Anchorage Daily News

It's Friday, TG. The big news today is the arrival of the Troopergate report from the legislative investigation, so stay tuned for coverage of that. But you might also be wondering: How's the Permanent Fund doing? Good question, see below. Sit down first.

We'll have Palin updates, including a link to a depthy profile examining Sarah Palin's earliest political years and her revealing doodle on the back of an old Wasilla budget report. There's also a flap over "sexist" photos of the vice presidential candidate's legs, if you can believe it. Onward.

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Permanent Fund tumbles. Dermot Cole at the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner points out that the vice presidential candidate's characterization of Alaska's "$40 billion investment account" is woefully out of date.

Since the most recent monthly performance report in August, the fund has lost more than $5.5 billion.

Mike Burns, executive director of the permanent fund corporation, described the experience this week as a "very challenging time," which is putting it mildly.

The loss of billions on paper is not pleasant, but it has not triggered a political uproar in Alaska.

I think this is mainly due to an understanding that has developed among Alaskans who have witnessed staggering declines in their own retirement accounts and still don't know what to make of the economic chaos afflicting the nation.

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The set up stories for Troopergate Friday. As reporters and observers gather this morning at the legislative office building in Downtown Anchorage awaiting the release of the legislative investigation in the firing of former Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan, The New York Times offered a lengthy backgrounder, but most of it is not new.

To Mr. Monegan and several top aides, the state fair episode was yet another example of a fixation that the governor and her husband, Todd, had with Trooper Wooten and the most granular details of his life.

"I thought to myself, ‘Man, do they have a heavy-duty network and focus on this guy,' " Mr. Monegan said. "You'd call that an obsession."

The Weekly Standard had its pre-report rebuttal ready, referring to the Times article as a "hit piece" on Palin.

More details about this specific matter may emerge today, as the Alaska Legislature releases its report on the Monegan firing, but it looks like the Times, at least, has produced little more than a work of journalistic malpractice.

Alaska Dispatch has Monegan's reaction to First Dude Todd Palin's 25-page statement turned over to investigators Wednesday. The Associated Press also advances. Here's a quote from Lyda Green about the investigation.

Palin's critics say that shows she used her office to settle family affairs.

''When you're the governor, you leave your household hat at home and you become governor,'' said state Senate President Lyda Green, a Republican who has frequently clashed with Palin.

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Palin's anti-elite attitudes surfaced in earliest political years. The New Republic has a profile slugged "Barracuda: The resentments of Sarah Palin." The story attempts to show the roots of the vice presidential candidate's current anti-elite attitudes now in full display as she appeals to Joe Six-Pack across America. But first, about that nickname:

When I asked Elwyn Fischer, another classmate, how Palin got the nickname "Barracuda," he thought it had to do with "that little grin thing she does." "She sets her teeth, it looks like she's eating jerky," Fischer said. "Flashing some fang, you know." Teeguarden allowed that "as a young player -- freshman, sophomore -- she was a bit foul-prone. ... She wasn't about to back down. I'm guessing it was connected to those kinds of things."

You'll recognize many of the Alaska names - John Stein, Nick Carney, Laura Chase. The story opens with an anecdote about Nick Carney and a fight he and Palin had on the Wasilla City Council.

When it came to garbage removal, what Palin seemed to have chafed against was less the substance of Carney's position than what she felt was his elitist, Ivy League bearing. And over the next few years, she found ways to get him back.

These days, Palin is engaged in this same fight against elites, though on a considerably larger stage. "I'm not one of those who maybe came from a background of, you know, kids who perhaps graduate college and their parents give them a passport and give them a backpack and say go off and travel the world," she recently told Katie Couric. "No, I've worked all my life."

Palin, by contrast, may be the first conservative politician since Nixon to experience resentment so authentically. For her, it's not so much a political tool as a motivating principle. A trip through Palin's past reveals that almost every step of her career can be understood as a reaction to elitist condescension, much of it in her own mind.

There's also an interesting doodle by council member Sarah Palin as she contemplates her run for Wasilla mayor. She uses the same themes we are hearing today on the campaign trail. TNR talks about the doodle, and ABC News examines the similarities of her old and new campaign themes.

Planning out her campaign promises, Palin writes, "no automatic pay increase for the mayor's position" and also "City Hall says it sees the need for an increase in sales and property tax to pay for some local politicians' wish list. There is no need to raise taxes, Wasilla is collecting two million dollars a year than what we had projected when we sold the sales tax proposal to you four years ago."

Both of these are forms of claims she has since made on the vice presidential stump -- that she took a pay cut as mayor, and that she fought taxes.

The reality of both is more complicated.

Conservative columnist David Brooks comments on the class war launched by Palin in an opinion piece for The New York Times.

Palin is smart, politically skilled, courageous and likable. Her convention and debate performances were impressive. But no American politician plays the class-warfare card as constantly as Palin. Nobody so relentlessly divides the world between the "normal Joe Six-Pack American" and the coastal elite.

She is another step in the Republican change of personality. Once conservatives admired Churchill and Lincoln above all - men from wildly different backgrounds who prepared for leadership through constant reading, historical understanding and sophisticated thinking. Now those attributes bow down before the common touch.

And so, politically, the GOP is squeezed at both ends. The party is losing the working class by sins of omission because it has not developed policies to address economic anxiety. It has lost the educated class by sins of commission by telling members of that class to go away.

> Meet Sarah Palin's radical right wing pals (Salon.com

This link includes a video of former Alaska Independence Party chairman Mark Chryson.

