Everyone who's not from Los Angeles and vicinity loves to bag on us. We're the place where disasters love to happen. Everyone has a joke about how we're all living in a disaster area.

Guess what: we get a lot of practice. And when the real thing comes around, we get the job done. Nobody fights over whose jurisdiction is what. There are no turf wars when the firestorms are raging. On the front lines of the Topanga Fire, there are firefighters from all over the State of California. And they are all working together against a common enemy: fire and smoke.

Apparently Bush got a little bit of a bounce thanks to the more aggressive approach to dealing with Hurricane Rita. I predict it will be short-lived, because there are new storms brewing, this time over GOP corruption scandals that will make Teapot Dome look like a tempest in a teapot. Tom DeLay and Dr. Bill Frist are only the first to get snared in the net. It's like someone noticing a beam in a house is beginning to pucker and gives in to pressure. You've only seen a little bit of how badly compromised the rest of the house is thanks to all the termites who've taken up residence in the wood structure of the house. Find a little bit of damage, and it is almost certain there is more other places. The damage in this case is quite systemic.

Since I haven't got much brainpower tonight, I spent some time looking at the PBS documentary on the 1960s. I was a baby when JFK was assassinated. I was 3 years old during the Summer of Love. I was 6 by the time 1969 ended. Even at that point, I felt a distinct sense I was born too late. By the end of the 1970s, I knew it.

In a lot of respects, the Red vs. Blue wars raging in American discourse is the continued fighting of the wars touched off in the 1960s. Bill Clinton was our first Baby Boomer President. George W. Bush was also a Boomer. I needn't have to remind you of current events and recent history. Like the Civil War 100 years before then, I'm sure the civil wars of the '60s will continue to be fought for generations to come.