In times like these, especially in times like these, when words are just upchucked by annihilationists, institutional arsonists and a world-historic, nihilist-narcissist whose much-kissed ring gleams with saliva, only poetry makes sense. And a few well-chosen images, quotes, and quatrains.
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INTRODUCTION: Is Joe Manchin the Anti-Byrd?
However complicated his life, Robert C. Byrd left a legacy of accomplishment that benefited the state and nation. His career's end game also set the example of what a senator looks like when they object when America runs off the rails. So, a key question about Joseph Manchin III: Is he the Anti-Byrd?
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FIRST/PERSON: Traveling West Virginia’s backroads in the Byrdmobile
"I once worked for a man who had been an Exalted Cyclops in the Ku Klux Klan — and I’m proud of it. Not because he was a Klan member more than three-quarters of a century ago, but because of what he became afterward ..."
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REFLECTIONS: Ted Boettner on “Status Quo Joe”
“I don't think Manchin thinks there is anything fundamentally wrong with business as usual and that the inequality we see today is just and acceptable. Byrd, at least partly, seemed to believe in a higher purpose beyond himself. I don't see that with Manchin, who seems mostly motivated by financial interests and political gamesmanship.”
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Q&A: Author Denise Giardina on comparing Robert C. Byrd and Joe Manchin
Byrd had "a quality that is too rare in human beings: the ability to continue to learn and grow over time." With Manchin, "it’s a story as old as Greek tragedy — hubris, hubris, center of attention, power, power, money, money. It won’t turn out well for anyone, him included."
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MANCHIN/BYRD COMMENTARY: The word inside of West Virginia
“Assuming Manchin does not come home to his party on Build Back Better, voting rights, and Roe (a safe assumption at this point), he’ll have lost many more votes on his left side than he could ever hope to pick up on his right … If he doesn’t come back to his own party in really stunning fashion soon, you can expect Joe Manchin will be driving his Maserati to K street, instead of the Capitol, come 2025 ..."
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CARTOONERY: Black By God acidly sketches Joe Manchin’s life & times
'BLACK BY GOD: The West Virginian' revives in the state a formally potent tradition — the zinger, draw-truth-to-power editorial cartoon and Joe Manchin has been a favorite zingee of this “storytelling organization centering Black voices from the Mountain State.”
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Many Fights, One Big Fight
A new history of Local 1199 chronicles the history of a small, respected union that represents the overlooked and previously unrepresented workers of Local 1199. The book conveys the human longing for fairness within an often heartless industry.
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How West Virginia’s new vaccine law opens the door wider to politicizing public health
Beginning January 2022, it will be significantly easier for West Virginians to claim exemptions from employer COVID-19 vaccination mandates. That raises all sorts of red flags.
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When Socialist presidential candidate Eugene Debs was sent to Moundsville Prison for making a speech
The story of how Socialist firebrand Eugene Debs once landed in the state penitentiary in Moundsville WV illustrates "how easy it is for Americans to vilify their own citizens and, when seized by fear or fashion, step on each other’s rights," says John W. Miller in this reprint from the Moundsville Blog.
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EDITORIAL: Shelley Moore Capito Remains Missing-In-Action
It is Dec. 4—28 days after the 2020 U.S. presidential election was called for Biden/Harris. Yet WV Sen. Shelley Moore Capito has yet to formally recognize Biden as President-Elect or repudiated Donald Trump's dangerous lies about election fraud lies.
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EDITORIAL: Counting Down the Days of “No Show” Capito’s Snub of Biden-Harris
You'd think by now WV Sen. Capito might look over her shoulder and recall what it feels like to have a backbone now that Trump is slowly evaporating into a disgruntled mist. Yet 15 days after the election was called for Biden-Harris, she has yet to formally congratulate them.
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What now, West Virginia?
Want a shopping list of the challenges West Virginia faces in addressing Covid-19, the future of energy, poverty, a Legislature full of white guys, and beyond? This Mountain State Spotlight post-election roundup has you covered.
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EDITORIAL | A Shelley Moore Capito Reader
We present for your reading and viewing interest a selection of three items pertinent to the candidacy and further office-holding of the Republican senator from West Virginia, Shelley Moore Capito.
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EDITORIAL: “The Silent Senator Capito,” A Justice Project Video
Waiting on WV Senator Shelley Moore Capito to do the right thing—not just mouth the right thing—you might notice your hair turn another color and not from hair dye. So, WestVirginiaVille points its second Justice Project editorial video her way.
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Some formerly incarcerated West Virginians can’t vote. Others can, but may not know it.
The hue and cry has gone out—get out there and vote! But in West Virginia, advocates say education about voting rights for people with prison time or records, as well as after they get out, is often unclear—and that changes are needed to keep former inmates from being disenfranchised.
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As opioid trial looms in West Virginia, the firms being sued get huge COVID-19 contracts from the Trump administration
The "Big Three" prescription drug firms responsible for fueling the devastating toll of West Virginia's opioid crisis are earning praise and contracts from the Trump adminstration as a key trial holding them to task approaches Oct. 19
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STRIKE THIS WAY: A Crowdsourced Look at the 2018 WV Teacher’s Strike
We hereby enter these videos into the Multimedia Historical Records of the Great State of WestVirginiaVille. How Mitch got Ditched: a crowdsourced look at the beginnings of a purge.
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OP-ED LIMERICKS | An Absolute Artist at Failing
West Virginia writer and artist Colleen Anderson's Molotov limericks are aimed straight at the softest spots of Donald Trump's long-haul campaign to sow division, distrust, and discord across the land. We've animated a crop of three of them, yanked right from the headlines.
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UNSCRIPTED No. 1| Trump’s Good Karma
You must admit he has amazingly good karma. His entire life he has never been called to account. "Trump's Good Karma" is the first in a WestVirginiaVille video series called "Unscripted."
