Zuccotti Park

            The protesters in New York's Zuccotti Park have given us quite a show the last couple of months. We are getting reports that they have defecated on police cars, paraded in the nude, engaged in public sex, and defaced the park with mounds of garbage. That's called exercising your First Amendment rights. Thank you Mayor Bloomberg for your generous understanding.

            What does this unwashed rabble want? Well, we know from their signs that they favor, among other things, radical redistribution of wealth, civil disobedience, and violence, if necessary. Apparently, this is not a problem for President Obama and the Democrats. They have embraced this tattered mob. They are so envious of the Tea Party that they'll support any mass of protesters that mirror their left wing ideology. Appearance and odor notwithstanding.

            What do the Republicans say about all this? Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said in a recent interview that the protesters have a right to express their opinion. Wow! Now that's taking a tough stand!

            Actually, Republicans look upon the rabble as lepers; they won't go near them, much less embrace them like the Democrats. A mistake, perhaps? I think they are missing a great opportunity to score points, not by supporting the mob, but by agreeing with its greatest complaint: greed, especially the kind infecting Wall Street.

            What are the protesters so angry about? The lowest 150 million Americans have a lower net worth than the 400 wealthiest Americans, many of them looking down on the mob from their Wall Street office windows. Put another way, the top 1 percent of Americans have more wealth than the entire bottom 90 percent. You want more? The average salary on Wall Street is over $360,000 a year, and that includes pay for secretaries, messengers, and mail room clerks. That's five times the average salary in the rest of the private sector. Five times!

            Let's take just one example. In 2010 Goldman Sachs had a pre-tax profit of $13 billion, down from $20 billion in 2009. But that didn't stop the Board of Directors from raising the CEO's compensation to $13 million. This year Goldman's stock is down 43% and it showed a third quarter loss of $428 million. Still, that has not prevented the firm from putting $10 billion into the compensation pool. God forbid the CEO should take a cut in salary.

            What's wrong with this picture? Does the Occupy Wall Street crowd have a case?

            Republicans have been adamant about not raising taxes on high income earners. But there's a difference between supporting small business owners who create most of the jobs in this country and remaining silent about the unconscionable greed of a securities industry that produces nothing and is dedicated only to creating wealth--its own.

            President Obama's incessant demand that the fat cats pay their fair share will continue to resonate with the masses as long as the protesters rail at Wall Street's greed.

            Republicans will continue to be identified with that greed as long as they fail to see the difference between the real job producers and the suits in the windows above Zuccotti Park.

Courage with a Smile

            I love writing about heroes. My latest is Primo Viray, a member of North Carolina's Sound Golf Links.

            Primo is the most beloved member of the club, and with good reason. His life story is one of courage with a smile. Born in 1936 in the village of Lingayen on the island of Luzon in the Philippines, he survived four years of Japanese occupation in World War II. He lost two uncles in the war, but evaded the occupiers by constantly moving with his parents from one hiding place to another.

            In 1958 Primo earned a degree in nursing from the college of Santo Tomas in Manila where he met Rose, his future wife. From 1958 to 1960 he volunteered his services in Laos and then emigrated to the United States where he became a nurse in Chicago's Cook County Hospital and eventually rose to become the OR nurse supervisor at the Alexian Brothers Medical Center in Chicago.

            In 1962 he was reunited with Rose who had also emigrated to the United States and was working as a nurse for the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. They married and proceeded to raise a family of six girls, all of whom went to college on Primo's modest income. They number a teacher, an OSHA administrator, an engineer, a lawyer, a social worker, and a doctor.

            After Primo retired in 2004, the Virays built a home in Albemarle Plantation here in Hertford. Primo immediately endeared himself to the community with his sunny disposition, his marvelous sense of humor, and his passion for golf. At 5'4" and 140 pounds, he could be seen on the golf course every day swinging his 50-inch driver and outdriving most of his fellow golfers.

            While on vacation in the Philippines in 2008, Primo suffered a stroke that almost killed him and paralyzed his left side. After three months of intense therapy, he was finally able to stand without assistance. Months later he began walking, although very slowly, by using his body to swing his left leg forward.

            Upon his return home, friends and neighbors found that Primo had not lost his smile nor his sense of humor, despite his disability. More than that, they were amazed by his determination to return to the golf course. Swinging that 50-inch driver of his with only his right hand, Primo developed a fluid tempo that resulted in 150-yard drives with astounding regularity. With the club's permission for Rose to drive  his golf cart everywhere on the course, even to the edge of the greens, Primo could be seen playing every late afternoon when his slow pace would not hold anybody up.

            By 2011 Primo was ready to compete again. His entry in the Member-Guest tournament this October was applauded by his friends, although he was given little chance of making a good showing, even less of winning. Seeded dead last with his son-in-law as his partner, Primo surprised everybody by winning his flight, then shooting a net eagle in the shootout elimination round and a net birdie in the finals.

            When Primo won, his fans were delirious. Even his opponents in the shootout and the finals (me and my brother Phil) cheered wildly for the courageous little man with the perpetual smile.

            Primo Viray won the tournament. But he had already won the hearts of everyone who knows him.

Obama's Contempt

            With Obama's poll numbers on a downhill slide, it is not difficult to understand his growing desperation. He must find a way to get people to love him again. After all, it's not his fault that the economy is going down the tubes and people can't find jobs. Someone else is to blame: Bush, rich people who refuse to pay their fair share, Wall Street, the Republicans, the Tea Party. Everyone is to blame but the guy in the mirror.

            Obama cannot bring himself to accept that his poll numbers are going down because he is doing a lousy job. His popularity, which was sky high after his election, is plummeting like a burst balloon. Many of his formerly rabid fans who were once enthralled by his smile and his lofty rhetoric are now seeing him for what he really is: mendacious, radical, narcissistic, arrogant, and, in the end, transparently incompetent.

            In a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, Bret Stephens hit the nail on the head. In his view, it all comes down to Obama's contempt. Examples: insulting the British by returning the bust of Winston Churchill; slamming the Boston police for arresting a black professor; rebuking members of the Supreme Court in his 2010 State of the Union address; snubbing of Gordon Brown, Nicolas Sarkozy, and Benjamin Netanyahu. The list goes on: the Religious Right, gun owners, billionaires and jet owners, the Marine Corps, the American flag, the American taxpayer.

            Obama doesn't seem to care about tripling our debt and passing the burden on to our children and grandchildren. He has no qualms about riding around the country in Air Force One to make fund-raising and political campaign speeches. It doesn't bother him one bit to spend a couple of million dollars to buy two fancy buses made in Canada so he could ride into Mid-West towns in a phony attempt to show he is a man of the people. He has no problem spending millions to send his wife and her entourage on vacation in Europe and South Africa. And he has no apologies for wasting half a billion dollars on a failing Solyndra just to advance his green jobs agenda. That, my friends, is contempt at every turn.

             Worst of all, in my view, is Obama's contempt for America, a contempt that requires apologies to the world for our history of racism, our class inequality, our arrogance, our power, our success, our exceptionalism.

            Why can't we have a president who loves his country and is proud of it instead of being ashamed of it? Why can't we have a president who feels something other than contempt for his country and its citizens?