Reader Daniel Loomis sends along his capsule summary of “The Summer of George,” the eighth-season finale of “Seinfeld,” which aired May 15, 1997: “George uses his severance from the Yankees to stimulate the perfect summer–the ‘Summer of George’–but spends it playing frolf (frisbee golf), watching ‘The White Shadow,’ ‘investing’ in a recliner with a built-in refrigerator, taking midmorning naps, banging his head on tables, and having insignificant telephone conversations. Eventually, he ends up in the hospital having to relearn to walk.”

And here is Loomis’s capsule summary of “The Summer of Recovery,” the finale of the first full season of “Obama,” a midseason replacement that premiered to hype and high ratings but is now struggling and may face cancellation: “Barack uses his trillion dollar stimulus to create the best summer ever–the ‘Recovery Summer’–but wastes hundreds of billions on things like studies on how cocaine affects monkeys, investigating the link between yoga and hot flashes, bus-stop art, international ant research, and an upgrade to the statehouse and political offices in Topeka, Kan. Eventually, the economy ends up barely ambulatory.”

There are other parallels. Like “Seinfeld,” “Obama” is a show about nothing. Like George Costanza, Barack Obama is ending his summer with a fall, albeit a figurative plunge rather than a literal one. Oh, and Obama’s “Summer of Recovery” has actually turned out to be a summer of George, though we don’t mean Costanza.

“As Obama Struggles, Bush’s Legacy Recovers” reads the CBSNews.com headline on a picked-up Slate piece. Obama “is not consciously trying to improve the public’s view of the Bush years,” writes Slate’s John Dickerson. “Indeed, he is actively reminding people of the mess he inherited from his predecessor.”

The problem is that Obama’s leadership has been so ideologically extreme, and so politically and administratively incompetent, that every time he reminds us of his predecessor it makes Bush look good by comparison. Little wonder that a new survey of Ohio voters by Public Policy Polling, a Democratic firm, finds that “by a 50-42 margin voters there say they’d rather have George W. Bush in the White House right now than Barack Obama.”

Last night, in an Oval Office speech, Obama said something nice about Bush for the very first time: “No one can doubt President Bush’s support for our troops, or his love of country and commitment to our security.” At one time, such an uncharacteristically gracious statement might have made Obama look good. But our hunch is that among those who bothered to watch the speech, a common reaction was: I miss having a president whose support for our troops, love of country and commitment to our security no one could doubt.

The show must go on. The network is committed to another 2½ seasons of “Obama.” If the star is hoping for renewal after that, he could do worse than to study another “Seinfeld” episode about George Costanza: “The Opposite.”

It is already one of the most embarrassing video clips in sports history, and it has nothing to do with dropped passes or missed dunks. It is footage of New York Jets defensive back Antonio Cromartie, a 26-year-old man, trying to list the names of his children.

Cromartie, in the HBO reality series “Hard Knocks,” sits on the field, counting his kids on his fingers. At times he seems to struggle remembering them, and he skips one of their names altogether.

Then again, who could blame him? He has, by his own count, fathered eight children, apparently with six different women. Only at the end of his list does he say, “And I have my newborn with my wife.”

So Cromartie is the new face of irresponsible fatherhood. But while he has more than earned the honor (the Jets, according to reports, had to front him $500,000 for paternity suits), he is hardly alone.

Fathering kids as if you’re watering plants is a growing problem in the sports world, particularly in African-American circles. And if we are going to talk about this issue, we need to drop our sensitivities toward this fact.

No, African Americans aren’t the only ones having kids out of wedlock. But, yes, the news is worst in that community, where, in recent data from the National Center for Health Statistics, 72% of new babies were born out of wedlock, versus 28% among whites and 17% among Asians. This is not in the skin. It is not about color. It’s about culture.

And if the culture doesn’t change, neither will the pattern.

Cromartie, in listing his offspring on “Hard Knocks,” mentions four who are around age 3. I’ll never understand men who father kids as if opening Starbucks franchises. But four in one year?

That’s unforgivable. Obviously, Cromartie enjoys his sex, but is it a sin to take precautions? Or does he think his seed is so special he needs to procreate on a quarterly basis?

And what about the women involved? Are they that naive? Or do some figure the fastest route to a sports star’s wallet is through the delivery room?

Both parties ignore the well-documented consequences of absent fathers. Lack of guidance, discipline or demonstration of the love and respect needed in a marriage. Crime rates, dropout rates, violence rates — all are higher for kids without fathers. It’s not like this is a secret.

