Are politicians human?

  In light of the recent political, shall we say, "faux-pas", I thought I would take a moment to reflect.  Are politicians human?  Are they allowed the mistakes, bad judgement, incorrect use of language, etc., that the rest of us are?  Or, should politicians be held to a higher standard than the rest of us?  It is somewhat of a conundrum for me.  On the one hand, I want the people who represent me and my views to be eloquent, well read, educated, bright, honest individuals.  On the other hand, I also want them to be down to earth, have life experience, have lived at the mean income level and not above it, a graduate of the public school system, hard working, and service oriented.  Somehow in my lifetime, the two never do seem to go hand in hand.(pun definitely intended)  I personally do not think a politician should be allowed to have ever been a lawyer.  Lawyers are well educated and well versed in the law.  However, they are also taught the art of lying.  They are trained to defend people they don't believe in, and most are not in the profession for any other reason than it is very lucrative and high profile.  Neither of which is a bad reason for a career field, but neither of which is as truly service oriented as most lawyers would have you believe.  Very few lawyers, in my experience, get into it for true love of the law or a real desire to help out their fellow man.  We would have a lot more pro-bono law firms who did not take any more than 10-20% of any winnings they earned for their clients if that were true.  But I digress, getting back to my point, If a politician makes a mistake should it cost them their career?  Should they be hung out to dry for grammar and history errors?  Would you be forced out of your job for making an incorrect historical reference?  Would your usage of grammar cost you promotions, or future potential earnings?  Would your childhood misdeeds be held up publicly for the world to judge you by?  I am not saying it is wrong.  I am not saying it is right.  I just wonder how many of us are so without any of these sins that we can cast our stones without hesitation.  How many of us have never padded a resume?  How many remember verbatim every point in history so as to never get a date, time, place, or situation wrong?  How many of us are free from grammatical and or verbal coloquialisms which make us sound stupider than we actually are?  How many of us have never broken even a minor law and gotten away with it?  How many of our families are totally clear of any skeletons/scandals in the closet?  How many never took a single drink under age, or experimented with any kind of drug controlled or otherwise?  How many of us have perfect children?  How many of us eat and love all our vegetables?  How many of us have never eaten or drunk more than our share, or more than our new govt. guidelines say we should?  Who has never taken a sick day off work when you weren't really sick?  Who kept every single promise they ever made?  I just think when you start to look more introspectively, and apply a "How would I do under the same scrutiny?" standard, we may actually give some politicians a break.  Maybe we should be more concerned with where this politician is heading instead of where they have been.  Maybe I want someone representing me who is more like me.  A flawed individual who is transparent, rather than a shiny looking liar.  I don't know, it's just a thought.

Some things just piss me off!

How would anyone agnostic or otherwise know what the Valedictorian was going to say, or pray, in her speech?  Sounds like a set up to me.

Hello

Trying to figure all this out.  Stay with me.