After the ring master has left a right royal mess, how about a Lord Voldemort joke?

(Above: more twittering from the master of twittery here)

So where, in sum and in short, are we?

The farcical direct action schemes of Abbott and Hunt in tatters; the carbon tax gone; and a meaningless zero rated ETS scheme in its place.

There is of course a deep mystery as to what Greg Hunt will do for the next couple of years, except fiddle with his thumbs and go hunting for facts on wiki.

And meanwhile Tony Abbott is unmasked and laid bare, just like a clown in a circus which has a buffoon as a ringmaster and an unlikely blow-in guest starring as the man in the cannon flying through the air with no need of a safety net.

You'd think the reptiles would be happy, but the lizard Oz also wants to get rid of the RET:

Why Al Gore bothered to fly around the world to support Clive Palmer’s confirmation yesterday that he would vote to abolish Australia’s carbon tax is a mystery. For all the theatrics, the biggest change in Mr Palmer’s position — acknowledging that Australia should move to an ETS when the rest of the world also does so — is a longstanding position of this newspaper. An ETS is the most efficient way to abate carbon, unlike Labor’s clunky Renewable Energy Target. Mr Palmer’s determination to rule out any changes to the RET by contrast, which forces households to subsidise costly wind farms though their power bills, was disappointing. (Costs are blowing in the wind)

But here's the thing. Because of the stupidity and the folly of the reptiles, and their blind allegiance to the luddite Abbott, if you happen to take seriously the climate science, then Abbott has led Australia down a dry gulch of despair, and has now been bushwhacked by Clive.

Okay, that's enough of the mixed metaphors, what's wondrous is the way the likes of the Bolter allowed their knee jerk reaction to Al Gore to blind them to the reality.

It slowly dawned on the Bolter that Australia will now do diddly squat about climate change:

UPDATE 
Palmer’s plan isn’t good, but could be worse. 
The very bad news is that Palmer (the coal miner) will vote to keep the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, which lends our money for dodgy green schemes, and the Renewable Energy Target, which forces us to waste money on green power and drives up power bills. 
But Palmer’s trading scheme has a useful get-out, although it sets up a dangerous machinery - especially if Labor is returned. 
He says he will move an amendment to a bill to abolish the Climate Change Authority that a zero-rated emissions trading scheme be set up, to be operative only when China, the US, the European Union, Japan and Korea have the same. The price, he suggests, will be set at the world price. 
At this stage, though, there is no sign the US, Korea and Japan will have any such scheme, and the Chinese plan is for a scheme where permits are likewise free. 
Clever Clive. With luck, this scheme will never happen. But Palmer says the carbon tax will go. And that is the main game. (here)

What else?

Well the Fairfaxians produced a laughable editorial, showing that the flim flam man could dazzle the Fairfaxians, as they scribbled Clive Palmer's carbon plan makes sense.

At last welcome signs of a positive approach to climate change, given the reality that the carbon tax was rejected by the people.

A positive approach? It makes sense?

In what alternative world?

The proposal is to degut direct action, to implement an ETS which has zero implications for the next few years, until or if the world agrees on a course of action, and then the locals can be made to agree, throw in a few bureaucratic baubles - a CEFC here, a climate authority there, an ongoing RET for the reptiles to moan about - as a little razzle dazzle and sparklers.

Meanwhile, Australia was always on course to fail at its risible, modest plan to reach its target by 2020. Now that seems guaranteed.

So what's the upshot? Well the wedge on Abbott and Hunt is a fine one. The consequence of their ideological zealotry is that three fifths of fuck all will now be done as a response to climate science, unless significant negotiations, back-tracking and adjustments are made.

Is Abbott up to it? Palmer has delivered him a kind of wet dream of inertia ...

Will Hunt make a stand? You expect a fop with the strength of tissue paper to do anything but soak up the spittle?

There Hunt is, running around saying it's unambiguously good news, but it's only good news up until the headless chook realises he's got absolutely nothing to do for the next few years as his direct action plan collapses in tatters around him ...

There's a profound irony in the story the reptiles were forced to run:

There you go, Palmer kills carbon action, nation left without an abatement strategy ...

And so the fig leaf is stripped bare.

But that's what they wanted. Palmer has delivered the hard right their wet dream, and now they've discovered their hands are a sticky mess ...

So what sort of penetrating insight could readers expect from the Daily Terror?

In a side note, long-time observers have noted the frequency of cold weather events that occur wherever Gore is speaking. It was evident again yesterday in Canberra. The ex-VP truly brings the bad weather with him. (here)

Yep, little Timmy Bleagh sets the tone for the paper ... except that's the editorialist ...

Poor fella, my country ...

As usual, the pond has to turn to the cartoonists for an incisive insight. Here's David Pope (and more Pope here):

The temptation, in relation to this circus, is to blame Palmer but the reality is that Abbott and Hunt provided the fertile ground in which this misdirectionist might flourish. All those years of nattering negativity about the carbon tax, and nary a thought for a market based response.