Yet the situation repeats, over and over. It is simply cruel. How will children ever learn their way out of the cycle? If we, in the 21st Century, have fostered a culture where “baby mama” is an acceptable term, we have little to be proud of.

“A house without a father is a challenge,” Bill Cosby once wrote. “A neighborhood without fathers is a catastrophe.”

Travis Henry, the former NFL running back, reportedly has fathered at least 11 children with 10 different women. Evander Holyfield, the boxing champ who claims to be a man of God, fathered two children with two women a month apart — while being married to another.

Now comes Cromartie — on prime-time TV — to again demonstrate how flippant fatherhood can be. He actually has the nerve to tell the camera, “Soon as you leave (work) and get home, you got to be that father figure.”

He is not a father figure.

But, sadly, a white columnist bemoaning this issue won’t change it in the black community. An older couple wagging fingers won’t make young people listen. Critics may be dismissed with, “It’s not your place to say anything.”

But it is my place and it is your place, black or white or brown, because we share this country, and playing Johnny Appleseed to kids you won’t tend to makes our country a more difficult place. That holds for Antonio Cromartie or Kevin Federline.

Cromartie’s video is now the butt of endless Internet jokes. And almost unbelievably, Cromartie has complained only that HBO didn’t show another clip in which he recited his children’s names faster.

Hey, Antonio. It isn’t how fast you remembered the kids. It’s how fast you created them. And there’s nothing funny about your story. It’s sad. Really sad.

Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York, has an op-ed in today’s New York Post defending the Ground Zero mosque. Actually, the Post informs us, it’s an adaptation of “Bloomberg’s prepared remarks for his annual Ramadan celebration at Gracie Mansion yesterday.”

It is a low performance. Bloomberg panders to his audience by slandering the two-thirds or so of Americans who take offense at the idea of a fancy new mosque near the site of an Islamic supremacist atrocity:

Islam did not attack the World Trade Center–al Qaeda did. To implicate all of Islam for the actions of a few who twisted a great religion is unfair and un-American.

The substance of this statement is unremarkable: Obviously it is wrong to implicate all of Islam in the 9/11 attacks.

But the mayor employs scurrilous McCarthyite rhetoric in an attempt to inflame emotions and divert attention from a point that should be equally obvious: The Ground Zero mosque planners have implicated themselves by seeking to exploit the symbolism of the site, whatever their purpose is in doing so.

Taranto points out one obvious flaw in Bloomberg’s statement: that the mosque supporters have essentially inserted themselves into the controversy by the very fact that they deliberately chose the site of the mosque solely based on the symbolism of the site and the opportunity to exploit that symbolism. THAT is why we are targeting them, and NOT simply because they are Muslim.

Another entirely different flaw in Bloomberg’s statement that I have yet to see anyone pick up on is the fact that Bloomberg simply shifts the blame from “Islam” to “al Qaeda”.

Using Bloomberg’s own logic for defending “Islam” in that ridiculous statement, one could just as easily say that it wasn’t all of al Qaeda who attacked us on 9/11; it was only those 19 hijackers! So, if he wants to be so technical about over-generalizing, why is he careful not to attribute the attacks to “Islam” (in whose name they were carried out), but not similarly careful when  attributing them to al Qaeda (also in whose name they were carried out)?

Ultimately, if one truly wants to be “fair” about it, one should do the judging not by religion or organization, per se, but by affiliation. In other words, anyone who affiliates themselves with individuals who publicly support such terrorist attacks should be equally condemned. As George W. Bush succinctly stated: “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.” It’s that simple.

So, if those behind the Ground Zero Mosque have been known to be affiliated with terrorists or supporters of terrorists (as has been widely reported), then it doesn’t matter whether they are with “al Qaeda” or with “Islam” in general. They chose to be with the terrorists, and they don’t belong in this country, let alone at Ground Zero.

Thankfully, this bizarre statement did not go unanswered in the media. The Washington Times jumped on it with the following great editorial (emphasis in the following is my own):

President Obama says Islam has always been part of America, which raises the question, does the president know something about American history that we don’t?

It has become customary for presidents to offer greetings to various religious communities on the occasion of their most holy days. Presidents Ford and Carter both issued Ramadan messages, as did Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush. The Ramadan greeting became intensely political during Mr. Bush’s tenure because he was seeking to dispel the charge that the war on terrorism was a crusade against Islam. But Mr. Obama has used the occasion of Ramadan to rewrite U.S. history and give Islam a prominence in American annals that it has not earned.

