How much is that lamb roast in the window, woof woof, I do hope that lamb roast is for sale ...

(Above: no, that wasn't last year, that was last week, but you can't expect to find federal Labor politicians getting their canny pricing at Marrickville metro)

Ah, the old Sunday roast joke.

It was good to see it get another airing, but instead of a one liner, it could have been a real cascade joke.

You see, that foolish fop, by name Barners, destroyer of Tamworth's virginal innocence (where's that trowel, let's lay it on Barners thick), originally doubled down on his promise of a hundred buck roast:

Barnaby Joyce is building on his claim the carbon tax will push the price of a Sunday roast to $100 by saying a single cow or lamb could cost as much as a house. 

What, as much as a house at the top of the hill in east Tamworth?

Is there a bigger idiot in federal politics currently doing the rounds?

The government derided his new claim of extravagantly expensive meals as deranged. 
Queensland Senator Joyce is the Nationals' Senate leader. He has been at the forefront of Opposition Leader Tony Abbott's campaign against the carbon tax and said previously consumers would not be happy ''when they're paying over $100 for a roast''. Senator Joyce denied on Sunday Mr Abbott had exaggerated the impact of the carbon tax on prices. 
"Obviously we haven't had this tax in for a year,'' he said. 

Years later, the insight arrives too late ... what a fraudulent, reprehensible man. A chicken little, a fraud and a liar. Scare the chooks, then offer them redemption. The old stick (look the sky's falling down) and carrot (look I can hold up the sky) routine ...

Amazingly there are still some chooks out there that think honourable business will pass on their savings. They must fly with Qantas instead of learning how to flap their own wings ...

As for the explanation and the justification, it was pure Barners bulldust (I know, I know, in Tamworth a spade's a spade and Barners would be full of bullshit, but the pond always values politeness in public discourse).

Senator Joyce said the $23 a tonne tax was imposed on businesses that emitted more than the threshold of 25,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent or more each year. ''Seeing that there's a 25,000 tonne limit, and then you pay the $23-a-tonne carbon tax, you actually do have, in abattoirs around this nation, a time where they don't pay the carbon tax, when they take that next beast to actually switch over to the 25,000 tonne carbon emission limit,'' he told Channel Ten. 
''That next beast costs them 23,000 by $23 which - what's that - $575,000 for a beast, so it's costing you vastly more than a $100 roast, that one.'' (all this and more back in November 2012 in Joyce's $100 roast prediction rubbished)

What a cretinous use of figures, what a fucking idiot. Oops, there goes the politeness in discourse, but hey a few more 'fucks' to top up the Godwin's Law swear jar and we could win a trip to Melbourne (don't ask about the second prize).

But that's why both sides of the aisle had a laugh at the lamb joke.

The government could laugh, Bronnie could chortle, because they knew they'd pulled off the biggest scam of all - getting into power - on the basis of outrageous, fraudulent lies peddled by a rustic oaf with all the wit and science of a dipstick. Yet there he was gabbling complete nonsense back on the day on Ten and getting away with it.

Which is why the opposition could get away with a rueful laugh at its own expense. They'd been diddled and dudded by a rustic, who'd tricked the city slickers with his fancy maths.

Oh yes, he might be mad, but he's mad north by north west and now he has a plum ministerial position, a fitting reward for an hysterical chicken little routine.

Go on, roast that chicken, likely enough it'll cost you more under Barners than it did under a regime with a price on carbon.

Meanwhile, the reptiles are busy gloating at their triumph:

Well it doesn't have quite the ring of the triumphalist Spectator cover's premature ejaculation of victory, but from the tone of the splash you'd think that the bouffant one was in the mood for sombre reflection.

But hey the reptiles are denialist central, and as Chairman Rupert showed recently, just as barking mad as the Spectator, Alan Jones, or the Bolter.

So what do we get from that sanctimonious bouffant hypocrite? Why more crocodile tears as he doubles down on Barners' double down:

As Tony Abbott reaches out to claim his delayed victory in the repeal of the carbon tax, Bill Shorten has entrenched a carbon price in Labor’s name and ensured Australia faces a fourth election with climate change to the fore. 
The Opposition Leader has kept the carbon faith regardless of the last election outcome and the Coalition’s clear mandate for repeal. 

How outrageous. As everyone, including American Citizen Rupert knows, with a price on carbon gone, climate science has also disappeared, along with all its observations and conclusions.

The Prime Minister has immediately claimed Labor is in denial about the last election and threatens to use an ALP-style Work Choices scare campaign against Shorten at the next election. 

Yes, because fraudulent lies and misrepresentations of the Barners kind, aided and abetted by denialist central, worked out so well.

While the Clive Palmer-induced confusion of last week has passed and the PUPs in the Senate will now agree to the repeal, the fight over the carbon tax will continue between the Coalition and Labor. Shorten vowed yesterday that “Labor will always fight for serious, credible climate change policy” and refused to resile from or apologise for Labor’s support for the carbon tax. 
Indeed, his only regret was Kevin Rudd’s failure to pass the emissions trading scheme in 2009 and call a carbon-price election. 
There was no regret for jobs lost or prices hiked because of the carbon tax nor was there any acknowledgment of Labor’s election campaign to abolish the carbon tax.

