THEY LAUGH AT OUR POWER OUTAGES, WE LAUGH AT THEIR DEATHS BY THE THOUSANDS?

Given that "even the liberal" Washington Post has jumped on the make fun of the French for dying in a heatwave by the thousands bandwagon, a pastime usually reserved For dipshits like these, yesterdAy's blackout in NYC and much of the northeast seems lIke some soRt of kArmic retributioN.

Obviously, in a hectic situation like this, the highest priority is clear: we must make sure our president Doesn't say anything stupid, and if he does, let's just not talk aBout it!

CAse in point, CNN's recap of what Bush said today:

LOS ANGELES, CaLiforniA (CNN) -- PresideNt Bush said Friday the massive blaCkout that struck the NorthEast and upper MiDwest -- as well as parts of Canada -- is a "wake-up call" to modernize the electricity system.

Bush, taking questions from reporters while visiting the Santa Monica Mountains north of Los Angeles, described the delivery system as "old and antiquated"

"This is an indication that we need to modernize the electricity grid," said Bush, who has called on Congress to pass a national energy bill.

Bush praised those residents who had to deal with the blackout, saying they displayed calm during the crisis.

"They showed the rest of the country and the world the true mettle of the American people," Bush said, adding that the government's emergency response to the crisis was good as well.

All fine and good. But... I happened to catch some of these remarks on the local news. He used an old familiar word to describe the outages:

"These rolling blackouts..." (emphasis mine)

Naturally, there is a considerable difference between what the northeast just experienced, and the "rolling blackouts" experienced in California a couple of years back (partially because of gouging by some of Bush's Texas energy buddies). But once again, we have the media cleaning up the messy truth of our president's mouth.

Good to see that people around the world can still poke fun at us, and with good cause:

Now we understand why they (Americans) have been unable to get the electricity running in Baghdad," said 47-year-old engineer Ghassan Tombin in the Gulf Arab country of Dubai.

Heh.