", that there are bigger fears than domestic reptile hysteria ...

And so to the red orange glow on the horizon, looking distinctly like a nuke going off ... (or perhaps one of mutton Dutton's SMRs having a seizure).

The cunningness of those leaked chats is that they serve to distract from other news, such as Two-thirds of Americans now say they wouldn’t drive a Tesla — and most of them cite Elon Musk as the reason why, according to a new poll, The Yahoo News/YouGov survey shows that the tech billionaire’s popularity has plummeted since he launched the Department of Government Efficiency.

So it goes, and speaking of President Leon and his servile minion ...

President Leon has wrought many miracles in a short time.

This in WaPo, where democracy goes to die in a billionaire's loose change ...Long waits, waves of calls, web crashes: Social Security is breaking down (the pond does its best to provide non-paywalled links).

In that litany of woe, this caught the pond's ear ...

Depending on the time of day, a recorded message tells callers their wait on hold will last more than 120 minutes or 180 minutes. Some callers report being on hold for four or five hours. A callback function was available only three out of 12 times a Post reporter called the toll-free line last week, presumably because the queue that day was so long that the call would not be returned by close of business.

Break the government, then privatise it, and make the lives of serfs and peasants a misery, primed to believe any spammer who actually gives them a call...

What other mischief?

Is it time for a pond PSA, what with the pond having just had its second shingles shot? 

It caused a pain in the arm for a while, but the pain was nothing up against the pain the pond endured when shingles turned up just above the eye and threatened blindness. 

Flu vaccines are now out and about, and the pond was advised you could get them in conjunction with a Covid booster.

Get 'em while you can ...The NIH Moves to Stop Studying Vaccine Skepticism, An internal memo says that the agency will not prioritize research on why people are reluctant to take vaccines.

The worm in the brain has done many other fine things in recent times and achieved much in the promotion of vaccine illiteracy, but the pond must move on ... because this story in The Bulwark caught the eye ...Drill, Baby, DOGE

The pond realises that all this concentration on the orange clusterfuck takes the pond away from domestic pleasures ...

But the pond must stay stern and resist. the cake and ice-cream... because yet more delights wait ...

How about this WIRED yarn?

Inside DOGE’s Plan to Invade the Treasury—and Throttle USAID

Court filings show that from the earliest days of the second Trump administration, Elon Musk’s DOGE had a plan to infiltrate US Treasury payment systems—and turn them against USAID.

This week, Trump signed an executive order stating that all federal payments should be consolidated within the Treasury. The order claims that doing so will help fight fraud, waste, and abuse.

Don Moynihan, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan, believes the order means that, “instead of having to send some DOGE guy into an agency to control the payments, it all happens in one place. It moves power away from agencies and centralizes it in the White House.” In his order, Trump claimed that $1.5 trillion passes through other avenues, known as non-Treasury disbursing offices. These are nested within certain agencies that are able to disburse funds without going through the BFS system.

Moynihan alleges that the strangulation of USAID’s funding could be a “harbinger” of potential changes at other agencies. The administration appears particularly focused, he says, on “the president having absolute power and control over where money goes regardless of laws on impoundment or statutes on agencies.”

“It’s a consolidation of power in the name of efficiency,” he claims.

All hail King Donald, and Emperor Leon ...

Frankly there's too much to cover, and what's covered isn't done properly. 

Per Parker Molloy (paywalled) ...News organizations did their homework on the legal problems with Trump's latest executive order, but buried the lede when it mattered most.

Donald Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday that would supposedly "require proof of U.S. citizenship" for anyone registering to vote in federal elections. While the media coverage of this order included important expert context explaining its dubious legality, these vital facts were buried far too deep in the reporting.

The executive order, titled "Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections," is sweeping in its claims. It demands the Election Assistance Commission require documentary proof of citizenship to register, orders states to count ballots only through Election Day, threatens to pull federal funding from non-compliant states, and directs various agencies to conduct voter roll purges.

What's somewhat frustrating about the coverage is that major outlets did include expert voices pointing out that Trump lacks the authority to do these things — but you'd need to read well past the headlines and opening paragraphs to find it.