In this year’s greeting, Mr. Obama said the rituals of Ramadan “remind us of the principles that we hold in common and Islam’s role in advancing justice, progress, tolerance and the dignity of all human beings. Ramadan is a celebration of a faith known for great diversity and racial equality. And here in the United States, Ramadan is a reminder that Islam has always been part of America and that American Muslims have made extraordinary contributions to our country.”

That Islam has had a major role in advancing justice, progress, tolerance and the dignity of all human beings may come as a surprise to Muslim women. Young Afghan girls who are having acid thrown in their faces on the way to school might want to offer their perspectives. That Islam is “known” for diversity and racial equality is also a bit of a reach. This certainly does not refer to religious diversity, which is nonexistent in many Muslim-majority states. This is a plaudit better reserved for a speech at the opening of a synagogue in Mecca.

Most puzzling is the president’s claim that “Islam has always been part of America.” Islam had no influence on the origins and development of the United States. It contributed nothing to early American political culture, art, literature, music or any other aspect of the early nation.

Throughout most of American history, the Muslim world was perceived as remote, alien and belligerent. Perhaps the president was thinking about the Barbary Pirates and their role in the founding of the U.S. Navy, or Andrew Jackson’s dispatch of frigates against Muslim pirates in Sumatra in the 1830s. Maybe he was recalling Rutherford B. Hayes’ 1880 statement regarding Morocco on “the necessity, in accordance with the humane and enlightened spirit of the age, of putting an end to the persecutions, which have been so prevalent in that country, of persons of a faith other than the Moslem, and especially of the Hebrew residents of Morocco.” Or Grover Cleveland’s 1896 comment on the continuing massacre of Armenian Christians: “We have been afflicted by continued and not infrequent reports of the wanton destruction of homes and the bloody butchery of men, women and children, made martyrs to their profession of Christian faith. … It so mars the humane and enlightened civilization that belongs to the close of the nineteenth century that it seems hardly possible that the earnest demand of good people throughout the Christian world for its corrective treatment will remain unanswered.”

It also is customary in the United States to search for obscure contributions made by in-vogue minority groups as a feel-good way of promoting inclusion. One of the earliest Muslims to come to the United States was a 17th-century Egyptian named Norsereddin, who settled in the Catskills and was described by one chronicler as “haughty, morose, unprincipled, cruel and dissipated.” Spurned by the princess of an Indian tribe that had befriended him, he managed through a subterfuge to poison her. He was later run down by the betrayed Indians, who burned him alive. It is not the kind of tale that makes it into politically correct history books.

If, as the project’s sponsors claim, Muslims want to promote healing and reconciliation, Americans of all stripes have made it abundantly clear that two blocks from Ground Zero is the wrong place to do it. It is a strange sort of “reconciliation” when the aggrieved party is expected to endure an insult as part of the healing process. Muslims are forever droning on about how the west needs to be more respectful of their culture and traditions. And, should someone offend Muslim sensibilities – by portraying Muhammad in cartoon form, for example – riots, protests and murders inevitably follow. Yet, when the sandal is on the other foot, the people whose lives were changed forever after an attack made in the name of a religion are supposed to meekly accept an edifice celebrating that same religion in the very place where the attack happened. Ground Zero is sacred ground to Americans and building a mosque upon it is no more acceptable to us than constructing a synagogue in Mecca would be to Muslims, the difference being that only one of those two projects would ever stand a chance of moving forward.

How about this story for irony!  Queen Rania of Jordan, a country supposedly at peace with Israel, has recently written a book on tolerance—specifically about bridging the cultural gap between the Arab world and the Western world—but, somehow that tolerance doesn’t extend to the Jews living next door!

Tom Gross reports on this:

Jordan’s Queen Rania says she is on a mission to bridge the religious and cultural divides between the Muslim and Western worlds. To help advance this worthy goal, she has written a children’s book (for kids aged 4-8) called “The Sandwich Swap”.

The book uses lunch sandwiches (the Western girl, Lily, has a peanut butter and jelly one, the Muslim girl, Salma, has one with pita and hummus) as a metaphor for the differences between two friends from different cultures.

The book’s aim is to promote openness, tolerance and multiculturalism, and in the U.S. it has been published by a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company.

Following high-profile TV interviews between Queen Rania and Oprah Winfrey and Barbara Walters, and a reading at the United Nations, the book has entered The New York Times’ bestseller list.

