Editorial

It has been ten days since The Atlantic, a flagship liberal publication since it's founding in 1857 in Boston, was purchased by Laurene Powell Jobs for an undisclosed sum on July 29th. The first issue since this purchase will be lead by a major editorial from their Contributing Editor Peter Beinart. That particular 2200 word screed has already appeared on the Atlantic's website and been boosted on social media at some cost. This can only be seen in context as a declaration of new editorial line, policy and intent.

Yesterday, August 1st a lawsuit was filed in the Southern District of New York by former Fox News investigator and talking head Rod Wheeler against Fox News. The suit, which is partially constructed as an employment discrimination suit and partially as a defamation suit, alleges that one well connected Trump operative and one Fox news investigator conspired directly with the President to advance the false narrative that former DNC staffer Seth Rich was murdered for leaking DNC emails to Wikileaks.

[Editors note: The Mockingbird does not accept unsolicited or unsigned editorial content. Anonymous sources for news articles are still known to us but will never be known to anyone else.]

On July 13th The New Republic ran an extensive and detailed article of nearly 6,000 words by noted investigative journalist Craig Unger on President Trump's extensive historic business dealings with Russian organized crime figures. As an editor, I have no reason to doubt Craig Unger's facts.

A ton of noise has been made about Trump's non-acceptance of the reality of his popular vote defeat. While estimating three million “illegal votes” for his opposition based on numbers seemingly existent in his own mind, he has promised an investigation. Quietly on the side, Mike Pence has also said he would look into it. Should they deliver on their promises, which after a fashion they have so far, Attorney General nominee Jeff Sessions will be the man doing the investigation. This could very well spell massive voter disenfranchisement nationally.

The Foundations of Trump's wall go back over a decade to 2001. The 2001 fence was conceived to keep Islamic terrorists out of the United States because George W. Bush's infinite wisdom assured him that they must be coming from Catholic Mexico where they would surely blend in. It was an extension of the fence that Bill Clinton instituted near Sand Diego in 1994 to coincide with an expansion in free trade with Mexico and the Zapatista uprising against NAFTA. Congressional wrangling over Bush's border fence landed it partial funding in 2006 and the funded part is still incomplete.

Day Two of reign of Orange Frankenstein brought us a double down on Kelleyanne Conway's alternative facts and Spicer's reality splice. The Trump Administration will now select who attends press briefings rather than the White House press corps being selected from prime media outlets based essentially on audience size. Overlooking the problematic issues in the prior arrangement, the Trump administration has taken another step down the road to an authoritarian and government controlled media.

The internet is happy today because a few high profile and long incarcerated political prisoners languishing in the sprawling Bush-Obama gulag. No doubt many if not all of them were unjustly tried, convicted and given draconian sentences. Of the many pardons and sentence commutations Obama has recently passed out, the commutation of Chelsea Manning's insane 35 year sentence has gotten the outgoing president the biggest gold star from Centrist Democrats and the soft-left.

The now obliviously false narrative that Russia intelligence influenced the outcome of the election through hacking is coming apart at the seams. Security researchers in the private sector have determined that malware allegedly used to hack the DNC and Podesta emails is commercially available and Ukrainian not Russian in origin.

The elites that run the country will tolerate all manner of personality flaws from members of their inner circles. There are certain things that are core foundation policies of America. Those foundation policies predate the Declaration of Independence. They find different names, different slogans, and different expressions over the centuries, but without them the nation, as defined by the people who own it, has no reason to exist.