Absolutely! Appalachia needs all the help it can get. Of course, it's highly doubtful that Iraq will ever see any of the aid talked about. And it kills me to go driving through the back hills and find some town like Edgemont, NC... a little Brigadoon-type settlement I found by accident when I once took a wrong turn and went up several miles of gravel road. I couldn't be sure they had electricity, running water or even enough clothes. The children playing in the dirt were bare-ass naked, and stared at the station wagon we were driving in awe. I'm not sure they had ever seen anything newer than the rusted out 1940's Ford pickup we saw in town. It's not an exaggeration by any stretch to say that Appalachia is America's Third World, and I will never understand why people aren't more upset about how we can spend billions upon billions to liberate another country, and do nothing to lift those in our own. :m: Peace.
I suspect "we" do plenty. If those Apalacians feel they deserve more, they could declare war on the US, or let leak that they have created two nuclear weopons.
America's third world I once took a wrong turn and went up several miles of gravel road. I couldn't be sure they had electricity, running water or even enough clothes. The children playing in the dirt were bare-ass naked, and stared at the station wagon we were driving in awe. I'm not sure they had ever seen anything newer than the rusted out 1940's Ford pickup we saw in town. Did you stop and ask them if they had seen a station wagon before? Did you ask them if they were happy? Did they appear to be having a good time? Were they smiling and laughing or did they sulk away behind sunken eyes? Have you ever felt that free? Can you play naked in the mud and run through an entire day without being pissed off at something? Have you ever spent a day in the woods and listened to the pines creak in the wind while carrying nothing plucked from the shelves of a Wal-Mart? Freedom is a funny word.
