Commissar

Just like Germany. Thorn in our side that it's been for the past sixty years.

Hey, an Iraq thread.

No. Won't help.

Fantastic. Or at least it would be, if it was a response to my post. Instead, you seem to have decided that because I don't think being happy over killing this asshat makes me just as bad as that particular asshat, that I condone the crap you're actually talking about in that little post of yours.

Yeah. On the other hand, it'd be a bit better if you actually had the faintest clue in hell as to what you were talking about. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Care to elaborate? Not that I'm disagreeing, just like to see your take on this. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Her position is that by taking pleasure in the elimination of a man such as this, we bring ourselves down to the level of those we're fighting. It's absurd to ignore motivation and rationale; she calls us killers for being happy about the fact that we managed to kill those who wished to kill us before they managed to do so. Every legal system in the world, as far as I know, agrees with me in that you cannot lump all takings of life into the same category. I shoot the guy who breaks into my house, kills half my family, and then tries to kill me, and being happy that he's dead puts me on the same level as him? I believe she may want to rethink that particular position, should she ever prove capable of emerging from the haze of patchouli and tie-dye.

Yeah. On the other hand, it'd be a bit better if you actually had the faintest clue in hell as to what you were talking about.

Because that makes you like them. War is a tool, nothing more. When you kill in war, you're just a soldier, a warrior; when you enjoy the killing... any of it.. that just makes you a killer. I'd like to think that they're the only killers in this, but I'm not that naieve. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Good thing you've got it all figured out.

Some are good, some are bad. It's food you can carry in a rucksack. Don't expect foie gras and pate. They get the job done.

Because Henry Gale didn't seem to know all that much about the hatch, for one. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Yeah, well, so what? I would imagine he knows a lot more about the hatch than he let on. The thing that I like about Henry Gale is that he lied until he was given incontrovertible proof that he was, in fact, lying...and then he just started telling a different lie. He's done this under mild torture, several days' worth of confinement, and let's not forget that bolt in his shoulder. Just because he claims he doesn't know anything about the hatch, or that he didn't push the button, doesn't mean that he's telling the truth. In fact, I'm doubting every word he says.

Heya folks, Me and the wife have been getting caught up on the second season thanks to the magic of iTunes - which has probably catalogued my entire system and dutifully sent it off to Apple - though we haven't seen the most recent which was, I presume, yesterday's. Why are we all so convinced that the Others are a mix of Dharma Initiative folks and other castaways, or even entirely separate from the DI? I'm thinking just the opposite; everyone on the island who's not one of the Losties, with the possible exception of the French chick, is a DI employee of some sort or another.

Hmm.

I did. That was the router that appears to have broken. The "new" old router that I just set up doesn't have wireless - which is a massive pain, since that's how I used my laptop at home - but I think I finally figured the damn thing out. Had to play around with some of the router settings, but all three -seem- to be online at the moment. So, I'll roll with it, and thanks for the help, guys.

Just tried that, and I get an error saying, "The static IP address that was just configured is already in use on the network. Please reconfigure a different IP address."

I just noticed something, while mucking around with 'em more... The two 'puters that refuse to hook up have a different IP address listed in ipconfig than the computer that will hook up. I imagine if I could get the two stubborn ones to agree on the IP address with the one that's working, the problem would be solved. Question is, how the hell do I do that?

I know we've got some computer-savvy folk here and there around here, so I thought I'd run this by you guys and see if you can fix me up. My wife was doing something for school on one of our desktops yesterday. We have two, though one is ancient and upstairs and I'm not sure why we even bother to keep it hooked up, and I also hook my laptop up to the network from time to time, usually using wireless. Anyway, she was doing something on the "main" computer computer yesterday, and claims that the lights on the router suddenly started blinking rapidly, and she lost internet connection. She then unplugged the router, and when she plugged it back in, all the lights were dead except for the power light. At that point, she left it alone for me to deal with. I fiddled around with it some when I got home, but couldn't ever get the router to do anything other than display the power light, so eventually I just said screw it, plugged the cable modem directly into the main desktop so she could finish her work, and then later last night found an old router we still had and swapped it in for the apparently borked one. I get all the indicator lights on the "new" router, and the main desktop has no problems, but I can't get the other two computers up on the network, for whatever reason. Both of their Network Connections pages claim that they're connected fine, but trying to bring up a page in Firefox or IE always times out. I've tried the good ol' release-renew thing on both of them, and no dice there. So, any ideas?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060316/ap_on_...taminated_water That's one of my all-time favorites, Taks, old buddy, old pal. One of the company's own says they massively screwed up their contract, but hey...it's just an allegation. I bet that guy was just pissed off over his salary. There's no proof! There's no proof! They haven't been convicted of anything! All these allegations, over several years, have had their day in court and been proved utterly spurious! Except that they haven't, but that's a minor little quibble. As long as a representative from the company steps out and says that they've done nothing wrong, but they've nevertheless fixed all of their problems, I suppose that's repudiation enough. Let me ask you this, my small-government, fiscal discipline, math-and-science and definitely not creationism, support-our-troops conservative friend: what's an acceptable timetable to wait on investigating all of these claims? If there's even an outside chance that they're true, perish the thought, aren't we prolonging our direct involvement in Iraqi affairs, and putting our guys in needless danger? There's likely not a trip over to the happy fun zone in my immediate future, but there's always that possibility. If that were your position, how comfortable would you be with even the possibility of mismanagement?

