In 1998, voters in a focus group were asked to close their eyes and imagine what a governor should look like. “They automatically pictured a man,” says Barbara Lee, whose foundation promoting women’s political advancement sponsored the survey. “The kind you see in those portraits hanging in statehouse hallways.” They most certainly didn’t visualize Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, a former beauty-pageant winner, avid hunter, snowmobiler and mother of four who was elected to her state’s highest office last November.

In Alaska, Palin is challenging the dominant, sometimes corrupting, role of oil companies in the state’s political culture. “The public has put a lot of faith in us,” says Palin during a meeting with lawmakers in her downtown Anchorage office, where—as if to drive the point home—the giant letters on the side of the ConocoPhillips skyscraper fill an entire wall of windows. “They’re saying, ‘Here’s your shot, clean it up’.” For Palin, that has meant tackling the cozy relationship between the state’s political elite and the energy industry that provides 85 percent of Alaska’s tax revenues—and distancing herself from fellow Republicans, including the state’s senior U.S. senator, Ted Stevens, whose home was recently searched by FBI agents looking for evidence in an ongoing corruption investigation. (Stevens has denied any wrongdoing.) But even as she tackles Big Oil’s power, Palin has transformed her own family’s connections to the industry into a political advantage. Her husband, Todd, is a longtime employee of BP, but, as Palin points out, the “First Dude” is a blue-collar “sloper,” a fieldworker on the North Slope, a cherished occupation in the state. “He’s not in London making the decisions whether to build a gas line.”

In an interview with NEWSWEEK, Palin said it’s time for Alaska to “grow up” and end its reliance on pork-barrel spending. Shortly after taking office, Palin canceled funding for the “Bridge to Nowhere,” a $330 million project that Stevens helped champion in Congress. The bridge, which would have linked the town of Ketchikan to an island airport, had come to symbolize Alaska’s dependence on federal handouts. Rather than relying on such largesse, says Palin, she wants to prove Alaska can pay its own way, developing its huge energy wealth in ways that are “politically and environmentally clean.”

Although she has been in office less than a year, Palin, too, earns high marks from lawmakers on the other side of the aisle. During a debate earlier this year over a natural-gas bill, State Senate Minority Leader Beth Kerttula was astounded when she and another Democrat went to see the new governor to lay out their objections. “Not only did we get right in to see her,” says Kerttula, “but she asked us back twice—we saw her three times in 10 hours, until we came up with a solution.” Next week in Juneau, Alaska lawmakers will meet to overhaul the state’s system for taxing oil companies—a task Palin says was tainted last year by an oil-industry lobbyist who pleaded guilty to bribing lawmakers. Kerttula doesn’t expect to agree with the freshman governor on every step of the complex undertaking. But the minority leader looks forward to exploiting one backroom advantage she’s long waited for. “I finally get to go to the restroom and talk business with the governor,” she says. “The guys have been doing this for centuries.” And who says that’s not progress?

There are 24 of them here, the men who went through hell with John McCain in Vietnamese prison camps four decades ago.

A few are politicking and organizing, but most are here simply to support the man they say represents a choice for America between honor and image.

“There is a waning sense of honor and duty … and that is troubling. And this election may be all about that very thing,” said Orson Swindle, who was a cellmate with Mr. McCain for two years in the infamous “Hanoi Hilton” prison camp.

New Orleans is still far from being able to withstand a 100-year storm — in other words, a storm that has a 1% chance of happening next year, a 10% chance in any given decade, and a 30% chance during the duration of a standard mortgage. An individual might accept these odds, but not a rational insurance company for any price most property owners would be willing to pay. Thus the city couldn’t have found a better time to rehearse its vulnerability — in the heat of a presidential campaign. For if the present New Orleans is to remain viable, it will be because federal money makes it so.

Just add it to the list. Final liability for more and more of life’s risks is being assumed by the federal government, i.e., taxpayers. Investment banks and hedge funds now aspire to be “too big to fail.” Washington has completed its monopolization of the mortgage business and the student loan business. Car companies in a financial bind? Congress is ready to become their lender of last resort too.

New Orleans is just one city. Miami, Houston and Long Island are all a typhoon away from losses greater than Katrina’s $140 billion. One-third of Katrina’s damages were covered by private insurance. In the event of a Hayward Fault earthquake of 7 or higher, San Francisco and vicinity would be thwacked with losses upwards of $165 billion — of which only 10% are insured. Guess who will pick up the tab? And why not. Perversely, all such commitments seem a drop in the bucket compared to $85 trillion in unfunded Medicare liability.

Men like women who resemble dear old mom, and women like men who look like dear old dad, a computer analysis now shows.

Scientists in Hungary investigated 52 university students and their parents. They also looked at the significant others of the volunteers and the parents of these significant others, for 312 faces total.

