It has been four years since the incident in Mossy Head revealed that the state of Florida had no law regarding bestiality. For four years the Republicans had been unable to create a law, but they were finally shamed into it … and they have managed to screw up and outlaw all sex because they don’t know how to write.

The options are for the law to be vetoed and wait for a new attempt next year, or to call a special session to fix it.

Instead of fixing the law, the world would be a better place if they “fixed” the legislature to keep them from breeding.

At the BBC Michael Goldfarb wonders Where are today’s Steinbecks?

He brings up the film, The Grapes of Wrath, as an example of the types of things that were coming out in the media during the Great Depression, and wonders why there doesn’t seem to be the same level and type of output today.

First off, as good as the film is, it is only half of Steinbeck’s novel. Every other chapter in the novel was reporting on the conditions in the country as the Joads were struggling in the main story. Steinbeck provided hard numbers to go along with the conditions of the fictional characters. He was a newspaper reporter most of his life, and he knew how to ask questions and report on the world around him. He was tied to reality as he wrote his fiction. He was writing what we now refer to as a docu-drama.

But the biggest difference is that very few people were isolated from the Great Depression. It was a long time before the programs of FDR took effect, as compared to the almost instant passage of the TARP bill to “save the financial sector”. Many of the “wealthy” were suddenly poor as result of the Depression, but they have been shielded in the GOPression. The people who would authorized a movie like The Grapes of Wrath, don’t understand how bad things really are, while Darryl Zanuck and John Ford did.

The pain is not being shared.

It is unlikely that anyone along the Gulf Coast in 2005 will soon forget Michael Brown of “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job” fame, and his tenure at FEMA. We were all bit taken aback when it was announced that Cold Creek Solutions had hired him as Vice President of Disaster Recovery Practice. They thought that they could get clients by offering advice from the world’s biggest disaster recovery screw-up?

So, I really shouldn’t have been surprised when I read today that Tony Hayward of the BP oiling of the Gulf has been hired as a “Safety Expert”.

It makes one wonder if doing your best is the way to succeed. Perhaps we should be telling children to fail disastrously? It worked for Brownie and Tony.