Glenn Milne, an absent Barnaby Joyce, the standard leftie Fairfax line, and the global conspiracy to ruin the back paddock ...

(Above: the coming economic collapse, and one of the key players behind the globalist conspiracy bringing on the collapse).

Rich pickings on the pond today, and you have to think things will only get better as Christmas cheer begins to infiltrate the thinking of our commentariat columnists.

How about this effort by Glenn Milne, under the header Tony Abbott adds the right stuff, in moderation?

Milne spends his column reassuring us all that Tony Abbott's new cabinet doesn't represent a shift, or even a lurch, to the right. No, no, no, it's factionally balanced, and packed with moderates. And Chairman Rudd is in a blind panic, and flailing about, and certain to do a pre-Christmas reshuffle, surrounded as he is by ETS sceptics and confronted by the resurgent Abbott.

Well I'm outraged, shocked and appalled. No, not by Milne's standard celebration of the Liberal party line, which is so predictable the only reaction it produces is ennui, but his failure throughout the piece to mention Barnaby Joyce. Not one word for the new shadow finance minister.

Not once, nada, zip, nihil. Not even as twelfth man, or sitting on the bench ready to play. Barnaby who?

Is this how the commentariat are going to treat my fellow former Tamworthian - drawing a discreet veil of silence over him and his ramblings?

Well we Tamworthians are made of sterner stuff, and if we can't get our Barnaby from The Australian, we'll bloody well get it elsewhere.

Even if it means reading Phillip Coorey, as he whips up anxiety with Libs fear Joyce will overpower Hockey.

Clearly Coorey hadn't read Peter Hartcher's From media tart to a force to be reckoned with.

Hartcher starts off by giving Barners a gong:

As 2009 comes to a close, ask yourself who have been Australia's most influential political leaders this year. Kevin Rudd, certainly, but who's next on the list?

I nominate Barnaby Joyce.

You see Milne! Go Barnaby! The man of the year and you don't mention him once, you craven commentariat columnist. How dare you! Pathetic tadpole.

True, true, Hartcher quickly falls into line with the standard Barnaby assault routine we've come to expect from the socialists at Fairfax:

... From the time he was elected to the Senate in 2004 until last week, the media and political mainstream refused to take him seriously. It's easy to see why.

He has a bumbling manner and a madcap style. He has described the Prime Minister as a ''psycho chook''. He called the emissions trading system "a political fascinator - a bit of fishnet with a few feathers you can stick on your head, but it's never going to keep the sunlight out."

This is wildly original, but it's also wild. It's not what we are conditioned to expect from serious political figures.

And it gets worse as Hartcher rolls along, picks up speed and zones in on Barners' announcement that the US Government might default on its debt and we need to prepare for financial Armageddon:

... there are two problems with Joyce's pronouncements on this. First is that he is now a frontbench member of the alternative government of a serious developed economy. He's not a backbench bomb-thrower any more.

Second is the prescription that flows from his fear: "Things you look for in that economic Armageddon are the capacity to feed ourselves, the capacity to provide the fundamentals in medicines and basic fundamental requirements for our nation," he told the Herald's Mark Davis this week.

What? I'd already lined up an old gold mine shaft I know, outside Tamworth in the old gold mining hamlet of Nundle, as my place of retreat, my shelter from the world, armed with my trusty .303 and ready to fight off a foolish world, and all thanks to Barnaby's warning.

Silly Hartcher just doesn't get it:

Now he is sounding like a member of a survivalist cult, digging bunkers and stocking up with canned food and shotguns. This is madness.

Shotguns? What happened to the law of the .303? Me and Breaker Morant and Barnaby, together and at one.

Um, is that why Glenn Milne didn't mention Barnaby in his column, gave him the pariah, invisible man treatment?

That damned Hartcher is relentless:

Someone - Joyce thinks it was the writer of a letter to the editor - described him as "the thinking man's Pauline Hanson". Geoff Cockfield of the University of Southern Queensland describes him as "Hanson without the racism''.

From political insurgent, Joyce has taken a big step towards being a political incumbent. He will have to make the adjustment in a hurry. Otherwise he will go the way of Hanson, and for good reason. Joyce has become extremely influential. He also has the potential to be extremely dangerous to the national interest.

You get more of the same from Coorey:

Not only do the aggrieved Liberals feel the Nationals are overly represented in shadow cabinet, Joyce is now espousing views that are anathema to Liberal philosophy of the free market, foreign investment and less government regulation.

Mainstream Liberals feel as though they are having their noses rubbed in it. They fear Joyce will overpower and dominate the senior finance spokesman Joe Hockey - just as he rendered irrelevant the Nationals leaders Mark Vaile and Warren Truss - and become the economic voice of the Coalition. What may go down well in the front bar of the pub in St George is unlikely to resonate in Collins or Pitt Street.

''This is going to be a disaster,'' said one MP. ''Great retail politician? Sure, but so was Pauline Hanson".

