Headlines Wednesday 14th May

Double murderer goes for gun in court
A MAN attacked a sheriff's deputy and tried to grab his gun from its holster just seconds after he was found guilty in court of murdering his wife and child.
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Morgan: Rudd’s spin lacks traction
Andrew Bolt
Gary Morgan reports:

The latest Morgan Poll has ALP primary support down 5.5% to 47% (its lowest support since the Federal Election last November) as Wayne Swan delivers his first Federal Budget.

Special Roy Morgan qualitative research finds that many Australian electors are concerned about the ALP’s ability to manage the tough economic times that we are facing with rising inflation(caused by higher fuel and food prices) and increasing wage claims from the Unions. Australians are starting to wonder whether Kevin Rudd is too concerned with his public image, and saying all the right things - rather than actually dealing with the economic issues Australia faces both from overseas and within Australia.

Not surprisingly, the closer Rudd comes to having to make a real decision, the less people like him. If Morgan is right.
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Let China build it
Andrew Bolt
Professor Robert Leeson says if we don’t have the spare labor for important construction work, he knows who does:

The Chinese [have] about 150 million (internal) migrant workers, some of whom could be recruited for Australian construction projects. Improved infrastructure would reduce the cost of importing iron ore into China (a point of dispute between Chinese steel mills and Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton)… Now Chinese demand underpins our full employment and its labour supply can help decongest our export chain.
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Traffickers target child cyclone survivors
CHILD traffickers are targeting the youngest and most vulnerable survivors of Burma's catastrophic cyclone and two suspects have already been arrested, the United Nations has reported.
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Rocks in Greer’s head
Andrew Bolt
Accuse Germaine Greer of worshipping the God of the Christians and she’d be insulted that you could so disparage her rationality. But show her Ayers Rock, and suddenly she hears voices:

So far, 35 people have died on the rock. Each death represents a catastrophic desecration which the traditional owners are powerless to reverse. It is not the thieves who are punished by bad luck when Uluru is desecrated but the Anangu people, for whom the cash revenue from tourism has been lethal. If grace and meaning are to be restored to their lives, Uluru must be cleansed and healed.

We can “heal” rocks now?
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Good news for people smugglers
Andrew Bolt
The Rudd Government’s Budget puts back a lure for people smugglers
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Hear the voice of freedom
Andrew Bolt
Abosultely heartfelt, absolutely brilliant, absolutely courageous. Lebanese TV presenter Sahar Al-Khatib blasts the Opposition leaders whose armed allies in Hezbollah shut down her TV station.
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Castro admirer demands respect
Andrew Bolt
Robyn Archer complains:

“We’ve just been through 10-12-year period when if intellectuals spoke out they were publicly derided,” she said.

Robyn, you are making sure that period isn’t ending any time soon:

Singer Robyn Archer says a good government “will help build a society that cares deeply about artists”, and she has seen just such a society: ”It’s called Cuba.” Its dictators “valued citizens who maintain their voice”.

Budget grab bag of spin
Piers Akerman
THERE is no denying that Treasurer Wayne Swan’s first Budget is a Rudd Labor Budget.

It was delivered to the media in a cotton bag marked “MADE IN CHINA” and it was long on spin and short on substance.
Forget the rhetoric about inflation being Public Enemy No. 1. It is a big-spending Budget, though there has been an attempt to disguise that fact by spreading some expensive promised programs over a few more years and claiming the reduced annual spending constitutes a “cut”.

Labor MPs will, however, be able to tell the True Believers that the Rudd Government is seriously into wealth redistribution - in line with Labor’s antiquated policies.

Some “working families” will get increased benefits at the expense of other “working families”, and there is the definite stench of class warfare re-emerging from whichever dank corner of the nation it had been hiding.

A good example of this is contained in two consecutive paragraphs from Swan’s speech: “For too long, working families have watched the proceeds of the (resources) boom directed elsewhere, in the form of tax cuts skewed to those already doing very well.

‘Tonight we tip the scales in favour of working families.”

“Working families”, is of course the catchphrase Labor’s image-makers lifted from the US, after road-testing it through numerous focus groups in Australia and finding it had a healthy resonance of the absolutely meaningless, just like an advertising jingle.

Swan gives it the flogging of its life. To say he uses it ad nauseum is being too kind.

In fact, Swan’s “working families” will get the tax cuts in July that were promised to them last year by then treasurer Peter Costello, and those other “working families” who, according to Swan, are “already doing very well” will lose a little of the tax cut that Costello promised them.
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Budget: the commentariat’s verdict
Andrew Bolt
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Respite needed
Andrew Bolt
Watch Four Corners‘ latest program, In My Shoes, and discover what we sure could spend some of that surplus on. I won’t forget the despair on one mother’s face, and I doubt you will, either.
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Spin, spin, spin that Budget
Andrew Bolt
Spin, spin, spin. This is what Treasurer Wayne Swan promised with his first Budget as recently as last Sunday
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This second-string act brought to you by Swan
Andrew Bolt
How tough was Wayne Swan really, when he can afford such make-work schemes for musos:

The Government will provide $1.7 million over four years to ensure that international touring productions employ at least one local band or artist as a support act.

You pay so they play.
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Budget talk
Andrew Bolt

And it will give you warts, too
Andrew Bolt
Yeah, sure:

CLIMATE change could lead to “killer cornflakes” with the most potent liver toxin ever recorded, an environmental health conference has been told.

Add it to the list.

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Alien life 'doesn't negate God's existence'
THE search for extraterrestrial life does not contradict belief in God, the pope's chief astronomer said today, adding that some aliens may even be innocent of the original sin.
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Oldest Caesar bust found in river
A BUST of Julius Caesar, believed to be the oldest representation of the Roman emperor yet known, has been found at the bottom of the River Rhone in Arles, a French town founded by him in 46 BC.
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Man shot dead outside family restaurant
A POLICEMAN was shot and a man killed during a wild CBD shootout in which officers jumped from their car with guns ready, shouting "get 'em".