For instance, The New York Times quotes Rick Hasen, a political science professor and director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at UCLA, who explains that Trump has "no authority to dictate how states ran their elections" and that what he's ordering the Election Assistance Commission to do is "either contrary to law or at best disputed." But this crucial context doesn't appear until the fifth paragraph, after readers have already been told that Trump signed an order to "require proof of U.S. citizenship."

Ah, the librul media at work as usual. 

It's too much for a koala to bear, so what about a little light comedy?

Greenlander’s Hilarious Anti-MAGA Hat Goes Viral Because Lots Of People Want It

Images of the hat’s blunt message are being shared as second lady Usha Vance gears up for her unwelcome and “highly aggressive” trip to Greenland this week.

That was before JD decided to join, uninvited, the circus, and before Usha sent out one of those silent cries for help ...

Al Gore in the b/g and nothing else visible to relieve the sense of grey prison gloom and the glazed dead mullet eyes...it's Stockholm syndrome in action, and only the subconscious left to plead with the world ...

As for the distracting fuss, the pond should get on with it ... with the story in The Atlantic revealing all, Here Are the Attack Plans That Trump’s Advisers Shared on Signal, The administration has downplayed the importance of the text messages inadvertently sent to The Atlantic’s editor in chief.

If the paywall kicks in, that's archived here, and on Yahoo News here ...

Others have pored over the texts, fiddled with the entrails, deciphered the runes, worked out the meaning embedded in the tea leaves.

The pond did note this ...

Nah, not the deeply embedded hostility to Europe but the sight of the new Petey boy, minor Faux Noise starlet ...

He's so vain they might have wrote a song about him, he actually put up a DP (display picture/logo) for the Signal chat, and never mind whether any of them should have been using Signal ...

The new Petey boy didn't help his cause by lashing out at all and sundry ....

Tragic, Petey boy, tragic, what with that love of acronyms evoking a Fox starlet's notion of how to be a warrior...

And it was grist to the CNN mill in Sources say the details shared by Hegseth in Signal chat were classified as Atlantic publishes additional messages 

...President Donald Trump and his team have repeatedly sought to downplay the sensitivity of the information shared in the Signal group in the aftermath of The Atlantic’s bombshell story on Monday. While they denied there was a “war plan” shared, the text messages published Wednesday offer an extremely detailed description of the coming strike, including the airplanes and drones used.

“It is safe to say that anybody in uniform would be court martialed for this,” the defense official added. “We don’t provide that level of information on unclassified systems, in order to protect the lives and safety of the servicemembers carrying out these strikes. If we did, it would be wholly irresponsible. My most junior analysts know not to do this.”

Ah, but we're dealing with a Faux Noise starlet and sometime drunk womaniser ... and so finally to Jack the Insider, because amid all the local fuss, there is a strange orange creature in the shopping trolley ...

The pond doesn't usually deal with Jack, but here we are ... 

Signal group chat farce reminds us military intel is an oxymoron,Did no one think to ask who JG was? Did America’s most senior national security personnel see JG and think oh, I see Julia Gillard’s popped in for a quick briefing? Has Johannes Gutenberg gone digital?

This really should have been bromancer turf, but he continues to go MIA, as the reptiles began proceedings with a snap to identify the Cantaloupe Caligula and his Faux Noise starlet, President Donald Trump and Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth listen during an event in the Oval Office.

Jack did his best to have fun with the karnival of komedic klowns ...

We now know that the Trump administration’s national security leaders couldn’t organise a surprise birthday party without offering the guest of honour the choice of the chicken or the fish three weeks in advance.

Governments leak, sometimes strategically, or more embarrassingly, at the hands of a disgruntled whistleblower. What we have here for the first time in recorded history is an accidental leak. A whoopsie of US national security where the most senior staff in US national security prefer to play with their own phones, ignoring the requirement from the Department of Defence and the CIA that all national security communications take place on secure networks.

The chief villain of the piece is said to be an unnamed staffer in the office of President Trump’s national security adviser, Michael Waltz. If you listen carefully you can hear the sound of the underling’s ritual arse-kicking as we speak. Waltz – of whom an anonymous White House insider offered the keen character ­assessment: “Everyone knows he’s a ­f —king idiot”, is said to have the support of the President for now.

