Hellzapoppin'

I love rock n' roll
So put another dime in the jukebox, baby
I love rock n' roll
So come an' take your time an' dance with me

Do you love rock n' roll?

More than one could have ever imagined, this is the week it all came together, or rather, it's the week the whole nasty, useless, thievin' Republican house of cards collapsed.

There's so much perfect storm slammin' their way, it'll be months before everyone realizes all that's happened since Monday.

Let's start with the collapse of Iraq. Believe me, I don't celebrate it, and I am in horror and empathy for the poor citizens who haven't been able to flee the nightmare we have wrought there, our soldiers there as well. But since I believe El Presidente and his cabal of cronies were 100% wrong to invade in the first place and lied their guts out to the U.S. and world public in taking shameless advantage of the 9/11 tragedy for their long-held greedy and sociopathic plans, it feels like a terrible, Biblical justice that somehow needs to come home to roost on those directly responsible.

Let's start with Cut & Run W. Bush. Earlier this week, the military he commands actually had to back out of Sadr City, lifting its checkpoints unexpectedly. As Mark Kleiman understands, here comes the fat lady to sing to El Presidente:

It's over.

The Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld strategy for Iraq is now obviously a dead letter.

In a showdown between the U.S. Army and the Mahdi Army of Moqtada al-Sadr, the Prime Minister of Iraq sided with Moqtada, and we are obeying his orders and backing down. PM al-Maliki thinks the presence of U.S. forces in Iraqi cities is fueling violence, and he'd like to see them withdrawn to bases in the countryside.

Much of this revolves around a kidnapped U.S. soldier that we are no longer officially looking for. That's right, Support Our Troops, hollow man. Andrew Sullivan has hit this one perfectly:

We now have his name confirmed: Ahmed Qusai al-Taayie. On the orders of Moqtada al-Sadr, U.S. forces withdrew from the neighborhood where al-Taayie was taken. We are now told there is "political activity" on the soldier's behalf. Pray for him.

But know this as well: under this commander-in-chief, the U.S. military has both practiced torture and abandoned a missing soldier in action. The commander-in-chief has ultimate responsibility for both decisions. he is directly responsible for betraying the honor of the armed services he is duty-bound to lead. So is Rumsfeld. So is Cheney.

Imagine if a Democratic President hit these milestones in an occupation -- screaming headlines, right? The news media has yet to pick up on either story, and the right-wingers are pretending it never happened. Close your eyes, Sean! Plug your ears, Rush! It will all go away with another hour on John Kerry's predictably botched attempt at humor!

(One positive to the media-inflated Kerry brou-ha-ha -- it has retired him from the campaign trail this week, in time for the folks actually running to make their closing arguments themselves.)

Oh, and Baghdad is under siege. I mean, it's reading like all-out civil war. And even the GOP-entwined mega-defense contractor Bechtel is, after hitting 52 murdered employees (hey, deck of cards metaphor again), cutting and running from Iraq.

But there's more -- and we're not even stateside yet.

The New York Times is reporting on Friday morning's front page that the BushCheneyCo Criministration, in their pathological attempt to justify their scam job about Saddam Hussein possessing weapons of mass destruction, has given Iran and anyone else in the world who wanted it, personally approved by Bush, the secret to making an atomic bomb:

Last March, the federal government set up a Web site to make public a vast archive of Iraqi documents captured during the war. The Bush administration did so under pressure from Congressional Republicans who said they hoped to “leverage the Internet” to find new evidence of the prewar dangers posed by Saddam Hussein.

But in recent weeks, the site has posted some documents that weapons experts say are a danger themselves: detailed accounts of Iraq’s secret nuclear research before the 1991 Persian Gulf war. The documents, the experts say, constitute a basic guide to building an atom bomb.

Last night, the government shut down the Web site after The New York Times asked about complaints from weapons experts and arms-control officials.

Phew, they shut it down. That's only, lemme see...eight months of nuclear bomb-making information availability.

Okay, so the honesty, judgment and competence arguments are all erased. What can they still run on?

How about their traditional favorite: "character."

There's Rep. Don Sherwood (R-PA) who not only tried to strangle his mistress but, it was revealed Thursday, "agreed to pay her about $500,000 in a settlement last year that contained a powerful incentive for her to keep quiet until after Election Day."

Hey, Don, strangle me! Baby needs dental work!

The settlement, reached in November 2005, called for Cynthia Ore to be paid in installments, according to a person who spoke on condition of anonymity because the deal is confidential. She has received less than half the money so far, and will not get the rest until after the Nov. 7 election, the person said Thursday.

Let's not blow it for Cynthia, valued reader, so please, c'mon, keep it to yourself.

Then there's gay-bashing Rev. Ted Haggard.

Uh-oh:

The leader of the 30 million-member National Association of Evangelicals, a vocal opponent of same-sex marriage, resigned Thursday after being accused of paying for sex with a man in monthly trysts over the past three years.

Y'know, that reminds me of disgraced ex-Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL) about whom, it came out Thursday, the GOP leadership tried to cover up even before ABC news broke the story:

Two senior aides to National Republican Campaign Committee Chairman Tom Reynolds participated in "damage control" conference calls concerning correspondence between Congressman Mark Foley and a former congressional page -- two days before the scandal became public, and earlier than previously reported.

Not good for the NRCC Chairman, Rep. Tom Reynolds (R-NY), who's fighting for his political life in Buffalo, at the center of the cover-up.

Just a few isolated incidents, right? This can't be a damning indictment of the entire Republican power structure...can it?

Try this trick.

Just one breath -- no cheating!

It's for $100 !!!

All that's left, then, is Loyalty.

Isn't the Conservative Movement, at least as defined by El Presidente, Darth Cheney, Rove, Mehlman and Richard Nixon essentially an authoritarian movement, quasi-religious idolation of Bush, reveling in a self-serving fantasy of his Kingly Wisdom?

No cut n' run. Not by any truely stalwart, lib Dem-hating conservative.

After all, what could be worse than a Pelosi-fied Congress?

Whoop.

Whoop.

Whoop, there it is.