Redrawing State Lines

I've often complained that the various states in this country have been poorly divided up. Clearly there's no need for both a North and South Dakota, and Rochester, New York has no business being in the same state as Brooklyn. But how best to solve this connundrum, which is clearly the most pressing issue of our time?

1) New England needs to be melded into one state--New New England. The mix of husky Mainers, granola hippie Vermonters, New Hampshire anarchists, Massholian dilletantes, slick Rhode Islanders and Connecticut bluebloods can get along well enough to share one state government. I even have their new state motto: "How you like them apples?" Sadly that'll be the most well known New New England quote a few decades from now.

2) The state of New York should consist of current NYC, plus half of Long Island, northern half of Jersey, and all of current New York state south of Albany. I'm basing this on where you can get good pizza and genuine rudeness. The rest of Long Island can be a territory like Samoa.

3) The remainder of Jersey can join Delaware and eastern Maryland as well as Philadelphia and its suburbs, to make a cheesesteak and crabcake filled neighbor called Fuggetaboutit.

4) Upstate New York joins the rest of Pennsylvania, West Virginia and all of Ohio to form a sports-crazed community of hunters who don't care a damn what people in NYC or New New England think. This state will be called "Steel Coal Gunsland."

5) Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, northern Florida, the Carolinas, Tennessee and southern Virginia will all be one state, called "South Gunsland." They will have a friendly rivalry with Steel Coal Gunsland over college football teams and who has more accidental gun deaths per square mile. Both of course will be closely contested by Republicans and greatly feared by Democrats. The rest of Florida will be a territory like Samoa and Long Island.

6) Chicago will be its own state, called "Corruption." Congress will bribe the state legislature of Corruption every year in order to get them to keep that name. Technically this isn't irony, but pretty neat.

7) Indiana, the rest of Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Wisconsin, Nebraska, Kansas and Minnesota will merge to form "West Flyover." There is no East Flyover, but we lived with a West Virginia for a long time without an East Virginia (or an "Old Jersey" for that matter) so this should be fine.

8) Michigan we will try and give back to Canada, hoping they don't realize that they never had Michigan in the first place. Shhh...

9) The Dakotas, Montana, Wyoming, Idaho and Colorado will form "Rocky" because of the Rocky Mountains. The state legislature of Rocky will spend most of its time sending the National Guard to disarm various illegal militias sprouting up everywhere, and kicking Hollywood pinkos out of Aspen.

10) Nevada, Utah, and Arizona will merge to form Rocky II.

11) Texas swallows up Louisiana, Oklahoma and New Mexico because that's just the sort of thing the biggest kid on the block will do. They'll still be called Texas, but they'll be even crazier.

12) California will merge with Oregon and Washington to form "Pacific Cannabisland." My hope is that all those hippies on the West Coast unite and put down their bongos long enough to fully legalize pot. Sadly they will probably also tax themselves out of existence.

13) Alaska and Hawaii will go back to becoming territories. We gave them a chance and they blew it.

14) You probably noticed that Kentucky has been left alone. They know what they did.