Is it Science Friday already?

What does one wear to a political earthquake anyway?

Something taupe-ish, with one of those Hatari! hats I’m guessing.

For the soup course, this very brief primer on quakes from Geology Labs Online:

Although seismologists recognize different types of waves, we are interested in only two types: P (primary) waves, which are similar to sound waves, and S (secondary) waves, which are a kind of shear wave. Within the earth, P waves can travel through solids and liquids, whereas S waves can only travel through solids…

So, you may ask youself, hey, “How is an Earthquake's Epicenter Located?” And the same site has this fine explanation:

In order to locate the epicenter of an earthquake you will need to examine its seismograms as recorded by three different seismic stations. On each of these seismograms you will have to measure the S - P time interval (in seconds). (In the figure above, the S - P interval is about 45 seconds. The vertical lines are placed at 2 second intervals.) The S - P time interval will then be used to determine the distance the waves have traveled from the origin to that station.

Now that you’re all schooled on seismology (well, enough to chat up that certain, special nerdy/sexy girl/guy at the next “Drinking Liberally”), let's see how the rules apply to the world of politics.

Let's say the events on the ground in Iraq are, collectively, "The Baghdad Wave" and events in Texas, "The Sheehan Wave."

Or what we’ll call, just between us, the “B-S Interval.”

And where they converge is the epicenter of a shit-storm that’s you can already hear howling just over the rim of the world.

The first set of readings – from Baghdad -- we can gauge from this article:

August 12, 2005
Bush Cites Gains but Sees No Cuts in Troops in Iraq
By ANNE E. KORNBLUT
CRAWFORD, Tex., Aug. 11 - Faced with mounting casualties and signs of diminished support for the war, President Bush said Thursday that while the United States was making progress in Iraq, it was too soon to say when the number of American troops could be scaled back.
…

He also signaled that, despite planning by senior Pentagon officials for a potential troop reduction as early as next spring, he was not certain Iraqis could handle their own security well enough for the United States to begin leaving anytime soon.
…

Mr. Bush said, "Pulling the troops out now would send a terrible signal to the enemy."
Recent discussions among Pentagon officials have focused on phased withdrawals beginning early next year, not a full-scale pullout.
…

Just two weeks ago, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top American ground commander in Iraq, reaffirmed to reporters his own statement in March that the Pentagon could make "some fairly substantial reductions" - which others estimated could mean reducing the 138,000 troops by 30,000 - if the political process remained on track and Iraqi forces assumed more responsibility.
…
"We need to stick to one message," said one military officer in Washington. "This vacillation creates confusion for the American public."

Note that the Baghdad Wave used to allow for months and months between the time the Administration lied declaratively and catagorically about something (WMD’s, Nukes, Mobile Weapons Labs, AQ Camps as thick in the Iraqi countryside as rubes at a Benny Hinn revival, “imminent”, “Mission Accomplished”, detainee abuse, swearing up and down and aournd the block to fire ANYBODY who was involved in leaking the name of an active CIA agent …and, baby, the hits just keep on comin’) and the time when Scotty Dog stuck out his puffy, and much abused lip and farted another oily denial into the microphone

Usually something as deft and clever and nuanced as a truculent, “Whatchoo talkin’ ‘bout Willis?”

Now it’s down to a bare two weeks between the Old Lie and the Brand, New Shiny Lie and that’s for the hard numbers: for the catch-phrases and slogans – you know, the wingnut haiku that they use instead of critical thinking – it’s even worse.

I mean just the manufacturing of the Freeper Flash Cards to teach them to stop saying, “Global War on Terra” and start casually working “Global Struggle Against UltraViolet (or was it “Violent”?) Extremists Except For the Christopathic Lunatics that Run The Republican Party” into the conversation cost hundreds of millions.

Ah, the good ol’ “GSAUEEFTCLTRTRP”. Who could forget all the good times?

And then the re-re-branding costs? Just the price of bumper-stickers and tattoo derm-abrasion alone was almost incalculable.

Hey, maybe that's where the missing $9 billion went, because it sure as shit didn’t go towards buying an Exit Plan or armor for the brave men and women that the liars and fools and cowards and thieves that run the Administration lobbed into the middle of Dick And George’s Excellent Armageddon without a second thought.