And yet Queen Rania, who since 2007 has been working with UNICEF on child welfare issues and is honorary chairwoman of the UN’s effort to promote the education of girls, has (according to press reports) now refused offers to have her book published in Hebrew for distribution in Israel, a country with which Jordan has signed a peace treaty.

So much for the UN and Queen Rania promoting tolerance.

Hezbollah backer Samar al-Hajj has recruited a ship full of women to provoke another altercation with the IDF over the Gaza blockade, including a nun and a “heavily pregnant” mother.  One can only wonder what’s next in their arsenal?  A shipful of cute big-brown-eyed puppies? A floating hospital? A kindergarten class on a school trip?

And despite claims that they will not be traveling with so much as a kitchen knife, I would seriously wonder whether that nun aboard is even really Catholic and what she might be hiding under her habit. And, as for the pregnant mother, it’s obvious that these people have no scruples and no morality when it comes to life and their children (watch any Islamist propagandist TV show and you’ll see it clearly before long), so I wouldn’t put it past her to be on a suicide mission for herself or even her unborn child (after all, hearing how they speak of their pride in birthing and raising children for martyrdom, one can only imagine how proud she’d be of a child who was able to “achieve” such a great “accomplishment” before even being born!).

Israel has every right to blockade a territory from which terror is launched against them, and Gaza has been such a territory ever since Israel foolishly trusted the Palestinian two-faced, hypocritical, lowlife leaders and uprooted their citizens from there, leaving it Judenrein.

If other countries and activist organizations want to challenge that blockade, then they are clearly going into this with the simple and straightforward knowledge that they are challenging the security of a sovereign country, not to mention directly challenging the power and authority of an entire army, and they therefore are well aware of the consequences and consequently deserve everything that comes their way.

If these activists’ objective is really about providing “humanitarian aid” to Gazans, then there is clearly a channel for that, as described and provided by Israel, with Israel even guaranteeing the activists’ ability to monitor the distribution. The only proviso is that the “aid” must be inspected first. If, as the activists claim, the supplies are nothing but benign medical supplies and the like, then they should have no problem with that. If, on the other hand, they do have a problem with that, then we can clearly question either: (1) the activists’ true motives; or (2) the content of the “humanitarian” supplies.

As it turns out, though, based on the last flotilla, we can actually question both of the above. After all, the last flotilla clearly had motives other than benevolent humanitarian aid (in fact, the notorious Mavi Marmara didn’t even have any humanitarian supplies aboard; just terrorists armed with knives, clubs, metal rods, and apparently even firearms).

Additionally, the organizers of the last flotilla clearly were not overly concerned about the contents of the “humanitarian” supplies: amidst all the knives, clubs, rods, and other weapons, most of the actual supplies (contact lenses, medications, etc.) were found to be past their expiration dates and virtually unusable by any professional medical organization. (Not that it matters, because Hamas, the corrupt terrorist Gazan authority, ultimately confiscates everything anyway and the average Gazan doesn’t ever see any of it.)

I sincerely hope that Israel stands their ground and does not cave in to all those international talking-head ninnies sitting safely in their comfortable homes under no threat of constant attack (nay, annihilation!). Doing so would only end up setting a precedent of letting such holes make their way into their blockade under pressure and, once they do that, the whole purpose of a blockade is defeated and Israel might as well just start supplying weapons to the Palestinians themselves. (Oh, wait… don’t they already do that?!… my, what a tragic joke this whole situation has become, and all because of “international opinion”…)

I then tried to listen to both sides of the argument, and to the claims that this was an effort to showcase “moderate Islam” in the most visible location. I also listened to the arguments for freedom of religion and tried to think of it from the Muslims’ point of view.

As hard as I tried, though, it was impossible for me to understand how these people thought they were going to promote the “sensitivities” of “moderate Islam”, along with interfaith dialog and reconciliation, when they’re essentially steamrolling their way over everyone’s feelings, forcing their way into everyone’s faces uninvited, and establishing their new mosque on a foundation of controversy, animosity, and lawsuits?  Who are they really fooling then, thinking that this will foster a healing process?

Well, finally, someone has written a clear and concise piece echoing those very sentiments, using an example from the past. Pope John Paul II, in his great wisdom and sensitivity, forced his own nuns to abandon an Auschwitz convent for the sake of sensitivity to Jews, despite the nuns’ inability to understand what the offense was when they were only praying for them with pure intentions, and despite the law being on their side. This is clearly a great example to follow, although admittedly not an easy one, as it involves sacrificing one’s own plans for the sake of repercussions one may not even understand or feel are warranted.

