Shocking! Devil Not Causing Earthquakes

And you have long thought Pat Robertson had proven that Haiti's pact with the Devil back in the 1800's caused their 2010 earthquake. That earthquake caused horrific effects, including a visit by Sean Penn and a photo of George Bush and Bill Clinton together.

Well, forget that.

Unless Satan is a Capitalist (yes, yes, Barak), he did not cause the end-of-times-of-2011 earthquake that seems to have rattled a McDonald's near Youngstown, Ohio.

Hold on. Ohio? 

Ohio votes Republican!

More evidence that the Devil can not be involved.

The earthquake was not all that bad, a 4.0 on a 10.0 scale (unless Barak raises yet another ceiling). It probably didn't knock the tranche'd pickle off of a single Big Mac or jiggle a chocolate shake. People in Youngstown probably thought it more Walmart price rollbacks, you know, when the Zorro'ed price cards fall away from new, lower ones. Or maybe, Newt Gingrich's polls hitting.

Severity, however, is not the point. The point is what or who caused the earthquake.

Brine.

Wait. Don't flee to the nearest Ru Paul Iraq Indirectly Caused 9/11 Website. Real elucidation awaits. Here, not there.

Brine.

The stuff that makes Heinz pickles down I-76 from the quake?

Not really, although you may have just solved the pickle juice recycling crisis.

Brine is used in Fracking, which is the only way to profit from natural gas stored in the rock under Youngstown and other places. Fracking is all the rage, since it will make America the Saudi Arabia of natural gas. This even though nobody really wants to be the Saudi Arabia of anything, unless you think women drivers...

The United States can not long survive without Fracking. America needs to cook with gas. Figuratively and actually, too.

Natural gas burns cleaner than anything this side of, say, the Sun. It is a great way to make electricity and char Rib Eyes to Pittsburgh Rare. Had America used natural gas instead of coal to industrialize, there would be no Global Warming. Or Al Gore movies. Greenland would be 0.8 inch lower in the water, where it was when the Vikings first rammed a Dragon Head into it. Antarctica would cover Terra Del Fuego, which would just be mapped as Northwest Antarctica, Magellan having circumnavigated only the Falklands for all the damned ice.

Fracking is all about Brine and some benign chemical additives and their high-pressure injection into the gas-hording rock. The rock fractures and America gets gas for it pipelines and twelve fuel cells. Of course, to keep the gasless rock from collapsing, Frackers shoot in sand, long known as compatible with brine and little crabs, into the space where your new water heater fuel used to be. You know how well sand supports your sandal much better near that briny water?

That's the theory, anyway.

Some environmentalists, who obviously do not have land in Youngstown to license, decry fracking as certain to give you earthquakes as well the most environmental-friendly fuel this side of, say, the Sun.

Uh.

Turns out that, however dumb they look hum... hugging trees, these guys are right again.

Earthquakes. Not Satan, Pat. Brine.

So, Youngstown! American! Stop with the Pickle Fracking Juice already!

Not to be confused with Battlestar Galactia-speak. Although, thanks to a few little earthquakes, Youngstown, along with the rest of the now-former Saudia Arabia of Gas, are Frakking doomed.