Still, it must be incredibly hard for Freepers and their “Moderate” dancing bears these days. They are, after all, nothing more than the chubby, mindless cogs in the Arsenal of Theocracy: reprogrammable manure-cannons who will reliably suck whatever sump they’re fed and fire off loudly and in any direction they are pointed.

Just like that – like throwing a switch -- yesterday’s “grieving mother” becomes today’s “left-wing whore”, but it used to be that they had a little “me-time” built into the schedule. A little down-time for routine maintenance and war-porn masturbation.

But now?

Although they’re still required to keep goose-swaggering at a steady trot, now they have to pivot 180 degrees so sharply and so often -- and then countermarch triple-time backwards fast enough to catch up with the new “Truth” -- that they end up stepping on their own dicks and actually throttling their own penises and screaming at them for being Liberal Counterrevolutionary Traitors.

Kinda sad in a theoretical, “Itchy and Scratchy” kinda way.

And now the Sheehan Wave approaches an annihilating convergence with the Baghdad Wave.

How do I know?

Because practically any mention of Iraq and Bush now includes a paragraph or two about Cindy Sheehan.

Because this is what some of the rest of the article on troops and Iraq says:

A number of recent polls have recorded declines in Mr. Bush's approval rating,with particularly sharp drops when it comes to his handling of the war in Iraq.

Ms. Sheehan, of Vacaville, Calif., began her vigil here last weekend, and says she will not leave until Mr. Bush meets with her to explain the reason for her son's death and to hear her argument for quickly ending the war.

Although two senior White House officials met with Ms. Sheehan when she arrived, Mr. Bush has not done so, fueling passions within a growing group of demonstrators, who now include at least five other mothers of slain American service members.
…

The brave and honorable Cindy Sheehan is now fully a part of this story, and is not going away.

There is no artificial finish-line – like an election – that the Bush Administration just has to stagger across and then it’ll all be secure and cozy and half the country can go back to forgetting what thugs and monsters they are.

There is no home-base for them to tag and call “safe” to make this all be over.

No, this isn’t going away. And the only trick the Bush White House knows – rabid, all-out slime attack – isn’t working.

In fact, it’s backfiring, but like any drunk who drinks to solve and salve his problems -- when the problem is, hey, you're a drunk! -- Bush simple can't let go of the only political crutch he has even though it's destroying him.

And like outing a real-life, White Hat Wearin’ spy for personal pique and conducting political vendetta in a way simultaneously so completely over-the-top and bellycrawling low that it’d make Nixon flinch, Americans don’t need a lot of detail to know that it stinks.

For the average citizen, it's simple: anyone who would do such a thing much be a Douchebag of the First Douchewater.

And just about the only thing that could actually ooze its way under a the sewer-scrapping gullet lowness of outing a spy during wartime is trying to beat the shit out of a Gold Star mother who wants to know why her boy had to die.

Cindy Sheehan is standing up for her rights and her child. Doing as a lone citizen what no one in the entire, despicable Republican Party will do for her, or for any of us: hold the man who sent her child off to die to account for his actions.

To “petition her government for redress of grievances.”

Funny, I can remember when the entire GOP brought its full weight down on the neck of a President, year after year after year over…nothing.

Now they used that same bloody hammer to beat up grieving mothers and secret agents.

Now they circle those same Little Red State Wagons protectively around their Masters -- around cowards, traitors and murderous liars – in order to defend men who by their own standards should served with article of Impeachment.

Every day this continues, George Bush humiliates himself just that much more, embarrasses the United States just that much more, and drags his whole party just that much deeper into shit-mire with him.

A man – any real man , much less the Commander-in-Chief of the most powerful military on Earth – would have her up to the house for some straight talk, but ever since Bush shit his pants and then showed his sticky ass during the debates, his operators have shied away from letting their “Special” President have any more than 30 unscripted seconds during any given week.

And what the Dauphin of Crawford lacks in spine and basic intelligence, he more than makes up for in peevish arrogance.

So against the simple questions of a single citizen he deploys his whole, vast army of whores and thugs and verbal button-men.

And the earth beneath him begins to heave.