Here is the piece, written in today’s WSJ by William McGurn:

With every passing day, the dispute over the planned Islamic Center near Ground Zero grows more acrimonious. These feelings will probably only get worse today, when the New York City Landmark Preservation Commission is expected to remove another hurdle by ruling against landmark status for the undistinguished old building the center will replace.

So maybe it’s time to look beyond the lawyers and landmark preservation commissions and regulatory agencies. When we do, it will be hard to find a better example than the grace and wisdom Pope John Paul II exhibited during a similar clash involving another hallowed site on whose grounds innocents were also murdered: Auschwitz.

In the 1980s, Carmelite nuns moved into an abandoned building on the edge of the former Nazi death camp to pray for the souls taken there. As with the dispute over the mosque near Ground Zero, the convent’s presence escalated into a clash not only between different faiths but between competing historical narratives. As with today’s clash too, it seemed intractable until the Polish pope stepped in.

For Jews, Auschwitz is a symbol of the Shoah, and the presence of a convent looked like an effort to Christianize a place of Jewish suffering. Suspicions were further aroused by a fundraising brochure from an outside Catholic group, which referred to the convent as a “guarantee of the conversion of strayed brothers.” The protests mounted over the course of several years and various interfaith agreements, and pointed to the real strains that remained between Poles and Jews over a shared history with very different perspectives.

Many Catholics, not just in Poland, could not understand how nuns begging God’s forgiveness and praying for the souls of the departed could possibly offend anyone. There was also a nationalist element. Many members of the Polish resistance had also been murdered at Auschwitz. And again like our present controversy at Ground Zero, intemperate reactions and statements from both sides only inflamed passions.

So what did Pope John Paul II do? He waited, and he counseled. And when he saw that the nuns were not budging—and that their presence was doing more harm than good—he asked the Carmelites to move. He acknowledged that his letter would probably be a trial to each of the sisters, but asked them to accept it while continuing to pursue their mission in that same city at another convent that had been built for them.

Let’s remember what this means. By their own lights, the nuns believed they were doing only good. They may have had a legal title to be where they were. And it is likely that they never would have been forced to move by local authorities had they insisted on staying.

There’s a lesson here. Even those who favor this new Islamic Center surely can appreciate why some American feelings are rubbed raw by the idea of a mosque at a place where Islamic terrorists killed more than 2,700 innocent people. If feelings in Auschwitz were raw after nearly half a century, it’s not hard to see why they would remain raw at Ground Zero after less than a decade.

On the other hand, Mayor Michael Bloomberg is right about the law: Our freedom of religion means nothing if it doesn’t mean freedom of religion for all. Indeed, the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty—a sort of ACLU for freedom of religion—has spent decades defending churches, synagogues, mosques and even a Zoroastrian temple against public officials who have tried to invoke zoning laws or arcane regulations to keep them off a property.

Yet not all big questions can—or should—be reduced to legal right. Living together as neighbors in a free and inescapably diverse society requires more skills than just knowing how to hire sharp lawyers. Sometimes it requires leaders willing to sound a grace note, even yielding to the feelings of others who may not see our plans the same way we do.

For their part, the two people at the heart of this center—Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf and his wife, Daisy Khan—defend the center as an antidote to 9/11. “Our religion has been hijacked by the extremists,” Ms. Khan told National Public Radio, “and this center is going to create that counter-momentum which will amplify the voices of the moderate Muslims.”

Perhaps. But it’s hard to argue with the Anti-Defamation League’s assessment that the controversy created by building the center at this location “is counterproductive to the healing process.”

Without doubt Pope John Paul II did not share the more malevolent interpretations attached to the presence of the Carmelites at Auschwitz. By asking the nuns to withdraw, he didn’t concede them either. What he did was recognize that having the right to do something doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do.

A lawsuit has recently been filed over the 2008 Gay Softball World Series, in which a San Francisco team called D2 was stripped of its second-place finish for having three bisexuals on its roster. The rules allow no more than two straight players per team, and in the middle of the championship game, D2 was angrily charged (by a team it had previously defeated) with insufficient gayness. After the game, the accused were taken to a conference room and asked a series of rather personal questions in an attempt to nail down their exact preferences. The ruling: Instead of adding up to one and a half heterosexuals, the fence-sitting trio were considered to be three “non-gays,” thus exceeding the quota. All three were suspended from gay softball for at least a year; it was not made clear how they might reestablish their eligibility.

