Obama: Breathalyzer, Inhalator for Kids With Asthma, page 2

The fact is that neither of the things he said was correct.

A breathalyser is for measuring the blood alcohol content of drivers and an inhalator doesn't exist.

However, I've been using an inhaler since I was 7 years old. Which, as pointed out by the 2OP, is better known as a "puffer". (I've also had to use rotohalers, spinhalers and nebulisers and have been on a ventilator, which is very different from a "pump").

And Obama's performance on that particular occasion is one of the most worrying things I have ever seen.

"forgive me, I'm tired". Yeah, is that gonna be your excuse when the world hands you Biden's "testing" international crisis?

The fact is that Obama cannot speak without a teleprompter because he has spent his life drafting everything he puts his name to. Lecture transcripts, autobiographies, senate speeches.

This is a law professor who has never practised law and never appeared in court for the prosecution or the defence. He has never built the skills a lawyer needs.

He is not a quick thinker. He has never needed instant recall in his professional life and his performance on the trail has proven that.

His speech about the breathalyser/inhalator was rambling, disjointed, unrehearsed and showed a man who clearly had little familiarity with the information he was supposed to be imparting. He was unprepared and it showed.

Barack Obama is to Martin Luther-King as George W. Bush is to Abraham Lincoln.

But they are as to each other.

As the OP said, if McCain had mumbled incoherently like that the media would have been full of stories quoting his age.

My favourite political cartoon from 4 years ago showed Uncle Sam sitting in his arm-chair, down to his singlet and boxers, watching the debates and asking himself "290 million people and these are the best we can do?"

It is even more true today.

I am not for McCain, but Barack Obama will be a spectacular failure as a president if only for the fact that he will be able to live up to none of the hype and expectations he has spent the last 8 months building around himself.

He will be able to accomplish no change in Washington, he will advance the gun and abortion debates exactly zero centimetres, the economy will do as it wants regardless of his administration, the Iraq war will progress as the GOC Centcomm decides (and its eventual outcome will leave Obama's original and oft-restated position of a deadline for withdrawal looking even more stupid than it ever was) and those religion-loving gun-huggers will never cross the line in the sand and accept that he may have had a point about anything.

Thanks to Karl Rove (and Newt Gingrich immediately before him) US politics has become so polarised that the left and the right will never admit there is some central ground.

Thankyou, Newt, for the whole Ken Starr fiasco that has effectively prevented any "red-stater" from having the personal integrity to admit Bill balanced the budget and did good for America ('though not much for Rwanda, Somalia or Bosnia) and Americans.

The GOP have effectively become a bunch of embittered divorced dads who, after losing custody, enter the "if I can't have the kids, no-one can" zone and begin their plans for family murder-suicide.

The greatest lesson US politics needs is from Primary Colours, which is why it will never be learnt, and it goes like this:

"I'm not against a good idea, just 'cause it isn't my idea."

It seems the GOP is. The GOP is also against the idea of voting for someone just 'cause he's smart.

Well, here's my character assessment: I'm NOT going to vote for a man I'd like to have a beer with. That man does not have my seal of approval to run the nation.

Now, I don't want to have a beer with Obama, but I also can't see the point in debating him, 'cause as former captain of the school debate team, I know I'd win.

And I'm not going to vote for someone I'm smarter than. Or can think faster than. Or can speak better in public than.

I guess it's a good thing I'm not a US citizen...