And now to Napoleonic complexes about Napoleonic complexes ...

(Above: the Sydney Morning Herald wins with its relentless campaign to introduce literarcy to the online world with this digital splash - I know, I know, it's a joke).

Who would you nominate as your "go to" person to discuss the implications of the latest CSIRO report on the state of the climate? (Hotter, more erratic weather and higher sea levels).

Naturally Marius Benson at ABC news radio went off to consult bumbling Barnaby Joyce, and naturally Barners treated it as just another part of the debate. You know, like the ongoing debate about the theory of evolution ...

If you want to listen to bumbling Barners you can catch him here on the front page of News Radio at the moment, though as it shuffles down the page you might have to go here for a direct mp3 link.

It's more "debate the controversy" stuff, with Barners stoutly refusing to admit anything except it's great to have another report to be sceptical about (and please stop calling him a denier even as he goes about the business of denialism).

Naturally Tim Blair had an incisive and witty response to the report:

According to the CSIRO:
Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are now higher than at any time in the last 800,000 years …
That’s why everybody is so short and fat these days.

This is called deflection in some quarters, abject, base stupidity in others.

You see, confronted with the notion that carbon dioxide is increasing in the atmosphere - and if nothing else the resulting acidification of the oceans is going to be a significant problem - Blair throws in a couple of wild links to notions that humans might get shorter or fatter as a result of CO2. It's supposed to be funny, but why is it that the average smartarse, clever dick, dick head at the back of the classroom comes up with more insights - or at least funnier comments - than Blair? He really does practise the lowest, dumbest form of trolling ...

Hey ho, on we go, and as we warned awhile ago, Paul Sheehan would inevitably return to the Herald as part of his bid to reduce the collective intelligence of the populace by at least a few points, and sure enough he's off to a bold start in Reminder of Rudd as Gingrinch clings on.

Only Sheehan could drag in a gratuitous, completely meaningless link between Gingrinch and former chair Rudd. Is there any insight to be gained by the comparison? You might after all write exactly the same amount of tosh about how Rick Santorum is ruining things for Romney and the Republican party by clinging on ...

But then you wouldn't have quite the same wriggle room for the true point of the exercise, which is to re-visit an old issue, which might still seem fresh to Sheehan after his absence, but has long been buried locally:

Gingrich's inability to see himself as a liability to his greater cause is familiar to Australians because of the vainglorious way former prime minister Kevin Rudd blew up his ministerial career.
Rudd's egoism was far worse.

Yes, they're peas in a pod, except the Rudd pea is far worse, and Rick Santorum is a wonder because he's a lightning rod for the "anyone but Romney" movement. All hunky dory, but wouldn't have been simpler for Sheehan to simply write "sheesh, how I hate Gingrinch and Rudd"?

By the time the reader gets to the punchline, it's like spending a few minutes with Tim Blair:

Watching humility being enforced on former leaders with Napoleon complexes has been engrossing, even enlightening, but not edifying.

Napoleon complexes! So what are we to make of Rick Santorum, so much on the nose that he lost his Senate seat? Talk about former leaders. What happened to his Napoleon complex?

Well I guess trotting out Napoleon is different to the standard Stalinist Russia comparisons ... but if Gingrinch has a Napoleon complex, what on earth does Santorum have? (yes, yes, apart from giving his name to a wonderful frothy mixture).

The only joy? Clearly Sheehan is saving his ammunition for his big assault on lazy Celts and lazy thieving Greeks ruining Europe ...

Meanwhile, news from the United Kingdom continues to amaze, and James Murdoch must be really feeling the heat, since he's felt the need to pen an unsolicited seven page letter about the culture of corruption that infested his UK reign (not that we'd ever assert the Murdochs suffered from Napoleonic complexes, but the letter makes for compelling reading, and you can find a link to the PDF here at The Guardian, and if that link fails, directly here at the parliamentary site).

How many ways is it possible to bleat "I knew nuttin"? This time it's a seven page bleat ...

Could the day get any better? Of course it could, and the news that evil secularists have sent Barney Zwartz at The Age into a frenzy is a grand capper.

These happy days it's accepted that smokers can be told to bugger off. In the old days of course if someone lit up, you just had to grin and bear it, in the interests of smokers' rights, and never mind the poison you might be inhaling.

And happily the same now applies to sexual molesters and harassers. In the old days, if you were groped or pinched while trying to serve a meal in a restaurant, you just had to grin and bear it. The male right to be a pig was taken for granted ...

The same applied to Christians. Whatever your belief system, if the Christians hunkered down in prayer as a way of starting off a meeting, you just had to grin and bear it.

They were supposed to be achieving your salvation without you playing any part in it. This could only be done where the Christians had the upper hand - in a business or a board room where the top dog could begin business with perhaps a recitation of the Lord's prayer, and if you happened to have a dissenting view, you just had to grin and bear it.

Now it turns out secularists don't have to sit and suffer, as Barney reveals in How the mighty are fallen, with the National Secular Society taking Bideford Council to the cleaners for saying prayers at start of their business.

If you flip it around a little, you can see where the game is heading. Imagine a couple of Islamists demanding that a council meeting start off with some prayers to Allah. Imagine some Scientologists suggesting that a council meeting would get things done quickly and better if everyone submitted to an E-meter check. Bugger off tossers ...

But here's Barney's prescription for secularists suffering under Christians. Grit your teeth and bear it - probably the sort of advice Barney also offers to women ...

And here's Barner's ultimate solution ...

...my school was like a Soviet gulag. We had prayers, hymns, carol concerts, some of them were really boring, and I didn’t believe in God either. So instead of saying “I believe in God the Father” – this is true - I used to sing “I believe in Gordon Farmer”.

Yes Barners believes that hypocrisy is the solution ...

Confronted by geese, you have to sing or mouth dissenting lyrics. Is that what women should do in bed Barners. "Oh yes, big boy, do it, do it ... oh yes, I believe in Gordon Farmer."

Anyhoo, it all builds, until Barners finds himself in company with an Islamic MP, and then Barners has to draw a line in all this idle chatter about the freedom to pray being undermined by the oppressiveness of secularists.

But he can't resist, even if finding himself in the company of an Islamic carrying on about the evils of secularism led to a momentary discomfort, asking a closing question:

Are secular activists the new wowsers, trying to halt the innocent pursuits of ordinary people?

The new wowsers!? Are you sure they're not the new Napoleon complex types Barners?

Of course the innocent pursuits of ordinary people happen to involve consigning Satanic evil (perhaps socialist) secularists to an eternity of hellfire, while - according to the book of Barners - secularists should just mutter about how they're being consigned to an eternity of ice cream consumption.

Enough already. Like any perversion or delusion, prayers are best conducted in private. Talk to an imaginary friend all you like, but please keep it hidden, or in a church, or amongst fellow delusionists.

The pond has nothing against smokers or sex fiends (it might even take one to know one), but here's the thing. The days of having to grit your teeth at a bit of bum-pinching, or inhaling second hand smoke, or listening to a Christian pray to save your vile damned soul is long gone, and good riddance.

Now if we could only get rid of newspaper journalists with Napoleon complexes scribbling about politicians with Napoleonic complexes ...

(Below: speaking of Napoleon, or perhaps in the manner of Charles Dickens' Mr. Dick, in David Copperfield, of King Charles' head, here).