The computer analysis of the volunteers’ faces revealed that women often resembled their male partner’s mother, a finding echoing psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud’s legendary “Oedipus complex.” This proved especially true when it came to aspects of the lower face, such as lips and jaws.

From an Alaskan who is a very serious cynic about all things political, here is my take on Sarah.

I met and spoke with Sarah Palin about two years ago at our downtown park strip. It is a place for walking, carnivals, political outdoor things and such. She was cooking hotdogs at a fund raiser and introducing herself to the public as a Governor hopeful.

She came by and said the usual “Hi, I’m Sarah Palin and I am running for Governor”…and I expected her to keep on to the next person but she asked me who I was and what I did in Alaska and we ended up talking for 15 minutes about me, Air America (she was all agog!) and my career in the Army and AAM. She is a pilot (Super Cub) I’m told, although all she told me about that was that she loved flying.
As I watched her successful run for governor over the next six months, I was really impressed. In fact I already was impressed greatly even before that, after she resigned a good position (Alaska Gas and Oil Regulatory Commission) because a fellow Commission member (Chair of the Alaska Republican Party) misused his office and position. He was using the fax, computers, printing room and all to promote the Republican endeavors while in a state job. That is a huge no-no in any government employment position.

A British couple on trial for allegedly having sex on a Dubai beach asked the judge on Tuesday to be allowed to leave the country.

Michelle Palmer and Vince Acors, speaking in low voices, asked the judge for a “quick ruling” that would let them return to Britain. But judge Hamad Abdul Jawad disregarded the request and scheduled another hearing for Sept. 9 to hear testimony from the policeman who arrested the couple.

Palmer, 36, and Acors, 34, were arrested in the early hours July 5 on a Dubai beach after they had been at a hotel party. They were later charged with having sex outside of marriage, public indecency and public drunkenness.

The elephant’s memory is legendary, but in a large, gray surprise to science, the mighty Asian elephant turns out to have a distinct flair for math as well

Under carefully controlled experimental conditions — essentially comprising a large cage and two buckets of assorted fruit — one elephant at Ueno Zoo in Tokyo managed to get its sums right 87 percent of the time.

A slightly less gifted pachyderm across the country in Kyoto scored a still respectable 69 percent.

Republican John McCain’s surprise announcement Friday of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate - some 16 hours after Democrat Barack Obama’s historic speech accepting his party’s presidential nomination -  has possibly stunted any Obama convention bump, the latest Zogby Interactive flash poll of the race shows.

Data from this poll is available here

The latest nationwide survey, begun Friday afternoon after the McCain announcement of Palin as running mate and completed mid-afternoon today, shows McCain/Palin at 47%, compared to 45% support for Obama/Biden.

In other words, the race is a dead heat.

The recently more Web-savvy John McCain campaign has re-launched its social network – McCainSpace – and it’s actually pretty good. The site is powered by KickApps, and includes standard social networking features like forums, groups, and plenty of user-generated content.

What’s impressive about the new McCainSpace is the viral potential it unleashes for the campaign. For instance, the Groups feature includes a “Hillary Supports for McCain” – which, apparently there are still plenty of according to recent polls. There are also groups for McCain supporters in every state, allowing them to organize and discuss their campaign efforts. Meanwhile, all of the videos users upload are embeddable, meaning they can be spread via blogs and social networks.

In a strong sign that John McCain has not selected Joe Lieberman to be his running mate, Republican members of Congress were told today by McCain’s campaign that the Arizona senator would tap a traditional number two, according to a GOP source.

The source said that would indicate that McCain has tapped either Mitt Romney or Tim Pawlenty.

Former McCain rival and Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney left his beachfront home in San Diego this morning with an overnight
bag. A son says Romney was headed to an unspecified location in California.

ABC News’ Teddy Davis Reports: The Obama campaign signaled a willingness on Thursday to go after Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, R-Minn., for the 2007 Minneapolis bridge collapse while saying that the populist argument it is building against John McCain will continue even if the presumptive Republican nominee taps the son of a truck driver as his running mate. 

Barack Obama’s campaign manager said today that if Republican John McCain selects Michigan native and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney as his running mate, he “will be doubling-down on ‘out of touch.’”

Television crews are currently parked outside Mitt Romney’s Belmont manse wondering if he is John McCain’s pick for VP.

McCain’s decision is known only to his small inner circle of advisers, no more than three or four people, who have refused all public discussion on the matter. Republicans close to the campaign said that the top contenders remained the same three men who have been the source of speculation for weeks: former Governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, Governor Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota and, possibly, Senator Joseph Lieberman, independent of Connecticut.

Speculation is increasingly centered on former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, although Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman remains an option and is in the final mix.

Republican presidential nominee-in-waiting John McCain stayed mum about his pick of a running mate Thursday and one top prospect, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, abruptly canceled numerous public appearances.

According to sources with strong Michigan ties, the Secret Service has conducted a security sweep of the home of Romney’s sister. Romney was raised in Michigan, where his father served as governor.