They could have adopted a market based strategy, instead of concocting the folly of direct action. They could have shown they were taking climate science seriously.

Now the magician and his blow in dummy have blown away the fig leaf ...

What will Abbott do? Will he pretend, in the nauseating way he did to Obama, that he accepts climate science and something more must be done? Well even the farce of the price hike on petrol as a form of carbon pricing has gone west ...

And now to a few lighter moments.

Guy Rundle first, in response to the London farce:

 ...in the hours after, she garnered hero tweets from Jeremy Clarkson, Piers Morgan and Louise Mensch, nee Bagshawe. Can Tony Blair be far behind? My god, what an awful bunch of people. Even the crowd in the bar seemed to think that, and most of them were organ traffickers. (more at Crikey here, paywall affected)

That's as tasty a smack down as the pond has read in recent times, and better still, it can be applied to almost anyone or anything.

Go on, give it a test drive. Tony Abbott's government and his climate policies? Even the crowd in the bar seemed to think they were hopeless, and most of them were organ traffickers ...

And then there was the tragic Elizabeth Farrelly scribbling Feminist frightbat campaign just the Blair Witch project.

You see, some of the women involved in little Timmy Bleagh's attention seeking contest actually rewarded him by playing his game - the class clown was apparently excited when he got noticed by the satanists at the ABC.

It struck the pond as pathetic that some of the named women would play along with the self-seeking publicist, and help him play out his public form of onanism.

But at the end of Farrelly's piece, one commenter made it worth the pond reading to the bitter end:

Tim Blair is a kind of Bolta lite. He's like those tedious classmates in high school who went on and on about loud, fast cars and who loved being politically incorrect - e.g. leaving the lights on during Earth Hour. Ooh, wicked! Alas, he's also middle aged.

Yes, exactly so, and organ traffickers don't have much time for him either ...

And so the day will unfold and let's see how Abbott flaps in the breeze like a wayward dunny door. He's already shown remarkable skills:

And is this the story that gets run when the dog steals your exercise book?

Finally, the pond would like to acknowledge the immense, enormous stupidity of Valerie Wangnet, as outlined at great length in Honour killing talk: we should be allowed to hear it:

When Uthman Badar's talk, provocatively titled ‘'Honour killings are morally justified’', was pulled from this year's Festival of Dangerous Ideas event in Sydney, I couldn't help but feel disappointment. Because even if the sole purpose of Badar's talk was to advocate for the oppression, victimisation and ruthless violence against women, and even if his intentions were in fact to unleash a radical ideology fuelled by prejudice onto unsuspecting Australians, it should not have been cancelled.

Indeed, indeed. The pond is just as supportive of the need to advocate gas chambers for the Jews in these difficult times ...

...even if the sole purpose of Hitler's talk was to advocate for the oppression, victimisation and ruthless violence against Jews, and even if his intentions were in fact to unleash a radical ideology fuelled by prejudice onto unsuspecting Australians, it should not have been cancelled.

Yes, it's time for Stormfront to storm the Sydney Opera House ...

No doubt there are some mindless do gooders who close their ears and eyes to this sort of useful discussion too ... and what a disappointment that is ... the pond had hoped to be titillated and challenged and provoked by Stormfront's ideas, much as it's provoked by the news that ruthless violence against women is a most engaging and challenging notion for a stimulating discussion ...

Remarkably, Wangnet goes on to talk about moral hysteria, when in reality it's Uthman Badar and his ilk who lather up a moral hysteria about the terminal decline and decadence of the west.

Bizarrely, the piece ended up this way:

Let's continue to challenge one another, open our eyes to the things we don't want to, and ultimately encourage a moral stance that is fierce and not passive, clear and not short-sighted. There is no such thing as a dangerous idea if we know how to react to it in the right way. In this case we didn't. 
Valerie Wangnet is the founder and director of ThinkKind, a humane education initiative to encourage kindness and compassion in students through critical thinking and moral reasoning.

In which case, may the long absent lord take pity on the students.

There's diddly squat benefit to be had in engaging in polite arguments with fundamentalists, whether of the barking mad Uthman Badar kind, or the Bolt lite Tim Blair kind.

Uthman Badar might grow out of his fundamentalism as he gets a little older or he might not.

Sadly - have we mentioned it? - Tim Blair is middle aged ...

It's impossible for the pond to summon up a sufficient amount of contempt for Wangnet's position, so how about a cartoon instead ...

Yes it's Pat Campbell, more Campbell here, and whenever the pond is stressed by the day's events, in need of a kidney-ruining Bex and a good lie down, it recommends a Lord Voldemort joke instead:

And how about the Rowe which the AFR shockingly delayed unveiling to the world today?

Voldemort issues guys? Never mind, more Rowe here, when the AFR site is working: