States Of The United States

"You (Jamaal Bowmann)... talk about the number of noes that he is saying to the face of your community: no more child tax payments, no affordable child care, no paid leave, no immigration protections, no community violence and trauma intervention funding, no $35-a-month cap on insulin, no down payment assistance, no housing vouchers, and beyond.,,, I also want to read another of the six congressmembers, the Squad plus you and Cori Bush said, “West Virginia is 50th in public health, 50th in childcare, 48th in employment. They (West Virginians) support Build Back Better by a 43 point margin. This has nothing to do with [the] constituents [of Manchin]. This is about the corruption and self-interest of a coal baron,” Ilhan Omar tweeted."

"West Virginia my home, sweet home My heart beats with lasting love for you Where my roots are so deep, where my forefathers sleep Where the kinfolks and friends are staunch and true"

"Coal- called by ancient Greeks "the rock that burns"- powered the modernization of America. Rich coal-bearing regions like southern West Virginia were transformed in the late nineteenth century into teeming industrial civilizations. The completion of the Chesapeake & Ohio in 1873 and the Norfolk & Western in 1883 opened up the southern West Virginia coalfields. Soon, thousands of coal miners and their families crowded into the rugged river valleys where independent coal operators boldly opened mining ventures. West Virginia's sturdy coal miners came from all over the world. Black Americans from the Deep South joined Eastern European immigrants seeking a better life and poured into the sprawling coal camps which housed the workers. More than 100,000 miners toiled underground in the industry's glory years, laboriously hand loading the "black diamonds" that transformed the United States from a rural nation into an international industrial power. Five billion tons of the world's finest industrial fuel flowed out along the smoothly grated roadbeds of the N&W and the C&O, hauled by the most powerful steam locomotives ever designed."

"All of this was as clear to McClellan as anything needed to be. He got, in addition, a slight nudge from General Scott. Late in May a detachment of Confederate infantry moved into the railroad junction town of Grafton, and Scott telegraphed McClellan to do something about this, if he could- to protect the railroad and also to "support the Union sentiment in western Virginia." From his headquarters in Cincinnati on May 26 he issued a proclamation, inviting mountaineer Virginians to "sever the connection that binds you to traitors" and to show the world that "the faith and loyalty so long boasted by the Old Dominion are still preserved in western Virginia.""

"Oh, the West Virginia hills, how majestic and how grand With their summits bathed in glory like our Prince Emmanuel's land Is it any wonder then, that my heart with rapture thrills As I stand with loved ones on those West Virginia hills"

"So I had Cheneys on both sides of the family and we don't even live in West Virginia."

"Except for christening a few such projects with the names of U.S. presidents, dams are customarily titled after the closest municipality. This, however, did not turn out to be the case with the dam and lake in question. What was dedicated on the spot by President Lyndon Johnson on September 3, 1966 as "Summersville Lake and Dam," did not comply with the usual procedure of labeling such structures... I have imagined being a fly on the wall when officials of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers met to discuss the naming of the big dam in Nicholas County because a rather serious back and forth erupted in the discussion of the proper naming of the dam. A few members of the brain-trust took the side of the small community closest to the project rather than favoring Summersville, the larger more prestigious county seat nearby. Since the byways and buildings of the little hamlet would end up being permanently immersed at the bottom of the lake, it would be most fitting to honor the doomed community by naming the lake and dam after it. The committee's pro-Summersville majority won the final decision largely on the strength of a public relations argument that would protect the future tourist and recreation site from being giggled at by some and abused by ridicule from others. It would also avoid predictable jibs and jeering in the media. The community closest to the project, you see, was the unincorporated town of Gad. Today, there exists only in imaginative speculation what might have resulted if the widely known magnificent structure had been named "Gad Dam"."

"West, by God! West Virginia!"

"The appeal of this dynamic, rugged state is perhaps best described by the words of mega-weenie John Denver, who sang: "Almost heaven? West Virginia?" West Virginia has long been a major attraction for tourists seeking to escape from their "nine-to-five" office-bound jobs for a chance to get out in the country and mine some coal. West Virginia's residents are all very friendly and closely related. You can meet them "up close and personal" during the annual Deliverance Canoe Trip and Pig Imitation Festival. West Virginia's Official State Toilet Part is the flapper."

"Had West Virginia been nothing more than a mountainous bulwark around which rushed the main currents of American life, its fate would probably have resembled that of Vermont. In fact, Rutherford B. Hayes made this comparison and concluded that there was "Nothing finer in Vermont or New Hampshire" than the western Virginia scenery he enjoyed. If the resemblance had continued to hold, West Virginia would have remained a backwater during the agricultural and industrial revolutions of the nineteenth century but still would have enjoyed two compensating mid-twentieth-century trends: the federal policies and programs that have worked to iron out differences in material standards of living among the various states, and the rise of tourist and recreational industries. Even today, notwithstanding all the violence that has been visited on the landscape, West Virginia's scenery and the recreational potential of its mountains, forests, and streams have proved its most enduring economic resources. Thus for states like Vermont and for those small portions of eastern West Virginia that have nothing but scenery to depend on, modern affluence and aesthetic values may finally break down the barriers that once separated mountain regions from full participation in the nation's economic life."

"West Virginia has the seventh-highest child poverty rate in the country. West Virginia has horrible climate conditions that need to be addressed. Senator Manchin is not talking about the people of West Virginia or the people of America; he’s talking — he’s responding to big special interests and his donors... It’s one thing to talk the talk, but is he going to walk the walk and take that “no” vote and then go home and explain that “no” vote? Because at the end of the day, West Virginians are watching. And they have been watching for quite some time. But now I think they have a full understanding of who Joe Manchin is and what he represents."

"Things you are slower than, #5: A West Virginia prom date."

"With a background like this, "Almost Heaven" bumper stickers represent a great leap forward. The point is not the merits of specific boasts but their cumulative psychological effect. Perceptive visitors usually see through the disguise right away and conclude, as with defensive individuals who seek to mask a sense of inferiority by boastfulness, that there is something about West Virginia that its citizens are ashamed of. As for West Virginians themselves, this form of indoctrination manages only to persuade most people that there is something phony about history, that it has nothing to do with the reality of their own lives, whereas the opposite is true. In West Virginia history often repeats itself. Perhaps the fact that our history is so painful explains why it is so poorly understood."

"West Virginians have hidden their weak sense of community behind a particularly strident form of state patriotism, but the disguise is very thin. The characteristic expressions are boasts, slogans, and distortions of historical fact. Traditionally schoolbooks adopted what might be called the "Soviet Encyclopedia" approach to local history, recalling the Stalinist propaganda that sought to establish a Russian inventor or setting for every important development of the modern world. West Virginia's boosters have not gone quite so far, but West Virginia children are still expected to believe that James Rumsey, not Robert Fulton, invented the steamboat; that Amos Dolbear, not Alexander Graham Bell, invented the telephone; that Point Pleasant, not Lexington, was the first battle of the American Revolution, and so on. They are also taught to memorize the West Virginia locations of such items as the world's largest clothespin factory, the world's largest ashtray, and to make an inordinate fuss about West Virginia natives who have become prominent nationally."

"By the early twentieth century, explosions caused by gas and dust accumulations in underground coal mines boomed across the mountains of West Virginia, causing hundreds of deaths. An explosion that shot through the connected Monongah No. 6 and No. 8 mines near Fairmont in 1907 left more than 360 miners dead and rbought about the nation's first federal mine safety regulations. The Monongah blast remains the biggest mine disaster in United States history. Coal miners seeking better pay and safer working conditions through unionization clashed frequently with coal operators during the early 1900s. While union miners relied mainly on work stoppages and intimidation of strikebreakers to boost their cause, coal operators turned to strong-arm detective agencies, hired guns, machine gun-equipped locomotives, and even bomb-dropping aircraft to enforce their will. Coalfield hostilities reached the boiling point in August of 1921, when thousands of well-armed miners marched from Kanawha County to Blair Mountain on the Boone-Logan County line, where an army of mercenaries hired by coal operators awaited them in trenches fortified with machine gun nests. The ensuing Battle of Blair Mountain is considered the largest civil insurrection since the Civil War."

"Persons who have studied the impact of coal mining on different societies from Silesia to northern Japan have usually concluded that coal has been a curse upon the land that yielded it. West Virginia is no exception. In its repetitive cycle of boom and bust, its savage exploitations of men and nature, the coal industry has brought grief and hardship to all but a small proportion of the people whose lives it touched. There has been, of course, a tiny elite of smaller producers and middlemen who grew rich from coal exploitation though not so rich as the nonresident owners in whose shadow the local elite worked. For those West Virginians who lived at a remove from the industry, its impact has been more ambiguous. Certainly coal created opportunities that were not there in the agricultural era, especially as the owners of the industry have always tried and have usually succeeded in passing off the external or social costs of coal production to the public at large. Moreover, the industry called into being a larger population than West Virginia's other economic resources can support so that, even after the great migration of the postwar years, the position of the state is like that of an addict. West Virginia is "hooked" on coal, for better or for worse. In the past it has generally been for the worst."

"Although coal mining was dark, dirty, and dangerous work, many miners enjoyed the unique chore. Some old-timers still reminisce about the close sense of community which united the inhabitants of more than 500 small company towns that were once situated along the Coal Heritage Trail. The road winds past company stores, miners' houses, massive railroad yards, and company towns. Visitors can experience the coal society and heritage that still exists and gain remarkable insight into a unique part of American history."

"But although western Virginia menaced the Federal cause, it also promised it substantial gains. Its people were largely Unionist. For years they had felt like Virginia's stepchildren, believing that the state was run by tidewater folk for tidewater's benefit; a great many of them had ceased to identify themselves strongly with Virginia, precisely as Virginia itself had lost its feeling of identity with the Federal Union, and they had voted against secession. Now they were planning a secession of their own; they would break away from Virginia and become either a brand-new state, or, if the war lasted, the legally dominant section of the old one. Either way they meant trouble for Jefferson Davis, and the Lincoln administration would help them if it could."

"We caught a B&O train out of St. Louis for Philadelphia, and it was just our luck that it ran five and a half hours late before we got to Philadelphia. The scenery on our trip was lost to us, because we were covered with dust and roasted too. However I did enjoy winding in and out among the mountains of West Virginia."

"West Virginia is the only state spawned by the Civil War, thanks to the efforts of political leaders in the northern and western counties who took issue with Virginia's vote to secede from the Union. Overall, only public sentiment in the land that was to become the thirty-fifth state only slightly favored the federal cause, and a number of counties were decidedly pro-Confederate. Battles, skirmishes, and raids reached every corner of the state, often putting those who were friends, neighbors, and relatives before the war on opposite sides of the killing fields."

"Liberty and Independence"

"Send it off through Delaware Just make it fair for the legionnaires"

"For the sun is shining over Our beloved Delaware"

"Or imagine being able to be magically whisked away to…Delaware. "Hi, I'm in…Delaware.""

"'Cause I was aware as a square in Delaware"

"In the meanwhile, the leading political dispute centered on the three lower counties of (non-Quaker) Delaware. Delaware, eager for self-government of its own, objected to all of its judges being named by the central government in Philadelphia. This dispute, becoming prominent in late 1690, reached its high point when Pennsylvania was forced to reassume government. Now a single governor would appoint Delaware's officials. Bitter at this turn of affairs and at the idea of a tax to support a Pennsylvania governor, the Delaware counties immediately decided to secede and to found their own self-governing colony. The reimposition of government had directly provoked secession by Delaware.Governor Lloyd did his best to induce the seceding counties to return, promising, in fact, that they would never be forced by the central government to pay any of his salary and that they would be allowed full local self-government without central interference. Delaware preferred, however, to assure itself of noninterference by remaining independent."

"302 phone number. Delaware. Truthfully, I didn’t think they allowed anyone to live in Delaware anymore."

"Where Pennsylvania went, little Delaware could not be far behind. The two were almost one province, having the same proprietary governor. Delaware, too, had retained its old assembly and governmental structure after Lexington and Concord. Its three delegates to the Continental Congress were Thomas McKean, a radical; George Read, an archconservative; and Ceasar Rodney , a centrist. By the end of 1775, Rodney had shiftedleftward, winning the delegation for the American cause. Pennsylvania's opting for independence quickly convinced Delaware. On June 14, McKean presented to the Delaware Assembly the May 15 resolution of Congress along with the recent resolutions of Pennsylvania. On June 15, Delaware removed the restrictions that prohibited its delegates from voting for independence, which had been in force since March 1775, when the delegates were instructed to aim for reconciliation with the mother country. Now, in imitation of the Pennsylvania Assembly's resolve of June 8, the Delaware Assembly ordered its delegates to concur with other delegates in favoring whatever measures may be necessary for the interest of America. The way was clear for the Delaware delegation to vote for independence."

"Marge: I can't believe it! We won another contest! Homer: The Simpsons are going to Delaware! Lisa: I wanna see Wilmington! Bart: I wanna visit a screen-door factory!"

"Tonight -- tonight, I want to talk about the future of possibilities that we can build together -- a future where the days of trickle-down economics are over and the wealthy and the biggest corporations no longer get the -- all the tax breaks. And, by the way, I understand corporations. I come from a state that has more corporations invested than every one of your states in the state -- the United States combined. And I represented it for 36 years. I'm not anti-corporation. But I grew up in a home where trickle-down economics didn't put much on my dad's kitchen table. That's why I'm determined to turn things around so the middle class does well. When they do well, the poor have a way up and the wealthy still do very well. We all do well. And there's more to do to make sure you're feeling the benefits of all we're doing"

"“Let’s go to New Hampshire.” “What’s wrong with Scotland?” “I’ve never been to New Hampshire.” “I have, and I don’t like it. It looks like your description of the moon.”"

"These people were of all races, colors, and creeds. French were in the north and in the Carolinas. Dutch had built the town on Manhattan island, and their patroons' estates in the Hudson valley; now they were building their own cabins in the Mohawk Indian country that is now New York State. Germans had settled in the Jerseys and in the far west, beyond Philadelphia. Germans and Scotch-Irish were climbing the Carolina mountains; Swedes were in Delaware, English and French and Dutch and Irish were settled in Massachusetts, the New Hampshire Grants, Connecticut, and Virginia. Mingled with all these were Italians, Portuguese, Finns, Arabs, Armenians, Russians, Greeks, and Africans from a dozen very different African peoples and cultures. Black, brown, yellow and white, all these peoples were some of them free and some of them slaves. Also they were intermarried with the American Indians."

"It may not have occurred to Haley that there are no Confederate monuments in New Hampshire. There are nearly 100 in the state to the Union cause. One-tenth of the population of New Hampshire at the time served in the Union army: 32,750 men, of whom nearly 5,000 died, 130 in Confederate prisons. The fifth New Hampshire volunteer infantry had the highest casualty rate of any Union regiment. About 900 soldiers from New Hampshire fought at Gettysburg, suffering 368 casualties, many of whom are buried at the cemetery there, where Lincoln delivered his address explaining their sacrifice for a “government of, by and for the people”. The monument to the fifth New Hampshire is one of five monuments to Granite state units at the Gettysburg battlefield."

"1981—William Loeb, alleged newspaperman, goes to his eternal torment at the age of 75."

"Live free or die."

"New Hampshire (formerly Vermont) contains many rustic little villages with names like "East Thwackmore" featuring quaint little inns where the harried visitor can escape from the high-pressure modern world, with its pesky flush toilets and central heating. New Hampshire is also the home of the famous New England town meeting, a dynamic example of "democracy in action" wherein once a year all the residents of each town gather to lick syrup off each other's thighs. One of New Hampshire's most popular attractions is the famous "Old Man of the Mountain," a natural granite formation that, when viewed from a certain angle, looks like rocks. New Hampshire's Official State Onion Dip Enhancer is chives."

"As our tour of the history of forgotten violence comes within sight of the present, the landmarks start to look more familiar. But even the zone of cultural memory from the last century has relics that feel like they belong to a foreign country. Take the decline of martial culture. The older cities in Europe and the United States are dotted with public works that flaunt the nation’s military might. Pedestrians can behold statues of commanders on horseback, beefcake sculptures of well-hung Greek warriors, victory arches crowned by chariots, and iron fencing wrought into the shape of swords and spears. Subway stops are named for triumphant battles: the Paris Métro has an Austerlitz station; the London Underground has a Waterloo station. Photos from a century ago show men in gaudy military dress uniforms parading on national holidays and hobnobbing with aristocrats at fancy dinners. The visual branding of long-established states is heavy on aggressive iconography, such as projectiles, edged weapons, birds of prey, and predatory cats. Even famously pacifistic Massachusetts has a seal that features an amputated arm brandishing a sword and a Native American holding a bow and arrow above the state motto, “With the sword we seek peace, but under liberty.” Not to be outdone, neighboring New Hampshire adorns its license plates with the motto “Live Free or Die.”"

"New Hampshire is a drug-infested den."

"There will always be critics of the potato because it is lowly and humble, ... But it still represents $2 billion of revenue a year in the state of Idaho -- and thousands of jobs."

"The real meaning of wilderness will open our eyes like an Idaho sunrise on a summer morning."

"I grew up all over IdahoI was born in Emmett, a very small town"

"I felt I had to share Idaho with my friend from New York because he'd shared New York with me, wo I was going to share the beauty of nature with a man who went to museums and clubs late at night. But, there was nothing to do where I lived at night."

"In Wyoming, the state's Supreme Court looked at two laws - one banning abortion in all cases except to protect a pregnant woman's life or in cases involving rape or incest, and another banning abortion pills explicitly. Both laws were quashed on Tuesday. Abortion pills are the most common method of pregnancy termination in the US. The Wyoming bill, which was passed by the state's Republican-controlled legislature in 2023, made it illegal to "prescribe, dispense, distribute, sell or use any drug for the purpose of procuring or performing an abortion". At the time, Wyoming American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) advocacy director Antonio Serrano criticised the bill, saying "a person's health, not politics, should guide important medical decisions - including the decision to have an abortion". Republicans in the state aren't happy with the laws being shot down. But they are now pushing for something more sweeping. On Tuesday, Wyoming's Republican Governor Mark Gordon expressed disappointed on the ruling and called for state legislators to pass a constitutional amendment cementing the ban in the state. "This ruling may settle, for now, a legal question, but it does not settle the moral one, nor does it reflect where many Wyoming citizens stand, including myself," he said. "It is time for this issue to go before the people for a vote, and I believe it should go before them this fall.""

"Abortion will stay legal in Wyoming after the state's top court struck down laws that placed a near-total ban on the procedures. The court ruled that Wyoming's anti-abortion legislation, including the nation's first ban on abortion pills, were in violation of the state's constitution. "A woman has a fundamental right to make her own health care decisions, including the decision to have an abortion," the court wrote in a 4-1 decision. Lawyers for the state had argued that abortion could not violate Wyoming's constitution because it does not constitute health care. The case against the state was brought by four women, including two obstetricians, an abortion advocacy group, and the state's only abortion provider, Wellspring Health Access in the city of Casper. Wyoming is one of many states in which legal fights over abortion bans have ensued since 2022 - when the Supreme Court reversed the landmark 1973 Roe v Wade judgement legalising abortion. More than a dozen states have since enacted near-total bans on abortions, several of which have been put on hold by the courts."

"This is Wyoming in 1897. It's a land of great, open spaces. A land that gives a man plenty of elbow room. Somebody once said that in Wyoming, you could look farther, and see less than any place in the world. Whoever said that couldn't have seen Wyoming as I have."

"He was up in Wyoming, And drew a bull no man could ride. He promised her he'd turn out, Well it turned out that he lied. And their dreams that they'd been livin', In the California sand, Died right there beside him in Cheyenne."

"He heard the wind, the ever present Wyoming wind for the last time."

"Mitt Romney and I both grew up in the heartland, and we know what places like Wisconsin and Michigan look like when times are good. We know what these communities look like when times are good -- when people are working, when families are doing more than just getting by. And we both know it can be that way again."

"Put you in a mansion, somewhere in Wiscansin."

"My name is John Johnson. I come from Wisconsin. I work as a lumberjack there."