Tony Abbott invoked the ghosts of Robert Menzies and Ben Chifley as he reached out last night to Australia's ''forgotten families'' and workers with the promise that he would lower their cost of living.

In a speech that was strongly critical of the government, deliberately short of new policies, and avoided taking positions on measures in the budget, the Opposition Leader said taxes and interest rates would be lower if he were elected.

The Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, has hit back at criticism from the retailer Gerry Harvey over claims the government subsidy for pensioner set-top boxes is too costly.

After Mr Harvey claimed he could provide and install set-top boxes for less than half the average cost of the government's scheme, Senator Conroy yesterday challenged Mr Harvey to put his money where his mouth is and bid for the work.

Under the program, the government is offering to pay for certain households, including pensioners, to be connected to digital television at an average cost of $350 a household.

The fourth horseman thundered across the financial landscape yesterday, a discreet distance behind his three compatriots, who each paid their respects last week.

While they have yet to openly portray themselves as harbingers of the Last Judgment, there's no denying each of our big four bankers are making profits of biblical proportions.

Sir Ralph Norris is an affable kind of fellow ordinarily, except when his salary is mentioned in the newspaper, and probably would take great exception to being likened to the Pale Rider, or Death, as he is known in the Book of Revelation.

Tony Abbott's budget attack is shamelessly contradictory. He slams the $2 billion saving from family benefits as ''class warfare'' that will hit ''struggling families'', but he is also blaming the government for looming interest rate rises because he says it is spending too much.

Barack Obama, who pledged to restore ethical honour to the White House after the Bush years, is now burying himself under an active volcano of lies, mostly but not exclusively concerning the assassination of Osama bin Laden.

There was scarcely a sentence in the President's Sunday night address, or in the subsequent briefing by John Brennan, his chief counter-terrorism coordinator, that has not been subsequently retracted by CIA director Leon Panetta or the White House press spokesman, Jay Carney, or by various documentary records.

We might ask ourselves how we would be reacting if Iraqi commandos landed at George W. Bush's compound, assassinated him, and dumped his body in the Atlantic

It's increasingly clear that the operation was a planned assassination, multiply violating elementary norms of international law. There appears to have been no attempt to apprehend the unarmed victim, as presumably could have been done by 80 commandos facing virtually no opposition-except, they claim, from his wife, who lunged towards them. In societies that profess some respect for law, suspects are apprehended and brought to fair trial. I stress "suspects."

The hubris turns megalomanic as the President of the Most Powerful Nation on Earth grandly announces: "America can do whatever we set our mind to." The pattern falls into place. Bush the Senior had said years ago, "What We Say, Goes."

Just a few decades ago, during cold war, Communism was projected as Enemy Number One by United States and its minions. US policies aimed at conquering the World economically, politically and also militarily where possible. Socialist block was a big obstacle for US ambition. Around this time Russian army occupies Afghanistan, and supports Afghan Communist regimes' efforts to bring in land reforms.

WASHINGTON — A missile strike from an American military drone in a remote region of Yemen on Thursday was aimed at killing Anwar al-Awlaki, the radical American-born cleric believed to be hiding in the country, American officials said Friday.

The attack does not appear to have killed Mr. Awlaki, the officials said, but may have killed operatives of Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen.

The media is divided on the story... Here in Orstralya, the Fairfax media is telling it as close as they can from the news wire. It's the one on the left. The Herald Sun, the poster touting the rag on the right — a newspaper from the Murdoch stable — knows far more — as usual.... Actually either Uncle Rupe himself or a couple of his directors at News Corp shot Bin Laden...

There is something fundamentally crazy-making about the fact that Osama bin Laden, damned murderer of thousands, met his demise on the anniversary of the day George W. Bush, damned murderer of thousands, pulled his infamous "Mission Accomplished" stunt on the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln.

I suspect that, had Mr. Bush managed to back up his big talk and actually bag bin Laden before his second term expired, we would have seen him jump out of an attack helicopter at Ground Zero wearing a SEAL uniform - complete with night-vision scope and even larger codpiece - under a banner proclaiming "Mission Accomplished II."