Will Waltz be the first to go? Who knows in Trump World. Waltz might actually be promoted or he might just continue to lurk around the White House until he accidentally leaks video footage of the presidential colonoscopy to Mother Jones.

The pond probably gazumped or sniped Jack with all those earlier links, but at least there was another snap of the clowns, US National Security Adviser Michael Waltz (L), US Vice President J.D. Vance (rear), and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth (R).

Jack did a summary of the proceedings, while again the pond wondered where the bromancer was ...sure it was only a few days since ‘This is defence policy for Fantasy Island, not Australia’, but if this isn't a fantasy land above the Faraway Tree, the pond has no idea what is ...

Eighteen senior national security staff used their private phones when summoned by Waltz.

It was a relative Who’s Who of the Trump administration including Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defence Pete Hesgeth, director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, director of the CIA John Ratcliffe, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and her deputy, Stephen Miller.

Editor-in-chief at the Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, got a guernsey for reasons that are now being attributed to clumsy finger syndrome. Goldberg sat silently in the Houthi PC Small Group while the others wrangled with the pros and cons of a military strike in Yemen two hours before it began.

One analyst based in New York placed President Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, in Moscow when he entered the group chat. Privet, Comrades. Just wait a moment or two so Vladimir Putin can log on. He was going to watch the bear baiting but this promises to be far more entertaining. Tulsi Gabbard also conceded she was overseas at the time. In gangster parlance, every single one of the 18 phones was ‘‘off’’.

The three separate chats, over several days with hours of dialogue, included another anti-European spray from Veep Vance, hinting at sending Europe the bill for the strike on the Houthis, either uninformed or untroubled by the fact the RAF had assisted US fighter jets with refuelling in air strike in question and had launched their own raids on Yemen in previous weeks.

The reptiles decided they should at least promote Sky Noise down under, with an AV distraction, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has called for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to be fired amid bombshell revelations that a journalist was added to a top-secret national security chat on Signal. Mr Jeffries wrote a letter to US President Donald Trump following the debacle. This comes after Yemen war plans were shared in a group chat on Signal, which included The Atlantic’s Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg, who was inadvertently added.

The new Petey boy seemed to get up Jack's nose ...

Unbothered by tricky details, too, was Secretary Hegseth who reached for the caps lock for added emphasis in replying to Vance: “VP: I fully share your loathing of European freeloading. It’s PATHETIC.” Show me on the dolls where the bad Europeans hurt you, guys.

Fifteen minutes earlier, Secretary Hegseth had suggested options were available. To bomb or not to bomb? That was the ­question.

And here Hegseth veered into the prophetic. “Waiting a few weeks or a month does not fundamentally change the calculus,” the former Fox News host typed. “Two immediate risks on waiting: 1) this leaks, and we look indecisive; 2) Israel takes an action first – or Gaza cease fire falls apart – and we don’t get to start this on our own terms. We can manage both.”

Hegseth’s day got a lot worse when he let a few political cats out of the bag after his flight touched tarmac at Joint Base Pearl Harbour in Oahu.

As he greeted the gaggle of media it looked like Hegseth had reached for the pomade and could find only sump oil to manage his coiffed do before he deplaned. He showed the world the full array of his political tricks – deny everything and shoot the messenger.

“Nobody was texting war plans and that’s all I have to say about that,” Hegseth told reporters before launching a condemnation of his old group chat buddy, Goldberg, blissfully unaware that the White House had confirmed the Signal messages were genuine just minutes earlier.

Goldberg would later confirm that Hegseth had announced specific targets, attack sequencing, weapons and aircraft deployed two hours before parts of Yemen’s capital, Sana’a, started exploding. Goldberg turned to X and right on time, reports from Yemen confirmed the attacks were underway.

The reptiles doubled down with the next snap, Vice President JD Vance

Ah JD, hillbilly turned fierce imperial warrior ... land grabber, new colonialist...

That left Jack with just a gobbet of goofy sitcom comedy to go ...

It smacks of an episode of Get Smart where a goofy, prat-falling Agent 86 is played by Pete Hesgeth, where Hegseth dials into the chat on his shoe only to miss it by that much. Alas, here the parallel must end because Control had the Cone of Silence when it was handling heady matters of national security.

Did no one think to ask who JG was? Did America’s most senior national security personnel see JG and think oh, I see Julia Gillard’s popped in for a quick briefing? Has Johannes Gutenberg gone digital?

