Story Update:  After a tense forty-eight hours of negotiation with top White House staff, President George Bush eventually agreed to attend when staffers allowed him to carry a metric conversion device.

 

Washington – President George Bush’s attendance at the Beijing Olympics is up in the air today after the President learned that the Summer Games were utilizing the metric system.

 

“How am I going to know what event I’m watching?” said a visibly irritated Bush at a hastily arranged White House press conference. “Or even how much stuff costs?”

 

Reports are surfacing that behind the scenes there was considerable drama preceding the Bush press conference as staffers attempted to explain to the President how the metric system worked, and the relative simplicity of conversion to traditional measurement standards.

 

“It didn’t go well,” said one staffer who, for obvious reasons, requested anonymity. “The President kept asking ‘What happened to the four-minute mile?'"

 

Bush was pleased to hear that he would be able to purchase made in China goods at a discount but unhappy to learn that to realize the best discounts he would have to convert his dollars to Chinese yuans.

 

“He kept saying he had a bad “yuan” experience when he was involved in baseball and he doesn’t want to go down that road again,” said another staffer, who believed the President was referring to Juan Gonzalez, an outfielder who played for the George Bush-owned Texas Rangers in the 1990s.