You know, when you power a political party (Republican) with angry, ignorant white people you may hit exhilarating speeds from time to time, but it’s as wrong as a 440 Dodge Dart and you will end up in the ditch.

Posted by Bubby Hussein, Hillbilly Sheikh on 1 July 02009 @ 10pm

140 KPH is exhilarating.

Posted by Waldo Jaquith on 1 July 02009 @ 10pm

You’re so right, Bubby …and now we get to see the same with the Dems in control. At least they’ll be multicultural; after all, Republicans are just angry, ignorant, white people!

Posted by tomr on 1 July 02009 @ 10pm

The same what Tom? Your tent is populated by people who define their affiliation by their dislike for immigrants, people of color, homosexual people, women who choose, atheists, unionists, scientists, or anyone who believes in the right to a living wage and affordable universal health care. And if you have the good sense to clean house you’ll find out what everyone else knows – they’re dangerous.

Posted by Bubby Hussein, Hillbilly Sheikh on 1 July 02009 @ 11pm

Why do Republicans hate the freedom of Americans to have lower numbers for their weight? :P

Posted by Alison Hymes on 2 July 02009 @ 12am

Better yet, let’s skip the metric stuff and go full-bore British weights and measures. I’m tipping the scales at 10 stone, 13 pounds. I’m writing my congressman.

Posted by Harry Landers on 2 July 02009 @ 8am

CNN.com has the most random, unremarkable collection of op/ed contributors I’ve ever seen on a major news site. Ruben Navarette? Tom Foreman? Julian Zelizer? Who are these people?

Judging from the photo credit, this “John Feehery” fellow even took his own picture. Good for him.

Posted by Mr. Snrub on 2 July 02009 @ 9am

Not going to happen. Democrats don’t understand the metric system any better than Republicans.

Posted by Steve Vaughan on 2 July 02009 @ 1pm

Bubby- I find it amusing that you will view a large percentage of American’s as being so intolerant and angry. You do a good job exemplifying the angry white male. I hope you are a good tent mate!

Posted by tomr on 2 July 02009 @ 1pm

Admit it Tom, you haven’t been amused since sometime in November ‘08. And speaking of tents, have you heard where Governor Mark Sanford has been pitching his Republican tent? And here I thought that the AT ended in Alabama. Well, gotta go Mike Murphy is giving a talk about the Coming Ice Age and I can’t wait to hear him refute the Global Warming hoax!

Posted by Bubby Hussein, Hillbilly Sheikh on 2 July 02009 @ 2pm

How is it possible that anyone can be against adoption of the metric system or see it as having political content? The US is a joke globally for its inability to use a logical system of weights and measures. I think this guy is a Democratic hoax intended to make Republicans look like morons. Most of our competitive industries (however few there are of them)use metric in any event.

Posted by NoVA Scout on 2 July 02009 @ 4pm

NoVA Scout,
Of the things people don’t like about us globally, I think our system of weights and measures is way, way down the list.

Posted by Steve Vaughan on 2 July 02009 @ 4pm

Speaking of which, well not at all and just being lazy as all get out, when are the fireworks at McIntire? Tomorrow on the legal holiday or Saturday on the Fourth? I promised my friend I would find out by tomorrow as my job since my friend is doing all the driving. Did I mention being lazy? :)

Posted by Anonymous on 2 July 02009 @ 5pm

Oh, on the fourth. They’re always on the fourth.

Posted by Waldo Jaquith on 2 July 02009 @ 9pm

Why hasn’t the US switched to the metric? I’m as redneck as the next guy and I’m ready to switch….

Posted by HES on 2 July 02009 @ 9pm

I switched my car thermometer and some of my computer weather forecast software to Celsius about a year ago, and I think I’m comfortable with that now. I’d like to learn metric for weights and distances next, but I’m not sure how to go about it. The only weights that I really encounter are for food, and those are generally marked with imperial measurements. The distances I encounter are on road signs and my car’s dashboard, but there’s no changing the road signs, and my car’s speedometer, odometer, tripmeter, etc. are also stuck in imperial, so I don’t really know how to go about learning those.

This world map of metric adoption by country is what convinced me to learn it. Really, it’s pathetic. It’s us, Burma, and Liberia. The last few holdouts (Australia, Canada, and New Zealand) made the switch in the 80s, and now it’s just us. Hell, that’s why we lost the Mars Climate Orbiter. It’s embarrassing.

Posted by Waldo Jaquith on 2 July 02009 @ 10pm

“The only weights that I really encounter are for food, and those are generally marked with imperial measurements.”

Is there a good Mediterranean and/or Middle Eastern grocer near you? Or relatively near you that you could go even once a month? My friend’s family owns one in Northern Virginia, and I know that they rely mostly on imports––you’ll find most of the goods are printed in Arabic/Greek/French/English and maybe one other language, and use both imperial and metric measurements. Since they’re imports, the primary measurement system is metric and the primary language is Arabic. Some goods don’t even have the conversion. It’s a nice way to be able to pick up a package and see what exactly constitutes a certain weight in the different systems.

Posted by Genevieve on 3 July 02009 @ 9am

Is there a good Mediterranean and/or Middle Eastern grocer near you?

You haven’t spent much time in Charlottesville, have you? ;) It never crossed my mind that such places existed. :) There’s no much of an international population here. There is a Mexican bakery whose employees speak only Spanish—rather scandalous for C’ville. Anyhow, good idea! I just live in the wrong place for it. :)

Posted by Waldo Jaquith on 3 July 02009 @ 11am

“You haven’t spent much time in Charlottesville, have you? ;) ”

But, surely a halal butcher would open up in the part of Virginia once represented by Virgil Goode? I mean, I thought that he’d welcome that sort of establishment with open arms!

Posted by Genevieve on 3 July 02009 @ 12pm

No doubt there’ll be one in Rocky Mount soon. ;)

Posted by Waldo Jaquith on 3 July 02009 @ 3pm

We also have Mexican and Asian grocery stores (the latter apparently shut down recently I heard) and have had a variety of restaurants. Mona Lisa Pasta certainly flirts with Mediterranean, and don’t get me started on The Twisted Branch Tea Bazaar. There’s also sun bow, which sells authentic rugs made by nomadic Middle Eastern tribes. Really, a Middle Eastern Grocer isn’t that terribly unlikely an establishment for Charlottesville.

Posted by Cory Capron on 3 July 02009 @ 8pm

We also have Mexican and Asian grocery stores (the latter apparently shut down recently I heard) and have had a variety of restaurants.

I guess they are grocery stores, aren’t they? They both are (or, rather, the one remaining one is) so small that I hadn’t really thought of them as grocery stores, but I think that’s because I have a suburban concept of a grocery store as a huge, brightly-lit one-story building with wide aisles, carts, and ten brands of every product.

Posted by Waldo Jaquith on 3 July 02009 @ 11pm

it’s my understanding that there’s a number of folks in town who do middle eastern / Mediterranean cuisine, and although none of them are well-established enough (or have a large enough constituency) to be qualified as a “grocery store,” there still some individual butchers, small sellers, and stands at various Farmer’s Markets to be worth looking into. No idea if they use the metric system or what. E-mail me if you want to know more, I’m pretty clueless myself but my brilliant chef neighbors are all over this sort of thing.

Posted by James on 4 July 02009 @ 2am