Here We Go Again

It’s about time we start sorting out the crowds of narcissists who would like to be president of the United States.

 

As of this writing, the Republicans have twenty wanna-bes, and the Democrats have three-and-a-half.

 

Since I don’t have enough space or time here to delve into the Republican line-up, we’ll scrutinize the Dems, beginning with a guy named Lincoln Chafee, the half.

 

Governor Chafee’s claim to fame is that he is the former governor of Rhode Island, and the only person east of the Rockies that knows the metric system.  He feels that America should join the company of the rest of the world in using this “universal” system.

 

Back in the early 1970’s, I quickly became tired of paying premium prices to get my oil changed, engine tuned-up, brakes replaced, light bulbs serviced.  The result was graduating from night school where I took an auto mechanics course.

 

To perform these operations at home, I needed to purchase tools.  I bought good stuff that would last – and they have until this day – and bought them for my Mustang.

 

Fast-forward several years and I sold that beast for a Plymouth.  The punk that resulted was some of the parts were installed with metric nuts and bolts.  My tools no longer worked because they didn’t fit.

 

Plan A quickly became Plan B.  My effort to save precious dollars was masterfully derailed by having to spend those mechanic bucks on tools, namely wrenches.

 

It seems that all those years living under the tutelage of my machinist father who painfully taught me fractions, then converting those numbers into decimals, was all for naught.

 

You see, metric does not use ¼, ½, or ¾ inch sizes; metric uses whole number in millimeters such as 7, 8, 11, and 15.

 

That would be useable if I knew how big a millimeter was.  I know how big ½ inch is.

 

Some kid tried to explain the metric system to me by telling me there are ten millimeters in a centimeter, ten centimeters in a decimeter, so-on and so-forth until we got to kilometers, at which point my hair was on fire.

 

“But how do I know which wrench to use on the nut?” astutely I asked.

 

“Keep trying them until you find one that fits,” that teenage clown said.

 

Plymouth, GM, Ford, and all the rest of the metric pioneers from Detroit relented after a few years and finally gave up on forcing the metric system down our throats.  But, I digress.

 

Governor Chafee’s platform is not reforming the tax code, removing American troops from Obama’s Afghanistan War, or single-handedly breaking Vladimir Putin’s third vertebrae.  No, his presidential platform is the resurrection of the metric system to completely befuddle the balance of Americans who have yet to buy new tools.

 

All this boils down to a simple equation.  There are two types of countries in this world: Those who use the metric system and those who have landed on the Moon.