Pet peeve: It's "champing", not "chomping".

And I thought it was "two brain cells to rub together."

I have no idea what you two are on about.

I have no idea what you are on.

Yeah, rub/run was a typo. Champing/chomping was a legitimate hole in my knowledge.

[Plants tongue in cheek...]

What...you don't think that sending up billowing clouds of fallout to rain down on Persia and elsewhere from bunker buster nucoolar bombs is a good idea? Huh? They won't take kindly to this and will mind the entrance to the Persian Gulf, sending oil prices well over 150 bucks a barrel? Rediculous!

They'll love being bombed. They will naturally welcome the atomic clouds of death as liberation from their mean Mullahs via the great and powerful Americans, won't they?

Shame on you, you unpatriotic, unamerican, libertine denizen of sin! You're getting the the way of my long-hoped and prayed for plans for Armageddon, aren't you. You're messing with my apocalypse.

Oh well, Armageddon doesn't matter much to me and my kind since I'll be long swept up in the Rapture of Our Lord. Guess you'll be "Left Behind" to roast in the Tribulation.

Champing/chomping was a legitimate hole in my knowledge.

Where do you stand on butt/buck naked, apo?

Here's Mr. Zappa's vote, if that holds any sway with you.

I think "buck naked" is the correct term, but I do see the appeal of "butt naked".

you have it just off slightly. cheney and his clique have never met a war for oil that they didn't like. drives up the cost of oil, the cost of all things oil related and all things militarily expensive. it's how they make money. they are ad men for the oil/military indurtial complex. just giving the people what they want.

"butt naked" and "buck naked" are both correct usages. "butt naked" is less formal.

chris, you _might_ be right, but I see no signs that the current iraq war is led by big rich mercans who want to steal oil.

if that were so, the oil would be flowing profusely from every pore of iraq and at a high price at that by now. it is not. the infrastructure for its extraction remains in complete shambles. all attempts to rebuild it are stymied by corruption and by the rebels.

in a way, IF ONLY this war were simply about stealing from the poor brown people of the earth. if that were true, fewer lives would be lost and at least the wealth would gradually trickle down to them in one way or another. no that is NOT good but in the world there are shades of good and evil and levels of pain and hurt. and right now it is the neocons' ideology that is causing the most hurt, not the oil mens' greed.

it is not about stealing oil, or, rather, i don't think it's quite that simple. it's more accurately about maintaining a giant network of huge permanent bases in that corner of the world, maintaining large "strategic footprint." and it's also about the original pipedreams of the neocons, a bunch of radical revolutionary interventionist republicans (only associated to them by convenience really, having once been "Scoop Jackson Democrats") hell bent on U Chicago Straussian cultist koans like "creative destruction," "pagan ethos," "benevolent hegemony," "end of history," and so on. these neocons, called by Bush Sr. "the crazies in the basement," and by Colin Powell "fucking crazy," seem to think that it's America's destiny to become the Final World Empire to end all Empires, and that the control of the Middle East, lynchpin by lynchpin, is key to their plans.

this is the worst kind of war, dying for lame ideas, not even over resources (or at least directly).

one conspiratorial possibility for you to chew on. the neocons were set up to be the fall guys for the long term plans of the rockefeller oil republicans, who really DO want to steal the oil. ie., if the neocon idealogues fail, the rockefellers can stand at a distance and point the finger in disgust. if the neocons succeed, they can share in the wealth.

Jon, I agree with your analysis of the neocons, but chris from boca is also right about another aspect, which is that the real theft that is occurring is not Iraqi oil, but theft from American taxpayers/citizens, who are paying the war through the nose and will continue to do so for some time, both through gas prices and "defense" costs that are now being financed. Not factored in is our opportunity costs.

The Republicans came in saying that "now the adults are in charge", but what do we have? Kids blowing things up and others playing along because it's a ripoff that's profitable for them.

The third aspect is that the Republicans believe that they can keep better political control (and thus their hand in the till longer) by playing up fear of Islamofascists, Pali crazies, enviro nazis, gays or what-have-you, and of twisting post-911 patriotism into making Dems look unreliable.

Fear sells, and it's being used deliberately to rip us off. The attractiveness of the lather-rinse-repeat cycle that apo mentions, coupled with the fact that our antagonistic foreign policy itself fuels antagonism towards the US, makes this game not only very addictive politically, but very dangerous as well.

Makes me glad we've got responsible mainstream Republicans routinely posting here to help to bridge gaps with spelling and diction.

Tom. Good points, of course.

That fear thing is certainly getting out of control!!

What a bunch of bull. A long time ago I viewed Fox News to get a non-internationalist-social-democrat view of the news, and found it occasionally amusing. The other day I was stuck in a car dealership, waiting for an oil change and tire rotate, and was subjected to the silverbacks hooting and chest pounding on the teevee. And that screaming and yelling. And every single thing they said was hysterically out of proportion and fearmongering while foaming at the mouth for the next war. Their gigantic disproportionality between balls and brains made me laugh out loud a few times, but it was kind of nauseating in the sense that it made the acid reflux bout seem causitive and not correlative...

Anyway, I don't mean to diss or lecture Chris in any way, just trying to rouse up the discussion here.

BTW, I'm not a mainstream republican, although I share a few of the basic tenets of their belief system (limited government, fiscal responsibility) which they don't follow anyway. More accurately, I am an anarchist at heart who would vote libertarian if I cared enough about such lost causes, but has sympathy for many of the Green positions on things, and believe that social ills are not just caused by shiftless and lazy people.

I don't think that the Democrats would do much better for us, but hey, I can be proven wrong. At the very least, a government where different parties control the legislative and executive branches would be a welcome change because the dilectic would be stimulating and healthy, where each would rein in the others' worst tendencies and focus on the national good (if there is indeed such a thing). Kerry in control of the exec (like he was elected to do in 2004 were it not for Diebold machines and Rove) would probably have restored some credibility to the USA abroad, making American products less nasty and untasteworthy to foreigners who hate us because of our government.

Anyway, im rambling and me got work to do, but oh well you are all nice and so i am grateful for not getting hammered too hard.

"Champ" is a legitimate variation of "chomp"; "champ at the bit" is a valid idiom--regional dialect, I'd imagine, though I don't know which region.

kkess.