see? And my response was, what do you consider an impartial source? You still continue to dance around that question. Waxman's not impartial? Fine. Tell me who is. Please. Pentagon? GAO? Who? And, once again, you're acting as if this is the only allegation leveled against Halliburton in the past couple of years. If you're really that out of touch, I could certainly educate you. are you being intentionally obtuse today or what? i mean, c'mon commissar, you're smarter than this. taks <{POST_SNAPBACK}> The system works? Let me ask you something: you dip into your till, you think you're going to get ten other chances to do it again? You think you're going to get a pass if you promise to be a good little boy? You and I both know you won't. I screw up something, I don't get the opportunity to screw it up again. Why don't we apply that standard here? According to you, everything's working as it should, which means you're comfortable with a system wherein a violator is caught, admits to wrongdoing, and isn't even given so much as a slap on the wrist provided they promise not to do it again. I am smarter than that. You, on the other hand, appear not to be.

the article fool. I love it when you start flaming. I'm afraid that impartiality bit works both ways, my friend. Forgive me for not taking Cheney's word on matters having to do with resolution of Halliburton's misconduct. Unless, of course, you believed Clinton during the Lewinski scandal. And hey, you're Mr. Truth and Justice. So I'll ask you the same question I asked Eldar: why do they get a pass?

That's an awful lot of hedging there, Eldar. You know, I can think of one or two political attacks over the past few years that have been dead-on. One or two things involving Clinton spring to mind. You know, I think it's good that we've got two parties that hate each other, and keep an eye on every single move the other guy makes. If we only had Republicans or Democrats, well...who would regulate them, exactly? Do you want me to find you independent sources? Name what you consider independent, and I'll dig up a few for you inside twenty minutes. This is hardly the first time this sort of allegation has been made; why are you acting like this is some sort of out-of-the-blue accusation? Fry them? Fry them how? The report itself says Halliburton claims to have fixed all of its deficiencies. That in and of itself is an admission of guilt; nobody fixes what isn't broken, right? We'll prosecute the guys at Enron when they screw up big, but because Halliburton's operating overseas, where it's only the guys who get paid to get shot at that're getting plinked, we give them as many passes as they need to get things right? Explain the logic in that. The evidence has come. Know how I know? 'Cause the Pentagon's said so, several times. Once again, we're back to you being quite okay with that as long as they promise, hand to God, that they won't do it again. But what's really to stop them? The stiff penalties they faced the last time they did it couldn't possibly be a deterrent, because there weren't any.

Yeah, 'cause I love Waxman. Really. I'm all up on his bandwagon, despite not knowing who the hell he is. You know what? I don't care if it's politically motivated or not. This is serious stuff, the sort of contracting they're doing over there, and it's not just Halliburton that's screwing up and costing you and me money, it's almost all of them. I don't get twenty-three different tries to get things right, where I work, and I assume most people don't, either. If the guy working the register at McDonald's came up short at the end of every night, and you gave him a stern talking-to about it and he claimed the issue was resolved, would you believe him? I don't care if Halliburton has ties to Cheney or Bush; they're doing fine making utter idiots of themselves by their lonesome these days. I care because it's the company we chose - not that won their contract, mind you, but that we simply chose - to do essential work on a post-war Iraq. Why on earth would you think that would be the sort of thing we could be hit-or-miss on? Check the end of the article. Don't care who brings it up. Don't care who disagrees with it. It's the sort of thing that needs to be pounded on by the media until there's actually a goddamn answer one of these days. I can say, based on what I remember from journalism class, that that's exactly how you're supposed to write it. I can find you no less than three hundred other examples of articles that start out in this exact same manner, if you really wish me to, including where the quote is attributed to President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Ken Milnan, director of midwest marketing for Piggly-Wiggly, and any number of others. If you haven't seen this sort of hook before, then I believe you may need to pick up a news journal once in a while. I don't care about the journalism. Know what, Eldar? If this was the first of its kind, you might have some sort of point there. This is a long-running issue that never seems to get resolved, but you're apparently fine with that. If this were a personal situation - if a contractor building your house, for example, was constantly overcharging, constantly screwing things up, constantly having to go back and redo various tasks due to intentionally sloppy work the first time around, how forgiving would you be? I ask because this is something of a personal issue with me. The longer it takes Iraq to get up and running, the longer we have troops in a combat capacity walking around with bullseyes painted on them. But hey, as long as people have yellow ribbon magnets stuck to the trunks of their cars, I guess that's enough, right?

One-sided? We all know what a bastion of liberal tree-hugging Democrats the Pentagon is. C'mon. Procurement officers generally don't chat about government contracts with the media, especially to criticize them; you'd know that as well, and, come to think of it, better than me. I'm really curious who you think is capable of giving an impartial view on this particular matter. KBR representative, maybe?

We did, but we also knew that it'd been brushed off a thousand times over. We also didn't really know the scope. I doubt we do now, either, but it's always amusing to see the, "Oh, Halliburton's not that bad," garbage countered.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060328/ts_nm/..._halliburton_dc

Did you guys know that the word "gullible" isn't in the dictionary?

Yeah, I didn't think taks would go for it. Job well done, Commissar. Pat on the back.