Saturday, May 15, 2010

Political Media: Review: 3 editorials Washington Times under review

On my MondoTimes media list, I placed three Washington DC newspapers -- well, actually I use the list to quicklink to the websites of said newspapers. They are: Washington Examiner, Washington Post, and Washington Times.

Here's how MondoTimes currently rates Washington Times:

Content: Average (37 votes)
Political Bias: Conservative (37 votes)
Credibility: Low (35 votes)

My small sample of reading items is focussed on the newspaper's editorials on current concerns:

First I shoud mention "Bailing out foreign banks." It helped my clarify my stance toward that issue from an American viewpoint. Two countries were specified, as well as the International Monetary Fund, and the loss last week of the Christian Democratic control of the German parliament's upper house, due to Germany's banking industry which had to bailout the Greek govt, that irresposible socialist extremely h+-spending basketcase that has endangered Europe's economy overall. Of course, Merkel's govt has to take steps to protect the German banks themselves, while passing on costs to the German public to keep the national banking system liquid in face of all its stupid loans to the spendthrift over-staffed govt and tax-evading population of Greece.

Besides acquiring further info in regard to Greece, and the Obamian threat to bailout that country, I was stunned to learn from the editorial that the USA has already bailed out Canadian banks to the tune of 30 billion US dollars. How did the country where I live, and which I love, allow our banking system to get into such dire straits. We've got a Conservative Party govt in Canada, we've had a thriving banking sector where leading banks make huge profits, a sector of the economy; while paying me only low interest rates on my savings account, CIBC VISA soaks me with h+ interest charges on my credit cards and provides really stingy service thru the CIBC (Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce) credit card they control (VISA). A plague on them all: on the govt financial laws, the banks, and the credit-card extorters! and on the failure to control these h+ profit, consumer-soaking, financial institutions that somehow got USA billions. It smells of fraud and deep doodoo.

The second recent editorial at Washington Times is entitled "Obama's invisible Islam." Subtitle: "Democrats refuse to admit who the jihadist enemy is." It's now become obvious how inadequate the responsibles in the govt on this matter have beome and how they've cut corners in meeting their tasks so that matters have gotten considerably worse, -- to the extent that Attorney General, Eric H. Holder, may have to resign. I also throw in here that Holder and his boss have both been loose at the mouth in recent days, pronouncing potbvaliantly that the new Arizona law to curb illegal immigration-criminals is "unconstitutional" (because it is putatively racist according to the subtext). Unfortunately, in the last 48 hours Holder admitted to a Congressional committee that he hadn't read the Arizona legislation. Then why didn't he just keep his mouth shut until such a time as he had done his homework?

The third editorial in my set of samples is entitled "Obama's Spanish lesson. Spain's govt is headed by Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriquez Zapatero, to whom USA President Obama recently addressed accolades for "Spain's effort to strengthen its economy and build market confidence." Washington Times editorial: "For once, Mr. Obama is exactly r+t." Says WT

Mr. Zapatero is taking action to address the root cause of his nation's fiscal dilemma: excess spending. For years, Spain had doled money out of the public purse with such abandon that its deficit reached 11.2 percent of gross domestic product in 2009. Mr. Zapatero will now impose a 5-percent across-the-board reduction in government salaries. Ministers will take a more substantial, but mostly symbolic, 15-percent cut. More importantly, the government will freeze pension benefits and eliminate a number of non-essential benefits. A total of 13,000 unnecessary government employees will be cut loose.

I can't say that MondoTimes's classification of WT is correct, or not. I just don't read this Washington news purveyor all that much. So I was pleasantly surprised by the informative and well-written editorials in my sample today. If the stance involved, of which I generally approve in the three cases sampled, are characterized as "conservative," I woud have no problem with that congruence, tho shy about conceiving myself as "conservative" in the current political sense.

At the same time, I note that the at-least-sometimes-conservative editorial stances at WT occur under the financial support and sponsorship of the Unification Church (popularly known as "the Moonies"). As MondoTimes points out: "the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's family cut off most of the annual subsidy of about $35 million that has kept the Unification Church-backed paper afloat, company officials said." In the wr+t-ups at MondTimes, there are contrary reports on whether the paper has been / is presently up for sale.

The sponsorship of the Moonies, the huge annual subsidy, and the question of sale-or-not all enter into WT credibility rating as "low."

-- Politicarp

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