Independence
You might recall that Delaware mall I posted a couple of weeks ago that's done up to look like Philadelphia's Independence Hall. The bank seen above in Owensboro, KY, has the same design inspiration. That's Independence Bank, an ... um, independent bank based in Western Kentucky. They built this Independence Hall-inspired structure in Owensboro sometime around the year 2000, and it's become something of a local landmark. Personally, I wish they'd have put it downtown. It's a fairly accurate recreation of Independence Hall, though the bank's president told me at the time that the actual Independence Hall wasn't big enough, so they added an extra floor to the replica.
Speaking of Owensboro: There's news in Kentucky politics! Kentucky's governor race has concluded, and in a move I see as a surprise, my old Kentucky homeland has re-elected Democratic Governor Andy Beshear to a second term! I never would have expected this during the Covid pandemic, as Andy's been a pretty good governor in trying times, and Kentucky usually punishes its politicians for that sort of thing. But part of how Beshear came to office in the first place was the strength of his last name -- his father was an extremely popular two-term governor toward the start of the century -- and Andy himself is a very charismatic guy who's done a good job, even if he has made Kentucky's very large MAGA crowd mad. He only won by about 5,000 votes in 2019, but he upped that to 67,000 votes this time. I'm mentioning this on an Owensboro picture because he actually carried Daviess County. Democrats rarely carry Daviess County.
Kentucky's gubernatorial election is a bit off-pattern with most other places, in that it happens in an off-year before the Presidential race, and it's one of the only big, state-wide races in the country. Mississippi also elects its governor that year, and a few big-city mayors come up, but that's it. That tends to make national news outlets who don't know any better try to use Kentucky as a bellwether for what's going to happen the following year with the Presidency. (I talked a little about that tendency in this post in 2019.) The thread this time is that Democrats took the Kentucky governor's race and a bunch of local level races and some state legislative races in Virginia, and they won a couple of big referendums on culture issues in Ohio, so the national news people are logically saying that it's a disaster for President Joe Biden. Which ... what? I'm not sure of the logic. I think the idea is that good performance for Democrats in the shadow of a bunch of polls that say nobody likes Joe Biden means that people like Democratic policies but don't like the President. My own take is that of all places, Kentucky has absolutely no bearing on national politics, and that the connection between polls in general and the nature of reality has been thoroughly severed. A poll a year out from a Presidential election when we haven't even selected Donald Trump's jurors is irrelevant. Kentuckians just likes Andy Beshear. That's all that means.
Independence
You might recall that Delaware mall I posted a couple of weeks ago that's done up to look like Philadelphia's Independence Hall. The bank seen above in Owensboro, KY, has the same design inspiration. That's Independence Bank, an ... um, independent bank based in Western Kentucky. They built this Independence Hall-inspired structure in Owensboro sometime around the year 2000, and it's become something of a local landmark. Personally, I wish they'd have put it downtown. It's a fairly accurate recreation of Independence Hall, though the bank's president told me at the time that the actual Independence Hall wasn't big enough, so they added an extra floor to the replica.
Speaking of Owensboro: There's news in Kentucky politics! Kentucky's governor race has concluded, and in a move I see as a surprise, my old Kentucky homeland has re-elected Democratic Governor Andy Beshear to a second term! I never would have expected this during the Covid pandemic, as Andy's been a pretty good governor in trying times, and Kentucky usually punishes its politicians for that sort of thing. But part of how Beshear came to office in the first place was the strength of his last name -- his father was an extremely popular two-term governor toward the start of the century -- and Andy himself is a very charismatic guy who's done a good job, even if he has made Kentucky's very large MAGA crowd mad. He only won by about 5,000 votes in 2019, but he upped that to 67,000 votes this time. I'm mentioning this on an Owensboro picture because he actually carried Daviess County. Democrats rarely carry Daviess County.
Kentucky's gubernatorial election is a bit off-pattern with most other places, in that it happens in an off-year before the Presidential race, and it's one of the only big, state-wide races in the country. Mississippi also elects its governor that year, and a few big-city mayors come up, but that's it. That tends to make national news outlets who don't know any better try to use Kentucky as a bellwether for what's going to happen the following year with the Presidency. (I talked a little about that tendency in this post in 2019.) The thread this time is that Democrats took the Kentucky governor's race and a bunch of local level races and some state legislative races in Virginia, and they won a couple of big referendums on culture issues in Ohio, so the national news people are logically saying that it's a disaster for President Joe Biden. Which ... what? I'm not sure of the logic. I think the idea is that good performance for Democrats in the shadow of a bunch of polls that say nobody likes Joe Biden means that people like Democratic policies but don't like the President. My own take is that of all places, Kentucky has absolutely no bearing on national politics, and that the connection between polls in general and the nature of reality has been thoroughly severed. A poll a year out from a Presidential election when we haven't even selected Donald Trump's jurors is irrelevant. Kentuckians just likes Andy Beshear. That's all that means.