The argument isn't stupid. It's actually an ad hominem. I wouldn't normally support ad hominem arguments, but in this case it's not just attacking the credibility of the other party. It's attacking the credibility of all the party shills jumping on the "Clinton is evil" bandwagon. It's arguing against certain readers in particular for being OK with it when their side did it but not OK with it now. Myself, I don't even remember this Bush "scandal".
If you thought Bush was bad and you think this is bad, that's fine. If you don't care about either, that's OK too. If you only care about one and not the other, that's hypocritical. Let's not talk hypotheticals or generalizations. Cahuenga wasn't picking sides; s/he was mainly pointing out that it's too late to worry about the other side doing it once it's OK because they already have. Nobody should be but can we stop acting so surprised and outraged that it did? Focus on the future in which Clinton's emails are unprecedentedly available to the public (not just by FOIA or subpoena like normal) and she doesn't do this anymore. I'd like to think that future includes nobody doing it again but no amount of fake outrage is going to make that happen anyway.
And if your outrage is genuine, well power to you but you are in a vanishingly small minority lost in a sea of party shills ready to attack Clinton for anything and everything
Don't call me a party loyalist. I don't really like Clinton. I just find this whole thing ridiculous.
All politicians are hypocrites regardless of this situation. The attackers I'm talking about are the media circus happening over this manufactured scandal. Then all the Twitterati and the rest of social media that has just made media circuses worse as they've grown in presence. I don't expect politicians to do any better than attack their opponents for whatever stupid reason they've got this week. But I would hope that the rest of us would stop acting like the only reason to use a private email account instead of a work email account is to hide something. We all know somebody that ignores the rules (or has tried to and been told to stop).
Clueless sycophants will defend politicians anyways. She's Ms. Clinton after all. Naturally she gets a pass.
You mean the same way that clueless sycophants will attack opposing politicians? She's Hillary Rodham Fucking Clinton after all. Naturally she is a demon woman trying to destroy the American way and cover the world in pantsuits.
...I don't really like her myself, but this is ridiculous.
"the other side does it"
This isn't an argument that it was OK. It's an argument that those attacking her are being hypocrites. There's an awful lot of hypocrisy going around and I am shocked by the number of people who act like they know of absolutely nobody that forwards work email to a private account. It's wrong and loads of people do it anyway, whether they're working in government or elsewhere. The only reason to make such a big deal of it is because she's expected to announce a run for the president and far too many people want to shoot her down for whatever stupid reason they can find.
...I was about to say something about reconciliation and making the first gesture toward peace, but you've discredited yourself fairly well. Anarchy only appeals to a rather small minority of the population, and the minority is even smaller once people start really thinking about what it would be like without a government to maintain roads, staff fire departments, hire teachers...hell screw that, what really whittles down the minority is thinking about how fast the terrorists would take over the country without any - ANY - military left to stop them.
That is, if Canada doesn't annex us first.
What's with all the disrespect for secretaries? Have you never been in an office with one, or do you just assume that an office of a dozen plus people just magically holds itself together? A secretary answers the phones, keeps things organized, keeps the copiers stocked, and above all knows enough about their coworkers' business as to tell the difference between a question that can be simply answered and one that needs the coworker's attention. A doctor's expertise is quite a bit more advanced than fielding the same question coming from dozens of people, and that doctor's time is more valuable being spent on things that actually require a judgment call. And while secretaries won't know why patient X needs X medication (at least not until spending years on the job and learning by osmosis), you can be sure that secretaries know every single prescription made because the doctor will have tasked them with sending them all to the pharmacy.
Secretaries spend their entire workday making everyone else around them more productive. It is not something a monkey could do. It is not something every person could do either. And they know an awful lot more about the work their coworkers do then you think. These people silently keep the world running smoothly. The least you could do is say "thank you" instead of running around like a snarky asshole acting like what they do amounts to nothing.
But then something dawned on him: He could make more money teaching.
What? You lost me there.
Faith is not the same as superstition. Furthermore, faith can be a very good thing if it is well placed. When you have faith in your friends, you make yourself vulnerable but you boost their self-esteem, pushing them to be better. You also let go of some of the burden of constant skepticism. Now, if your friends might take advantage of your faith in them, you'll probably get hurt. But what if you can construct a perfect entity to have faith in? That's what God is.
God is the perfect entity, the embodiment of certain values we wish to make real in our lives. Of course not everyone has the same view of God; mine is almost certainly very different from the God that jihadists believe in. But the thing is that scripture generally does not support holy war or violence of any kind. Something universal to all religions is that their teachings - all of them - are directed inward, not outward. Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, even Joseph Smith all tried to teach people how to live their own lives, not how to make everyone else live theirs. This is reflected in the scriptures they all left behind.
You can ignore all the metaphysical stuff if it makes you feel better. I do. But the faith component is still just as positive and constructive as the God you choose to believe in. Again, if you want to change everyone else's view of God, have faith yourself and lead by example. In the words of Mahatma Gandhi: "Be the change you wish to see in the world."
It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do. -- Jerome Klapka Jerome