Indeed, indeed, and there's no regret for Barners' fraudulent lies and misrepresentations.

Labor’s political response yesterday to inevitable defeat on the carbon tax was immediately to challenge Abbott to guarantee he would bring down the cost of housing, groceries and farming.

 Because, you know, that's what he promised. How outrageously unfair to hold him to that. How shocking that the price of lamb should be reduced from the current hundred bucks a roast that you can drop at the butchers in Marrickville, right here and now, to the measly twenty bucks that Barners promised ...

Oh wait, the pond just fell into a logical conundrum, right down there with Barners, or is that right up?

Amid what appears to be a logical acceptance of price rises as a result of the carbon tax, Labor now wants to jam Abbott into a guarantee prices will fall. 

Yes, because with lamb at a hundred bucks a roast ...

Oh never mind ...

Abbott’s response, still muted until the vote is cast, is to point to Labor’s “denial” about its election loss last year, the reversal of the pledge to terminate the tax and to start his own scare campaign that if Labor is elected it will reintroduce the carbon tax. 
Abbott will get his long-cherished victory on the carbon tax, which has damaged or destroyed three prime ministers and two opposition leaders in seven years. 
Meaningful climate change policy is likely now to remain in limbo but carbon politics remains alive and divisive.

And there you go and oops that's why you felt you were in a thought-free vacuum because it seems that's everything the bouffant one could manage to say. 

Just when it might have got interesting - with meaningful climate change policy in limbo - the bouffant one splutters and fizzes like an Oscar Wilde rocket zooming into the mud.

But that's because, in the end, the reptiles at the lizard Oz are denialist central. They really don't accept climate science's projections and predictions, they don't think anything should be done about it.

They don't want meaningful climate change policy because they think the concept of climate science is meaningless.

On the very day that they celebrate their fiftieth birthday and the onset of senility, they have triumphed and can dance in the streets with the Spectator, shouting "we've won, we've won".

The reptiles even have the audacity to reprint this from their first edition:

In these pages you will find the impartial information and the independent thinking that are essential to the further advance of our country.

Crazed right wing rabid ideologues and climate science denialists provide impartial information and independent thinking?

What frauds, what hollow echo of a past long gone ...

Of course at some point, the reptiles might look quizzically in the mirror and say "we've won!, we've won!, we've won?"

But that'll be a long time coming.

Yes, the pond spent a little of its time over the weekend catching up on Jess Hill's piece in The Monthly, Power Corrupts, How network companies lined their pockets and drove electricity prices through the roof.

Let’s be clear: this is the single biggest reason power prices have skyrocketed. According to the federal treasury, 51% of your electricity bill goes towards “network charges”. The carbon tax, despite relentless propaganda to the contrary, is small beer, comprising just 9%. The rest of your bill is carved up between those companies that actually generate your electricity (20%) and the retailers who package it up and sell it to you (20%). The Renewable Energy Target is such a small cost impost, the treasury’s analysis doesn’t even include it; the Australian Energy Market Commission says it makes up around 5%. 
Thanks to the networks’ infrastructure binge, we now pay some of the highest prices in the developed world. The impact has been felt most keenly in New South Wales and Queensland, where the networks are government owned and network charges have accounted for two thirds of the price increases. 
For a Coalition intent on destroying the carbon tax, the price hikes have been a gift – “proof” that the carbon tax is as ruinous as they predicted. Chris Dunstan, from the Institute for Sustainable Futures, thinks that what the networks have done over the past five years may actually be the secret to Tony Abbott’s success. “If electricity prices hadn’t doubled,” he says, “the carbon tax would not have been anything like the issue it was.” 

Yes, there's your roast lamb, only it's called roast plucked duck consumer ...

In situations like this, where black humour is the only way forward, the pond always looks to Dr. Strangelove and the bliss of MAD:

General "Buck" Turgidson: Ahem... The Duty Officer asked General Ripper to confirm the fact that he *had* issued the go code, and he said, uh, "Yes gentlemen, they are on their way in, and no one can bring them back. For the sake of our country, and our way of life, I suggest you get the rest of SAC in after them. Otherwise, we will be totally destroyed by Red retaliation. Uh, my boys will give you the best kind of start, 1400 megatons worth, and you sure as hell won't stop them now, uhuh. Uh, so let's get going, there's no other choice. God willing, we will prevail, in peace and freedom from fear, and in true health, through the purity and essence of our natural... fluids. God bless you all" and he hung up.

Put it another way.

God willing, we will prevail, in peace and freedom from fear, and climate science will go away, and there will be no need for meaningful climate change policies, because chairman Rupert has told us so, and so we will triumph in true health, through the purity and essence of our natural... fluids. God bless you all" and then the PM of Australia hung up and went to have a lamb roast with Barners ...

And who was he in bed with to accomplish his alleged, though at this moment, still putative, policy triumph?

Which is to say the triumph of nattering negativity and populist alarmism and denialism ...

Show us Mr Rowe. Wait, that looks exactly like the man routinely demonised by the Murdoch press as a populist wrecker, the Daily Terror's wrecking ball himself, and he has an animal handler with him ...

Yes it is, yes it is ... and more Rowe here.

Ah dear, that reminded the pond of one of Rowe's all-time classics:

And so Tony Abbott and the country dances to the tune of the leader of a minor party ...