The larger question now is whether this is, as the POTUS has suggested, a learning moment for the group chat crew or will it usher in a golden age of governmental stupidity where each act of wanton idiocy is dumber than the last?

Anything’s possible and right now, Gabbard and Ratcliffe are busying themselves throwing Hegseth under the bus.

When unable to explain the inexplicable, they gleefully heaped all the blame on Hegseth.

Not much contemplated by the media so far is the elephant in the group chat, or rather the absence of the elephantine frame of Trump, who when asked about his chatty subordinates, happily conceded that he knew nothing about their Signal shenanigans.

This leaves the perplexing thought that the bombing raids on Yemen were on a need to know basis and it seems the group chat thought the President did not need to know.

If the pond could cast a vote, it would go with it ushering in a golden age of governmental stupidity where each act of wanton idiocy is dumber than the last?, so rich and ripe that it's impossible to keep up with the immeasurable stupidity ...

How will the bromancer cope? Have we ushered in a golden age of reptile stupidity where each act of wanton idiotic scribbling in support of the benefits of the US alliance is dumber than the last?

And so to wrap.

Did the pond regret abandoning the whole reptile budget stew, the mutton Dutton, the beefy boofhead from down Goulburn way, petulant Peta, and all the rest? 

Only in that it deprived the pond of any reasonable segue to wrapping up proceedings with the infallible Pope ...

Oh sheesh, the segue was there, the pond should have paid closer attention to the detail. It's always in the detail ... it's the undertoad ...

For those who can't remember the undertoad or aren't familiar with him...

...Duncan began talking about Walt and the undertow – a famous family story. For as far back as Duncan could remember, the Garps had gone every summer to Dog’s Head Harbor, New Hampshire, where the miles of beach in front of Jenny Fields’ estate were ravaged by a fearful undertow. When Walt was old enough to venture near the water, Duncan said to him – as Helen and Garp had, for years, said to Duncan – ‘Watch out for the undertow.’ Walt retreated, respectfully. And for three summers Walt was warned about the undertow. Duncan recalled all the phrases.

‘The undertow is bad today.’

‘The undertow is strong today.’

‘The undertow is wicked today.’ Wicked was a big word in New Hampshire – not just for the undertow.

And for years Walt reached out for it. From the first, when he asked what it could do to you, he had only been told that it could pull you out to sea. It could suck you under and drown you and drag you away.

It was Walt’s fourth summer at Dog’s Head Harbor, Duncan remembered, when Garp and Helen and Duncan observed Walt watching the sea. He stood ankle-deep in the foam from the surf and peered into the waves, without taking a step, for the longest time. The family went down to the water’s edge to have a word with him.

‘What are you doing, Walt?’ Helen asked.

‘What are you looking for, dummy?’ Duncan asked him.

‘I’m trying to see the Under Toad,’ Walt said.

‘The what?’ said Garp.

‘The Under Toad,’ Walt said. ‘I’m trying to see it. How big is it?

And Garp and Helen and Duncan held their breath; they realized that all these years Walt had been dreading a giant toad, lurking offshore, waiting to suck him under and drag him out to sea. The terrible Under Toad.

Garp tried to imagine it with him. Would it ever surface? Did it ever float? Or was it always down under, slimy and bloated and ever-watchful for ankles its coated tongue could snare? The vile Under Toad.

Between Helen and Garp, the Under Toad became their code phrase for anxiety. Long after the monster was clarified for Walt (‘Undertow, dummy, not Under Toad!’ Duncan had howled), Garp and Helen evoked the beast as a way of referring to their own sense of danger. When the traffic was heavy, when the road was icy – when depression had moved in overnight – they said to each other, ‘The Under Toad is strong today.’

‘Remember,’ Duncan asked on the plane, ‘how Walt asked if it was green or brown?’

Both Garp and Duncan laughed. But it was neither green nor brown, Garp thought. It was me. It was Helen. It was the color of bad weather. It was the size of an automobile. It wasn't green or brown. It was orange. A deep weird toner orange. It had weird wispy hair. It was the mango Mussolini ...

Sorry,  the pond can't remember if those last lines were in The World According to Garp ...