And as long as there are Palin threads, we may as well update the available information. “Half-Baked in Alaska: Palin’s 11th Hour ‘Troopergate’ Exoneration Was a Lie”: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/geoffrey-dunn/half-baked-in-alaska-pali_b_…

Murphy Brown and Boston Legal….two of the best shows ever. I don’t find anything even a tad attractive about an ignorant regressive…Larry Beinhart [author of ‘Wag the Dog’ etc] said it best: “Sarah, I love you for having revealed unto the media the snarling heart of the beast that is the base (and the soul) of the Republican Party. Yes, you have the lipstick and the heels, not to mention the calves and bosoms, that send Republican men into swoons, but you have more; the pit-bull snarl that rouses your supporters to cry out, “Traitor!” against Obama, and “Kill him!” “George Bush kept those folks in their kennels, ran as a “compassionate conservative,” and always masked his most heinous plans in double speak. Bush the Elder, Ronald Reagan, and even Richard Nixon never explicitly ran on hate and fear of “the other.” They used words that were coded enough that it was possible to pretend that they were true. “But now the beast is loose. “The Republican Party likes to remember Abraham Lincoln. And so they should. It’s a nice memory and brings credit to them. As does the accidental ascension of Teddy Roosevelt, environmentalist and basher of corporations. Back in the 1950s and ’60s, their party included such figures as Dwight Eisenhower — whose reputation grows ever better in retrospect — Nelson Rockefeller, who built New York’s state university system, and New York City mayor John Lindsey. “But there is another strand that runs through their history. “Back in the 1840s, there was a group called the Know Nothings. They were against immigrants and for real Americans. (“Real American” did not then, as it does not now, refer to Indians, it refers to descendants of English immigrants.) The movement was based on fear. Irish and German Catholics were going to take over. They would take orders from the Pope-in-Rome (one word). Their values were not “our values.” They drank. Their nunneries were virtual brothels and when the nuns had babies they practiced infanticide. “The Know Nothings started with secret societies like the Order of the Star Spangled Banner, associated with William Poole, better known as Bill the Butcher, depicted by Daniel Day Lewis in Gangs of New York. Their public political face was the American Republican Party, which became the Native American Party, and finally the American Party. “Their platform was: - Severe limits on immigration, especially from Catholic countries. - Restricting political office to “native-born” Americans. - Mandating a wait of 21 years before an immigrant could gain citizenship. - Restricting public school teaching to Protestants. - Mandating daily Bible readings in public schools (from the Protestant version of the Bible). - Restricting the sale of liquor. “For a brief time, the American Party was wildly popular. In 1854, party membership swelled from 50,000 to over a million in a matter of months. It elected mayors in Philadelphia, Boston, Washington, DC, San Francisco, and Chicago, and won the state legislature and governorship of Massachusetts. “But there were other things going on: the Mexican War, slavery, secession, and the Civil War. The movement didn’t last long and was soon absorbed by the Republican Party. “…The Great Depression demonstrated that the principles of the Republican Party were bankrupt. Like most of the country. The Democrats became the progressive party, representing social justice and programs that would protect capitalism from its own worst tendencies, moving toward a vision of a perfectable world. The Republicans became — in a very literal sense — a reactionary party, reacting against whatever the Democrats were doing, engaged in a 60-year-long war against the New Deal. ‘Lyndon Johnson is the pivotal figure, both heroic and deeply tragic. The Democratic Party’s dirty public secret was that its political hegemony rested on the Solid South, still refusing to vote Republican out of hatred of Lincoln. Johnson knew that if he pushed through the Civil Rights Act his party would lose the South for a generation. Or more. His heroism is that he did anyway. No, he did not end the race issue, but he broke the back of segregation. “The Republicans saw their opportunity. They pursued the Southern Strategy, wooing resentful whites with great success. “But two things happened. “Racism became less and less tenable. The generation that cherished it has grown old. That pillar of the Republican Party is crumbling. “And then along came Bush-Cheney. Like Herbert Hoover, in the process of leading the country to bankruptcy they demonstrated that the Republican Party’s ideas were also bankrupt. They made government bigger, not smaller — and more intrusive, too. They didn’t oppose special interests, they were the special interests. They didn’t oppose lobbyists, they forced lobbyists to join their party at fiscal gunpoint. They were militaristic on parade, but could not run a war. They could not protect the country, nor punish the people who actually attacked us. Their policies demonstrated that free markets are a fiction, and real markets need more supervision than a grade-school playground. “Along came John McCain. He looked out, from sea to shining sea, from the mountains, to the prairies, in search of voters who would vote for him. All he could find were the new Know Nothings. People who, frightened of the way things are changing, want to change back to that white, Protestant place it was, oh, sometime back before 1840. American Firsters. Anti-immigrant. Anti-foreigner. Anti-elite. Anti-intelligence. “Not quite capable of running as a true Know Nothing himself, he chose someone who could: Sarah Palin. She does it well, and in so doing, shows us, clearly and simply, who they really are.” Amen to that. She is the worst America has to offer in a package that appeals to other Know Nothings.

This is what I would have said to Sarah Palin if given the chance. I think it sounds like Murphy: I have been carrying around this fear that wakes me up at night and leaves me feeling like I don’t have the right to feel happy about the future.That none of us do. And it is because of what you have been spewing about. About Senator Obama and who he is and who he knows. First of all, I think slander of any kind can be dangerous especially if the wrong people wrap their warped minds around it and proclaim it to be their truth. Then we are in for some major trouble. And in my heart of hearts, I don’t think you would want this on your conscience. I am disagree with almost everything you say and I can fight to keep your thoughts from becoming a reality, but I can’t be responsible for somebody else’s behavior because of what you are saying and what this campaign has been doing. But , you and the campaign of McCain will be held responsible. I strongly feel that all of this talk about Bill Ayres and Senator Obama has got to stop and stop now before you cause some unthinkable tragedy to happen. People have got to stop saying the name “Hussein” as if towers will fall and people will die. It is a name. Nothing more. Nothing less. It is not evil. Words can make people overthrow rational thought and do things they might not have considered if this type of talk does not stop now. You have got to stop pouring gasoline on the fire that is burning in the deranged hearts of some of the people in this country. Please stop it now. I do not want to hear that some good man who was meant to bring a new future and sense of hope to a lot of Americans will not be around to see the dream realized. I don’t want to read of his widow’s pain and taste the salt from his daughter’s tears. Been there. Done that. I was a child when JFK was shot down and a your girl when the two fine and strong voices of hope were tragically silenced within months of each other in 1968. I can’t have that happen in my lifetime again. There are too many of us out there who bear the wounds of a few who believed an untruth and took deadly action. They silenced our hope, they crushed our peace and they had help. Words pushed them off the deep end. Oh, yes, they had help. You don’t have to be living in a trailer to feel you can bring down a good man. There were parties held in mansions after Caroline Kennedy lost her father too soon. Hate can wear overalls and sport a few less teeth just as much as it can walk around in a suit that costs more then some people make in a year. I never thought I would be reduced to begging, but it means this much to me and to all the people who know that it only takes one person to turn the world up side down. Please, MS. Palin stop all this talk about Senator Obama making nice with a national terrorist. Don’t give a sick and delusional mind permission to end yet another dream. You would not be able to forgive yourself and neither would I.