Words and numbers, Senate race edition

Pederson/Kyl stuff....

...It looks like that even the Phoenix Business Journal is catching on to the Republicans.

"Kyl launched a new television ad with Sen. John McCain defending his Republican cohort..."

Yeah, I know they really meant to use the word "colleague", but "cohort" really is more accurate. :)

...Continuing on the word usage front (btw - in case you couldn't tell, George Carlin was my favorite comic when I was a kid. He's become something of a grump these days though. :) )...Sen. Kyl, in his weekly column in the National Ledger, dropped a Bushism.

"The only way to win this struggle is to win it."

Very insightful. Really.

I will give him credit for one thing though - he does differentiate between the radicals responsible for much of the strife in the Middle East (and elsewhere) that we hear about and the normal Muslims that just want to live their lives in peace.

Many of us, and most Republicans, don't bother with that distinction.

...The AZ Republic ran an editorial today about the number of Pederson ads.

Yes there have been a lot of them, but I've seen as many Kyl spots. Particularly the aforementioned one that has John McCain defending him.

...(Thanks to jobsanger for the headsup on this poll) The latest WSJ/Zogby poll has Pederson trailing by 6.7%, up from the 4.1 % last month, but still within the margin of error. This basically matches the internal poll numbers released by the Pederson campaign.

There are credibility issues with both (Zogby - questionable methodology; Pederson internal poll - questions about the motivation for releasing the info) but with them both in the same ballpark, I'd say that this race really has become much closer than the Republicans *ever* thought it would.

Note: as I was doing research for other parts of this post, I came across a piece from Taegan Goddard's PoliticalWire that says basically the same thing.

In other news....thanks to Desert Beacon for the idea to even look in this direction. I looked up the principals of the ongoing corruption investigation in Alaska in the FEC's database.

I couldn't find any direct contributions, but the officers and executives of VECO Inc., the oilfield services company at the center of the investigation, have given a LOT of money to the Northern Light Political Action Committee, and NLPAC has given over $16, 000 to Kyl over the years.

$5,000 in 2006 alone.

Nothing illegal here that I can find so far, but one would think that in a year that has Duke Cunningham in jail, Tom Delay under indictment and resigning in disgrace, and JD Hayworth running for his political life under a dark cloud of corruption allegations (see: Abramoff, Jack), the Reps would take that old cliche about "the appearance of impropriety..." a little more seriously.

Note2: Taegan Goddard has a similar piece from former Labor Secretary Robert Reich. Guess great minds think alike :)) .

Later!