   How Time Flies! It's our tenth aniversary! By Ernest Stewart Welcome to volume 1 # 1 of our new ezine "Issues & Alibis." Our goal is to present to you on a bi-monthly basis America's best writers and political cartoonists, so that you can cut through the political bullshit and past the spin-doctors to the heart and the truth of the matter. On the 1st and 15th of every month no smoke and mirrors will stop us from bringing you your political reality, however horrible it actually is. You can always deal with the truth, no matter how bad it is, but you must know what it is. This is not an ezine for the weak of heart or for those who would rather have a sugarcoating on the truth. We're going to tell it like it is and let the chips fall where they may! We hope you are ready for "Issues & Alibis." "...It is a tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. "Everyone knows that there is one law for the rich and another for the poor." ~~~ George Orwell If you're drowning, you don't clutch no straw, no, no!
Has it really been ten years that I've been sitting behind a computer bringing you, for your enlightenment, the latest atrocities committed by our government against us? It seems like only yesterday when I said enough is enough. The 12-12-2000 judicial coup d'etat had just gone down as Tony (light-fingers) Scalia and his "Gang of Five"™ on the Extreme Court had just installed Smirky the "Wonder Chimp" in Al Gore's house at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Al, even though he had clearly won the election, like the rest of the country, for the most part, went along with this act of treason and sedition. For me, being the poli-sci/history student that I am, there was but one choice to be made. Either go along and expect that America was over and all the madness and mayhem that this act would surely bring would be on my hands too, or stand up and oppose it. I chose the latter; and with the Internet beckoning, I decided to begin this magazine. I had put myself through college by working for a couple of chains of local, weekly newspapers and had been writing a column, "Issues & Alibis" for a local magazine, so I knew what I should do if I wanted to be effective in countering this fascist madness, and two months later on February 1st, 2001 "Issues and Alibis: The Magazine" was born. Ever since old Dementia-head Ray Guns got rid of the fairness doctrine on TV, there was only the corpo-rats viewpoint available on the TV, on radio and in newspapers. The truth wasn't getting out there to the public, so I decided that I'd put it out there for all to read! My mission was born! At the time, there were damn few leftist news sites on the Internet; Bartcop and the Online Journal were perhaps the best known, so there was certainly a spot and need for me and a niche that needed filling! Initially, I was only publishing twice a month--on the 1st and 15th--as I wasn't sure if I could put out a weekly. Could I find enough material, just not anything, but important things that everyone should know and if so, would I have enough time to do it in? For the first couple of issues, it was taking me around 80 hours to get it out. A lot of that time was because I was on dial up; when I went broadband, I cut out at least 20 hours a week! By the time of our 4th edition, I had enough connections to enable me to publish every week, and had divided the time it took in seven days, with the shortest days being on the weekend so I could escape from the news madness on the occasional weekend to the lakes and the Jack Pines! We've publish every week since, with just ten weeks in all that time where we couldn't. About half of that time was because of moving, the rest because of sickness from Influenza to SARS! About half way through I ran out of funds as I had been paying for all the costs. I had never charged a fee or ran any advertising to cover costs, but I suddenly either had to let in a few ads, beg for money or start charging a fee like everybody else does. I couldn't charge a fee as the point of all this was to assure that anyone who could get online could get to the truth, so I started accepting advertisements from like-minded companies and people and coming to you hat in hand for donations. Cest la guerre! As we start our eleventh year, I look forward to fighting the good fight with you against the truly evil people who are running this country. As George said, "You got to pay your dues if you want to sing the blues and you know it don't come easy!" It seems that nothing good ever does come easy, but I'm willing to pay the price; are you, America? Barry had a lot of bright ideas but never mention a single plan on how he was going to implement them. He did mention going after programs for the poor, the elderly and the sick:
As you well know, Mr. President, the biggest contributor to our long-term deficit are our many war crimes and crimes against humanity that are a never-ending drain on the treasury! He then told some more lies about how we are better than other countries, assuring us that things like this could never happen in America when they certainly happen every day: If you ever been in the way of a rail line or a freeway you can kiss your property goodbye for whatever they want to pay you for it, and when exactly was the last time you could get the truth and important news stories from the MSM? If you could, I wouldn't be here! Many Americans have never gotten the truth from our corpo-rat controlled media as they were born after Barry's hero Ray-Guns destroyed those requirements of equality. Another funny lie was this: Perhaps that's true for the denizens of Foggy Bottom in Con-gress but I'm willing to bet that millions of regular folk would pack up and leave for greener pastures in a heartbeat if they could! Who wants to stay on board a sinking ship, especially when it's politicians and corpo-rat goons that get first crack at the life boats? I think the funniest thing that Barry said was: Oh please, the last five Presidents and the Congress have been doing everything they can do to destroy the Constitution and Bill of Rights and they're still working on dismantling the few rights they still haven't yet destroyed! Not happy to be destroying Medicare and Medicaid, Obamahood has plans for those Social Security funds as well. He's already cut the funds to Social Security by cutting back on Social Security taxes, making the fund less stable than it was; but there's more to come America:
What a crock! Then he's off to brag about our "Frankenfood" which is designed to kill you, thanks to the FDA which has been selling us out for 150 years. Our water in most cases is poisonous and shouldn't be drunk unless it is first boiled and filtered to remove the industrial poisons, biochemical wastes, fertilizer run-offs and pharmaceutical poisons. And some of the most polluted air outside of China or India floats right here in these United Snakes! And yet he says: I could go on and on with lies like, "And it's why we passed reform that finally prevents the health insurance industry from exploiting patients." I guess trippling their fees isn't exploiting us but life and this column is short, so I'll just close the way I began by paraphrasing Frank Zappa, "Mr. President, who you jivin' with that cosmic debris?"
RM: You are head of the Civil Rights Division at Justice. I am sure you would agree that a person's right not to be tortured is a civil right.Trouble is, there is no such thing as prosecutorial discretion when it comes to torture. Of course, if Eric were to bring charges against Smirky and Dick, as is required by not only US law but by United Nations law which we signed on to, i.e., "the United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment adopted by the UN General Assembly on Dec. 10, 1984 (now signed by some 150 nations - including the U.S., which ratified it on Oct. 21, 1994) has been and remains the supreme law of the land? The Convention makes no allowance for 'prosecutorial discretion,'" he'd also have to bring charges against Obamahood and Biden as well! There is of course no chance of that ever happening! But what if you or I were to waterboard crybaby Glenn Beck for his crimes against America? I wonder if Eric would look the other way? Also, shouldn't Eric be brought to just-us for not enforcing the laws that he swore to uphold? Anyone care to find out if the law would apply to you? The very same law that doesn't apply to Bush, Cheney, Obama and Biden? If you do, please let me know how that works out for you! One could expect to get a little help from the readership. In a good year perhaps 2% would help out; in a bad year only 1%. Now-a-daze that number has dropped to about .02%. In my case, if it weren't for a couple of folks overseas or at least across our northern border we would have ceased to be last year. In most cases we're kept afloat by people who really can't afford to help out, while those who could finance us for a year on their pocket change alone send in nothing, but have no problems reading us every week. How those folks can look in the mirror every morning without cutting their throats is beyond my comprehension, but they don't. Those of you who can help us out, please do. Rest assured that we will put your donations to good use and never, ever, waste a penny of them. If you have advertising money to spend please consider spending some of it here. Our rates are much better than most and you'd be helping out a good liberal cause in the bargain!  09-26-1914 ~ 01-23-2011 Thanks for the reps!
 04-14-1933 ~ 01-23-2011 Thanks for the adventures!
 06-16-1944 ~ 01-26-2011 Thanks for the music!
 07-27-1927 ~ 01-26-2011 Thanks for the harmony! ***** We get by with a little help from our friends! So please help us if you can...? Donations ***** So how do you like Bush Lite so far? And more importantly, what are you planning on doing about it? Until the next time, Peace! (c) 2011 Ernest Stewart a.k.a. Uncle Ernie is an unabashed radical, author, stand-up comic, DJ, actor, political pundit and for the last 10 years managing editor and publisher of Issues & Alibis magazine. Visit me on Face Book. Follow me on Twitter. |
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