But, but, Glenn Milne told me the new cabinet was fine and balanced and potent - like a Braham Cross bull confronted with the cows of the Labor party - and the poor dears were mooing in fear, without any sensible line of attack, especially if they tried to paint the new shadow ministry as further to the Right than John Howard:

Before we get to the shadow ministry itself, a word of caution to Labor about this line of attack. In trying to characterise Abbott as a radical and polarising figure, one of Labor's most senior strategists made his point to me by comparing him to Howard. "The truth is," he said, "that no matter how hard we tried to paint Howard as a dangerous right winger, the fact is he was just a middle of the road politician."

The obvious conclusion for Labor now from that observation is clear: any attempt to demonise Abbott as a divisive threat from the Right by claiming he's a throwback to the Howard era isn't likely to wash with voters. If for most of his period in office they didn't buy that argument about Howard himself why should they be worried about Abbott's resonance with those years now?

What's even more remarkable is the way John Howard won the election in 2007, and then instead of working on, sensibly chose to retire, knowing that Work Choices had been fully implemented, the fine work by the likes of Kevin Andrews and Philip Ruddock and Bronwyn Bishop given hearty approval by the electorate, and Tony Abbott, always the heir apparent, now anointed as the new leader of the Liberal party and Australia. And with the Liberal party ETS implemented, Chairman Abbott has been cutting a fine figure at Cophenhagen as he excoriates the laggards who shout 'climate change is crap' while devising ways to use farmland to cut emissions.

Oh sorry, that was a strange dream. Chairman Rudd's the one doing the Abbott.

But if you've been having strange dreams or surrealist fantasies, then relax, because reading Glenn Milne can do that for you. Come to think, reading The Australian can do it on a regular basis too. Dream. Again.

Ain't it wonderful how Milne can cut Barners dead while the leftie conspirators in Fairfax and the ABC can celebrate the coming of Barnaby - why he was on Radio National this very morn explaining how he didn't have any connection to the Citizens Electoral Council (listen here at Barnaby Joyce denies connections to the Citizens Electoral Council).

Well bugger Milne, in a metaphorical, spiritual way of course, and can I recommend instead The Swagman's Half Jesuit, half hooligan, and a cure for Rudd's tedium. Sure, it's in The Punch, Australia's most dullard conversation, but the swaggie has a point as he welcomes Tony Abbott:

Now don’t get me wrong. I wouldn’t vote for the loon while my bum pointed down but at least he’s interesting. Half Jesuit, half crazed Millwall supporter, with a religious philosophy of “share in the love of Jesus or I’ll smash your f***en face in”. He’s the hoot we had to have.

And so is Barnaby. And if you think politics is a blood sport, you have to think Christmas has come early, because Barnaby is the kind of guy who will just keep on giving and giving. Even in The Australian, where Andrew Fraser penned Barnaby Joyce voices a far Right platform:

Barnaby Joyce's views about limiting foreign investment, the possibility of the US defaulting on its loans and the fraud behind climate change are an echo of the platform of one of Australia's most extreme right-wing groups, the Citizens Electoral Council.

The CEC are the Australian disciples of US far-right figure Lyndon LaRouche, and while the CEC struggles to make an impact on the broader electoral scene in Australia, it has a strong following in the part of rural Queensland from where Senator Joyce comes.

The CEC's Australian head, Craig Isherwood, who is based in Melbourne but first got involved with the CEC while living in Kingaroy in the 1980s, said yesterday that Senator Joyce was on the party's mailing list.

Oh no, don't say that, the next thing you know Barners will have to front ABC radio this morning saying he doesn't know diddly squat about such a list. What else you got?

"We've also got a lot of supporters in western Queensland and they run into Barnaby all the time -- I'm sure they give him our material and talk to him about it," said Mr Isherwood.

"There's nothing direct with Barnaby, but indirectly, we all run in the same paddock."

Is that the back paddock, where the fence is down and half the sheep are missing? Or do you just go on picnics short of a sandwich, or have a barbeque short of a sausage and a few chops, or talk about which knife is the dullest in the drawer?

The party's former candidate in Blair, Dick Thies, a retired builder and farmer from the Darling Downs, spoke to Senator Joyce at a meeting against climate change in Roma in October.

"He's certainly picking up on a lot of our ideas," said Mr Thies. "I found him very receptive."

Barnaby receptive?

And Glenn Milne didn't mention Barnaby, and claims to be some kind of expert political commentariat columnist!

Well as we used to say in Tamworth, pig's bum to that. You see, it's not just John Elliott who can call a drongo when he reads one, calling out a dunny budgie who thinks he's got dunny rat cunning when he's really just a gob smacking fruitloop out to have a lend of us.

Never mind Barners, forget Glenn, we loves ya here at the pond.

Now how about exploring that CEC idea that some in the British royal family are running drugs ... seeing as how they're already involved in a bizarre coalition of international banks promoting globalisation as a way of undermining sovereign governments ...

And keep that financial Armageddon stuff going. If people hide under the bed, they'll find the reds, and that's the first step to saving the world. Those bloody socialists in the Fairfax media and the ABC are everywhere, socialising this and socialising that ...

Oh I know I've said it once, but I'll say it again, bugger the pious platitudes of Glenn Milne and his ilk, 2010 is going to be a grand year for loon pond ... as we race towards Armageddon or the rapture ...

(Below: another frightening graph, and a warning about the socialists).