Though Chryson belongs to a fringe political party, one that advocates the secession of Alaska from the Union, and that organizes with other like-minded secessionist movements from Canada to the Deep South, he is not without peculiar influence in state politics, especially the rise of Sarah Palin. An obscure figure outside of Alaska, Chryson has been a political fixture in the hometown of the Republican vice-presidential nominee for over a decade. During the 1990s, when Chryson directed the AIP, he and another radical right-winger, Steve Stoll, played a quiet but pivotal role in electing Palin as mayor of Wasilla and shaping her political agenda afterward. Both Stoll and Chryson not only contributed to Palin's campaign financially, they played major behind-the-scenes roles in the Palin camp before, during and after her victory.

Palin backed Chryson as he successfully advanced a host of anti-tax, pro-gun initiatives, including one that altered the state Constitution's language to better facilitate the formation of anti-government militias. She joined in their vendetta against several local officials they disliked, and listened to their advice about hiring. She attempted to name Stoll, a John Birch Society activist known in the Mat-Su Valley as "Black Helicopter Steve," to an empty Wasilla City Council seat. "Every time I showed up her door was open," said Chryson. "And that policy continued when she became governor."

***

Readers debate the sexist qualities of a photo of the vice president's legs. Fox News has the Reuters photo and story.

As sexism charges against media coverage of Sarah Palin have intensified in recent weeks, one particular news photograph has roused widespread fury among readers who say it demeans the Alaska governor as nothing more than a sex object.

The photo -- taken Wednesday by the Reuters wire service -- shows the Republican vice presidential candidate addressing supporters at a rally in Bethlehem, Pa.

But the only glimpse of Palin in the photo is a blurred close-up of her legs -- with the face of a young, male audience member set between them as he looks upward at the stage.

***

Other Palin stories today:

> Many say press has been too tough on Palin (Pew Research)

While opinions about Palin coverage are highly partisan, many independents share the view that the press has been too tough on the Alaska governor. Among independents, 41% say the press has been too hard on Palin, 20% say the press has been too easy and 36% say the press has been fair.

> PR consultant helped Palin grab spotlight (Washington Post)

Meetings on the pipeline became regular features on her calendar, and the Department of Natural Resources wanted to heighten national attention on it, said Kurt Gibson, a member of Palin's oil and gas team. Despite the project's "unprecedented" nature, state officials were not attracting the interest of national media, he said.

"We are a small state far removed from major media markets. We needed someone with expertise. The objective was to raise national awareness of the project," Gibson said. "It benefits not just the state of Alaska but Americans in general. We want the public to understand this."

So they hired a PR consultant who began sending media pitches like "Big Oil Under Seige" and "Alaska's Love-Hate Relationship with Big Oil." And national newspaper editors eventually began to respond.

Some lawmakers complained about the governor's preoccupation with media coverage, blaming it in part for her absence at the Capitol.

There also was some resentment that Palin presented herself as the driving force behind the pipeline. "This didn't happen because of one person," said state Rep. Beth Kerttula, a Democrat and House minority leader. "We saw changes because many, many people wanted them and worked for them."

Who knew this would lead to a seat on the Republican ticket?

> Palin hits the rink, but look out (Christan Science Monitor)

This CSM blogger warns that hockey rinks may not be the safest place for a political candidate of any stripe.

On Saturday night, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin will walk out to center ice at the Wachovia Center in Philadelphia and drop a puck. It's a simple act, really. She probably won't do much more than wave to the crowd.

Still, it's ripe with public-relations peril. Sports fans don't like it when elected officials inject politics into something as "pure" as sport. And Philly fans are known for being cranky - no need to go into the particulars from "Santa-gate" to the Tie Domi incident. You may consider yourself, say, America's No. 1 hockey mom, but there are some places even a pit bull might want to avoid with or without lipstick.

> Tina Fey Factor is real; Palin going on SNL (SF Gate)

Looks like Palin will appear on the Oct. 18 episode of SNL.

No, no, not live. Heaven forbid she'd have to answer a question. Instead, she'll be spoofing one of Fey's American Express commercials. It's below -- so you can see what it's like. If you prefer not to be shilled, skip it. It's a smart move by the McCainiacs. Her numbers will spike after this.

> VIDEO: Oh, its Canada for me (You Tube music)

Sample lyric:

Oh, if you become VP,

It's Canada for me...

> VIDEO: Her stupidity flows....(You Tube music)

It starts at her toes and goes to her nose

Her stupidity flows ...

Other stories of interest to Alaskans:

> Palin refused to sign Coming Out Day proclamation (Bent Alaska)

Gay Alaskans petitioned Gov. Sarah Palin to sign a proclamation for National Coming Out Day on Oct. 11, but yesterday her office rejected the chance to support us.

> Seward has too many uninsured (Seward Phoenix Log)

According to the Providence Seward Medical and Care Center's 2008 Seward Area Community Needs Assessment, 21 percent of adult survey respondents said they had no health insurance coverage.

And 16 percent indicated that their children didn't either.

This, said Monica Anderson of mission services at Providence Health Service Alaska, is too high.

> NANA introduces business partnership with school district (Arctic Sounder)

NANA Colt, an engineering firm and subsidiary of NANA, is the first business to head start the program. NANA's focus, aside from teaching students all of the above, will also be on the field of engineering. "It will sort of be like a day in the life of an engineer," said Kristina Patrick, shareholder manager for NANA.

> High heating costs makes wood more attractive (Bristol Bay Times)

The current price for the most commonly burned heating fuel is $6.14 a gallon. Representatives from local fuel distributors Bristol Alliance and Delta Western don't have predictions on what the price of fuel will be during winter, but even at today's price, residents will easily be facing heating costs of thousands of dollars.

Dillingham resident Russell Nelson estimates he paid $1,200 a month in heating fuel last winter. He now has a wood boiler that, with all costs taken into account, he estimates he paid $9,000 for.

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