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Forrest Johnson

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Lessons from Bob Melvin, the Two-Faced Man

Forrest Johnson

Bob Melvin the Two-faced Man told me long ago that you can’t eat money but you can live on happiness. For a guy with two faces, I couldn’t have imagined a happier guy than Bob, two faces or otherwise. He’d wander around the freak show tent at the Royal American Show midway at the state fair, tapping people on

Give me liberty, give me hollow rhetoric, Part Two

Forrest Johnson

Denial was once again on parade as the vastly uninformed New Conservative Neanderthal Party and its many candidates gushed over tax cuts for the rich and spending cuts for the rest of society in order to stimulate the economocracy. True to the head-in-the-sand philosophy of the neo-patriotic and neo-Ch

NCNP party platform is a cry for help, and NUFA is there

Forrest Johnson

This is a National Union of Friendly Americans (NUFA) alert. Members of the New Conservative Neanderthal Party (NCNP), formerly known only as Republicans, have gone insane, and NUFA will do its part to rehabilitate and bring these lost souls back into the human fol

The economocracy and the delivery of education, Part Two

Forrest Johnson

In an idle moment I recalled hearing the speaker of the Minnesota House tell a radio host that our schools have to be more innovative and efficient, that they have to be reform minded in these tough economic times. Perhaps you heard that interview as well.

Combating ignorance while we fish for salmon

Forrest Johnson

As a goodwill ambassador for the National Union of Friendly Americans (NUFA), it is my job to listen to all viewpoints, no matter how screwy they may be.

Two Very Different Christians Are Running For Office In 2012

Forrest Johnson

As a practicing member of the National Union of Friendly Americans (NUFA) and having been raised by happy and hard drinking pagan Lutherans who never once had a fight during any family gathering, it is with some trepidation that I would bring up the faiths or beliefs of others.

The Odd Irony Of The Economic Tides

Forrest Johnson

Here in Bristol Bay we are waiting on the fish. A cold winter and spring have left the landscape slowly warming as the subarctic summer sun arcs across the sky, right now hidden by rather thick and persistent cloud cover.

If a drone comes too close, swat it with a shovel

Forrest Johnson

The drone was following me closely. Too closely. It’s not the first time. They’re getting to be like mosquitoes. Hovering about the town checking on the miscreants and then heading up to the border to see what’s going on.

What Came First, Drugs Or Human Nature?

Forrest Johnson

An international commission looking at the results of the decades long War on Drugs has recently concluded that it has been a costly and miserable failure.

If I were king, boy, things would be different

Forrest Johnson

If I were king and I allowed voting, which I would because I would be a friendly king, I would first require all citizens to pass a simple test. A very simple test made up of very simple questions. Pick a single question and find the answer. You can use a calculator if you must. You can use an encyclopedia. It is an open book test.

At least you can eat a hippo

Forrest Johnson

I just can’t wait until the hippos and rhinos of the North Woods recover in sufficient numbers to allow a hunt. I’ve never liked them. They look down their noses at the deer and stomp all over our freshly cut lawns and just don’t seem to care about our culture at all.

Industrial foods and farming methods and your brain

Forrest Johnson

Several weeks ago I wrote about efforts by the National Union of Friendly Americans (NUFA) to remove intelligence-draining food products produced by the industrial food complex from our tables. Exacting NUFA studies have proven that a large segment of the population is consuming bio-engineered and amply processed foods made to keep cows and humans passive and obese while lowering intelligence at the same time.

Band-aids for the problems, not solutions

Forrest Johnson

The patented portable carbon dioxide/methane/greenhouse gas vacuum is a proven technology and under construction as we speak. Climate change deniers and skeptics will cringe in the shadow of the vacuum as it rolls through the nation, not quite under its own power but almost.

Bad food is behind the anxieties of the conservatives

Forrest Johnson

The Parade to Nowhere continues. Arguments that Social Security is failing continue to build across the large segment of the population that is consuming the bio-engineered and amply processed food made to keep cows and humans passive and well-fed while lowering intelligence at the same time.