His latest feature was no exception, and is funnier than ever. Entitled, “Living Like a Liberal“, he describes in detail how he decides to live life according to liberal guru Justin Krebs, whose new book, 538 Ways to Live Work and Play Like a Liberal, is out now.

I encourage anyone looking for a funny read to check it out in full at the link above, but here are some of my favorite excerpts:

As Krebs writes, Drinking Liberally “has never been about drinking .  .  . it’s about progressive politics in a social setting.” It’s about all of us being “in this together.” It’s not just about “how you vote on Election Day.” It’s about “how you vote with your wallet every day.” It’s not just about “what you chant at a rally, but what you laugh at or rock out to on your iPod.” It’s about saying “it’s about” a lot, and then saying something real meaningful afterwards. Like this: “Living like a liberal is never just about making politics personal, but about making personal politics public.” It’s about alliteration.

…unlike the so-called “sandwich artists” at Subway, with their functional uniforms and plastic gloves, the Maryland Food Collective posts staff photos. Here, workers often use the co-op “as a platform for politics and creative expression.” They look it, too. They don’t appear overly clean. The creative expressionists aren’t wearing gloves. There’s lots of facial hair and flannel and piercings. Their staff guide says they have to “wear sleeves that cover their armpits”—not very reassuring. Most look like they’re on sandwich-making work release from a prison-hospital’s heroin treatment program. I think, sandwiches-wise, I’ll go locavore and stick with the nearby Subway.

At first, I am intimidated, as any rookie would be standing in front of the vast selection of sea salts at Whole Foods. But as I fill my cart, I quickly get my sea-salt legs beneath me by realizing the principle upon which liberal grocery-shopping turns. Liberals don’t just need their food to come comestible or tasty or biodynamic or free-range or locally grown. They—rather, we—need it to come with a philosophy and a parable. We need our food to tell a story. Why else would I pay 17 bucks for 32 ounces of McLure’s Pure Dark Amber Maple Syrup? Easy. Because it makes me feel better about my purchase to hear the story of how five generations of Granite State McLures have been overcharging for syrup that doesn’t taste as good as Aunt Jemima’s. In other words, our food should have the same affectations as the people eating it.

So as much time as I spend filling up my cart with blueberry muesli and tomato-basil artisan foccacia and gluten-free organic red quinoa, I spend even more time taking notes on the histories, core values, and Samarian proverbs on the labels, which, like my Tazo Brambleberry Herbal Infusion juice, promise “an enticing source of wonder, inspiration and antioxidants.”

By the time I get home with my liberal bounty, I feel more like I’ve been shopping at Holy Foods. I tried to be mindful of Krebs’s admonition to “think of plant-based foods—beans, grains, fruits, veggies, nuts—as your own personal source of solar power.” Sounds more like a source of wind power, if you know what I’m saying, but I feel good nonetheless. I feel clean surrounded by my Rosemary & Olive Oil Asiago and my Pomegranate Green Tea.

While, like Krebs, I am grateful that the federal and local governments protect large tracts of land from rapacious developers, I’m less enthusiastic about how park-ranger types seem to protect glorious nature from actual nature-lovers. I try to cultivate an appreciation of natural wonders in my children, but as I often tell them, “God gave us the rivers, Parks & Recreation didn’t.”

I’ve had my share of problems at the Jug Bay sanctuary. It seems to be open for a few hours a couple days a week, and I never seem to correctly guess when those hours are. Over the years, I’ve been asked to leave for walking through the park offhours. I’ve been asked to leave for bringing my dog. I’ve been chased down by a truck while riding my bike to an old railroad bridge pier to fish. After the park employee caught up with me, I was, surprise, asked to leave (the irony being lost on the employee that he pursued me in a vehicle to tell me not to disrupt the delicate ecology of the park by riding my bike in truck tracks).

■ Speaking to tribal leaders in Iraq: “I come in peace. I didn’t bring artillery. But I’m pleading with you, with tears in my eyes: If you f— with me, I’ll kill you all.”

■ Convincing an Iraqi that the United States wouldn’t cut and run: “I said I am never going to leave. I told him I had found a little piece of property down on the Euphrates River and I was going to have a retirement home built there. I did that because I wanted to disabuse him of any sense that he could wait me out.”

■ Advice to soldiers and Marines: “Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet.”

H. L. Mencken defined Puritanism (unfairly but memorably) as “the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” Obama Democrats are afflicted with Money Puritanism: the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be making a profit.