(Editor’s note: Jonah posted this account yesterday on Alfrankenweb, which reached the Rec List on Daily Kos. Now I’m fielding emails and calls inquiring whether Jonah is real. Here are the Alfrankenweb posts, until Jonah can give us an update.)

OK, so this is the story as I finally got straight.

I was out scrounging scrap metal today, to get enough food money to last us through the weekend.

I came home and Miss Johnnie, my landlady, was crying and showing me a table full of food.

I thought one of our friends or my relatives had come over and bought for us.

But it was bought, according to the lady who owns the restaurant, by Barack Obama over the phone.

After the Obama Campaign Workers came to the door, and were listening to Miss Johnnie describe why she, a registered republican, was voting for Obama.

She showed a picture of her daughter Michelle the Marine who had been deployed to Iraq twice, and is still pending discharge because of the Stop Loss.

All her kids in fact.

And her late husband, who had died of Agent Orange from his service in VietNam.

About that time the campaign workers started making phone calls and she got to talk to Obama.

She was in tears while telling me all this so I got the story wrong at first.

She talked about the War, about the health care bill that got turned down because it was “too expensive” but the Rich Thieves got to take 16 times as much just because they had broken the economy with their wild schemes.

About the VA messing around with the repayment of the medical expenses she had borne by herself over the 12 years since her husband died, over nitpicky paperwork errors on Their Part.

About me being out against doctor’s orders scrounging scrap metal just to make it through til monday.

One of the volunteers was a Marine and a Nam Vet, so much for the notion that Veterans are all voting for McCain, (despite his continued votes to screw the veterans the same way the VA is messing up Miss Johnnie’s paperwork and payments)

Miss Johnnie, understandably, doesn’t talk without a great deal of emotion on those subjects.

So after the Volunteers left, about 20 minutes later a very large order of Chinese food charged to Obama came to the door.

The Delivery man is a recent immigrant and doesn’t speak English, so he called his boss, who confirmed it but said it was supposed to be a surprise.

Enough food to last until Monday.

I came in with this really pitiful half gallon of milk and about a meal worth of food and some cat food.. and she was crying and showing me all the food.

And said that Obama had bought it for us.

I didn’t get the story quite right the first time, so I thought he had been there in person.

Not quite, but you know how in the Churches people say “I’ll be there in spirit”?

He was there in a way that really counts.

McCain has a fake falsified made-up “Joe the Plumber” who turns out to be a white-collar person named Sam and not even a plumber…

Obama now has Miss Johnnie the Viet-Nam Widow and a Real Joe the Ex-Roofer with Busted Feet.

That’s why Obama wins.

He’s Real, his concern for the people is Real, and the people who supporting him, WE’RE real too.

…

Hell, I don’t know where to research it myself.

There’s been a flood of out-of-state volunteers past two days, because Ms Sarah was doing her Schtick at the baseball park to a tame crowd.

Tame as in no Nasty Obama Supporters being let through to ask all kinds of icky-poo questions.

I went in yesterday and mentioned at the welcome desk at Obama HQ about the FreakSquad chalking the death-threat or death-wish either one on the sidewalk essentially directly across the street from them.

The restaurant is “Coal Mine Dragon” at 1720 W Uintah, the Springs. The lady who runs it is Second Generation Chinese. She told Miss Johnnie that it was Obama paying the tab, and that it was supposed to have been secret.

If it was merely the Volunteers calling in the order, and the restaurant owner not getting it out clearly distinguished, that’s still great.

as to was he the one who spoke to her, he identified himself as such.

If he was a clever impostor doing a good imitation that’s more improbable.

Not much reason anybody would, especially as Obama wouldn’t tolerate it.

if he confirms it himself is the best proof I could think of.

…

Who has that kind of pull to hotline direct to Obama during a rally?

Congressman Mark Udall, that’s who.

He told Miss Johnnie about being a Marine himself, I had thought “damn, that sounds a lot like Mark Udall…”

And, sure enough…

…

Run the pack of clowns out of office.

There’s some tidying up to do, seems like a herd of Elephants has gone through the national living room, pooping on the floors, breaking stuff and drinking out of the toilet.

If I’m not mistaken, some poor clerk at the VA in Denver is going to have a rude surprise Monday morning.

Mark Udall is running on Workers Rights, and Veterans Affairs… very large issues here in Colorado.

The “Terror Connection” they’ve been trying to tar Obama with, with Udall it’s “the Department of Peace” and Labor Unions.

His opponent is making big talk from those same National Attack Ads just like with the “Daschle Democrats” Ads with the bobble heads…

Well, Daschle was proven RIGHT about Iraq.

Trying to paint Udall as a hippie-dippy doper (seriously, they’ve been using that angle) when he’s a Marine and a Nam Vet, I think they bit off a chunk of the wrong sandwich.

I don’t know what all the names of the meals are, one involved a lot of chicken and broccoli, mushrooms… oh man..

Another same recipe, stir fried, with steak in it.

Cabbage rolls and rice with more chicken in it…

I think I like this restaurant and plan to give them my patronage.

The bill came to just under $40 bux.

If you’re in Colorado, vote no on 47 and there’s two more Blatantly union busting amendments there.

Oh, there’s an attack ad on right now….

These freaks need to be slapped repeatedly, in fact I’ll start a thread about that…

…

I had to reboot the puter, knocked my keyboard connection loose.

We have one cat, Keenan, neutered male.

She built him cat-runs at three of the windows, we can’t let him outside because our next-door neighbor is a Confirmed Cat-Kicker.

Last summer she contracted Leishmaniasis, which is also called the Baghdad Boil, in Mesopotamia it’s spread by the bite of a flea…

They gave her Antibiotics for it, and for the Mycelin Resistant Staph Aureole that goes with it.

This has affected her inner ear, because the antibiotics were so strong.

At the time we thought it was her lymphatic cancer coming out of remission.

After her husband died, she was waiting on getting her Widow’s Pension, the VA wasn’t even acknowledging that her husband had died of Agent Orange.

It took a few years for that. That’s when she had the lymphoma.

She was out on the street while taking chemo.

Last year she started to try for her CHAMPVA benefits, so she could get meaningful health care.

The ones who come to the forum to blast “Socialized Medicine” don’t know the least part of what the hell they’re putting out, or putting down.

We had the paperwork and forms from the VA to take to the Air Force to get her Widowed Spouse ID card, to get the CHAMPVA started.

We rode the bus across town to Peterson AFB, they allowed her onto the base, but not me, made me get off the bus and wait outside.

Which I prefer anyway, when I left the Air Force, I LEFT.

The guards at the gate, they weren’t Air Force, didn’t have any insignia or rank or name tags, but I knew they weren’t SPs because the SPs are stone freaky about maintaining a spit-shined appearance.

Turns out they’re mercenaries, I thought at first Blackwater but it seems it’s a different group of Mercs.

All the same to me.

At the Admin building another Mercenary, not Air Force personnel, clerk told her that the VA was full of shit, everything changed with nine eleven, don’t you know there’s a war on yadda yadda and threatened to have her arrested.

This year we finally got her ID card, got her CHAMPVA started.

Any Vets reading this, be-the-hell-ware because this is what they’re fixin’ to do to YOU next if McInasane gets in power.

So she’s owed 11 years worth of reimbursement for all the medical care she had to pay for out of pocket, even with the next to worthless Colorado Indigent Care Program insurance (Look up “worthless” in the dictionary and right next to it will be a picture of CICP) one of those “Massive Entitlement Programs For Bums” that McCain bitches about.

She got some reimbursement but is owed about 5 times as much more.

They keep bouncing her claims back, saying the forms are “incomplete”.

Utter bullshit, because I went over their claim as to what information was missing, and it was all right there in the papers.

That’s why I believe somebody from Mark Udall’s office is going to give them a Nasty Note Monday.

That’s the status so far.

The Health Care meltdown in Colorado is almost as bad as it was in Texas when I left.

Privatized everything. Well, I can testify, it didn’t work in Texas, and it surely ain’t working in Colorado either.

…

I get SSI and Medicaid. Miss Johnnie gets a Widows pension and CHAMPVA.

I supplement it by repairing computers and selling them, and the Scrap Metal.

I’ve been making more money off the scrap metal than the computers though.

The internet is part of our Cable package.

And, it’s necessary for the repairs I do to the computers, otherwise we would have ditched that part and just used dial-up.

The past month I haven’t been able to scrap, doctor’s orders.

That drop in income brought us near the edge.

We have for vehicles three bicycles, two of them mine, and she can’t ride hers anymore because of some of her injuries.

And ride the bus for further transportation.

I don’t drive anyway, never learned because it would be too dangerous.

Trust me on that.

But I’ve been getting on fairly well using the bicycles.

Until last month.

On top of that, scrap prices are down, way down… and there’s more competition for what scrap there is.

This is what’s happening across America.

I find out on November 5th what exact kind of surgery is going to be needed, for the foot I thought was uninjured 16 years ago.

I do know part of it is going to involve removal of a bone, the Cuboid.

I won’t have a leg to stand on.

It would be really really cool, you know, if this situation were anywhere near being unique.

Fact is, it ain’t.

That’s why there’s this:

I’m not dancing with joy that McCain is going to lose…

I’m rejoicing that America now has a chance to WIN.

…

Thanks, but we’re getting there. You might need it yourself soon anyway.

Stocks are tanking like mad.

Gas prices are down to 3 a gallon but that’s mostly because so much business, small and large, has crashed that there’s a huge drop in actual consumption.

First law of economics, supply and demand.

There’s going to be money coming in, just a question of when.

We both know how to make money, just we aren’t going to try doing anything on credit, build from a cash-only base.

Johnnie used to be a business owner, she and her husband did custom printing. Before his illness got to him they had over a million in the bank.

That’s how quick a catastrophic illness can do you down.

“difficult” and “impossible” are two separate equations, if something is difficult that just means it’s possible.

It’s a challenge more than anything. I hope.

I’ve got good skills I can adapt, like these computer skills.

This one I’m using now I built up from parts I salvaged, part of the scrap metal deal.

Here in town there WAS a steady supply of one-off computers, like, HP would come out with the newest mainboard and all the HP employees would get a discount on the new one, and either sell the older ones cheap or donate them to the ARC or Goodwill. Here’s a really good business tip, something you might want to invest yourself into, a new mainboard combination comes out roughly every 6 months and the older one, the one that’s King of the Jungle today, is going to be only worth half of what it is today.
Same with all the parts.

And for all practical purposes, the best there is today, in 6 months will still be able to run any software package there is. Not much point in buying a brand new computer, unless you’re developing software specifically for the newest chipset. so I’m developing a base of people who will want to buy good computers, that’ll do whatever they want, just at an amazingly lower price than they would pay to HP or Dell.
it’s more a matter of timing your purchases than anything else.

Now HP is closing down most of their local operations here, moving some to Albuquerque and some to iirc Little Rock.

But I’ll adapt. Part of it is that I don’t have a huge monetary investment in anything, mostly my investment has been in skills.

At least we have a plan, and are getting, slowly to be sure, but it is building up, the means to implement the plan.

Dire straits are familiar territory for me. At least I know my way around.

There’s good coming onto the horizon.