A whole bunch of people use a different part of the brain than I do

Forrest Johnson

As I moseyed around the Tea Party rally at the Amsoil Arena on Sunday, I understood the truth of those words only too well. And from what I heard throughout the afternoon, it seems awfully easy to fool a majority. I was polite. I asked only innocuous questions, nothing personal. But I came to realize that most of the

Take populism back from the flim flam man

Forrest Johnson

I’m not quite sure how it happened that the New Conservative Neanderthal Party (NCNP), formerly the Republicans, has managed to pull the old switcheroo on the populist movement. The Tea Party, “The Rebellion to Stay the Same,” is also in on the heist, and I suppose to a lesser degree so are the religious factions who somehow have lost sight of the words from the original populist, one Jesus of Nazareth, t

National Union of Friendly Americans under assault—again

Forrest Johnson

The National Union of Friendly Americans (NUFA) held an emergency meeting at Camp Shack International Labor Temple early this week as the slave masters closed in on the hard-earned workplace gains earned over the past century, rights that have allowed freedom and dignity and a small measure of the democratic process to be exercised

The world has gone crazy

Forrest Johnson

The yellow bird with black wings flies past our patio here on the Mexican west coast. The now dry jungle crowds to the edge of the ocean and a few miles back in the hills the squatters eke out a living. Their meager fields host skinny goats and cows, a few stalks of maize and slight banana trees. In town, the familiar market has finally started to feel the loss of regular customers, a

There’s a world of worry and fear out there

Forrest Johnson

The motto “Learning more can’t hurt,” coined by the good folks at the North Shore Neighbors, sure is appropriate in these days of myopia, ignorance, and foolishness.

All we can do is try to be nice to each other

Forrest Johnson

“Just try to be nice to people,” my grandmother always said. “You can’t change who they are or why they are. All you can do is try to be nice to people.” My grandmother was a spiritual woman who believed in the ways of Jesus and knew how to get rid of warts by rubbing them with a piece of bacon under a full moon and then having a third party hide the bacon under a rock. It seemed to work. She could also find water with a forked willow stick, sang in

National Union of Friendly Americans under assault—again

Forrest Johnson

The National Union of Friendly Americans (NUFA) held an emergency meeting at Camp Shack International Labor Temple early this week as the slave masters closed in on the hard-earned workplace gains earned over the past century, rights that have...

The free market has me suspicious about the food market

Forrest Johnson

Oh, to be a capitalist, a free market capitalist, in the industrial grade food business. It can’t get any better as long as people still mate and produce more little consumers as blind as their parents when it comes to eating habits. Hey, don’t get me wrong. I’m no saint when it comes to the delights of food and the revving up of serotonin levels at the table of plenty. There are no kettle chips I can resist. The best I can do to exercise my will is not enter that aisle of bli

Kill the unions and the working class and bow to the economocracy

Forrest Johnson

Once again I’m trying to wrap my mind around an irony of sorts. The irony is much larger than my feeble leftist mind. Now the New Conservative Neanderthal Party (NCNP) is the compassionate party, the one to look out for the interests of ...

My debt ceiling will be raised once again

Forrest Johnson

Talk of raising the nation’s debt ceiling, minus the hubbedy-do we saw last summer they say, stirred me into fiscal action. Dredging up an idea from that recent past seemed appropriate.

The snow dance will be applied soon

Forrest Johnson

The results are in. The weather is screwy. In jest, my dad used to blame abnormal weather patterns on the Chinese. He even said they might be tinkering with gravity. But the problem is ...

Poor thinking a tough nut to crack

Forrest Johnson

Once again the National Union of Friendly Americans (NUFA) has been called upon to assist reticent nations and citizens in coming to terms with climate change.

The employees lose their jobs when the smoke clears

Forrest Johnson

Are you a parent? Are you a parent company? Would someone please tell me the difference between the two? What is a subsidiary? Would that be akin to a brother, a sister, a cousin?

NUFA creates Super Dooper Committee to solve deficit

Forrest Johnson

Doomed from the very beginning, the legislative “super committee” failed to craft a measure that would have begun to nibble away at the nation’s looming deficit. As the old saying goes, however, within every dark cloud is a silver lining.

Out of our realm and into cholesterol

Forrest Johnson

The Exalted Shack Master and a single subject recently paid a visit to faraway Camp Cholesterol and boy did we have fun. It is deer season after all.

The occupation of Camp Shack is underway

Forrest Johnson

The Occupy Camp Shack movement began in earnest last week only hours before the opening of deer season. The protesters, mired in the 90 percent of the population that controls 27 percent of the wealth, indicated it was their intention...

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