...Later in the day, the president attended a fund-raiser in Newton hosted by Dr. Ralph de la Torre, the chief executive of the Caritas Christi Health Care network, which operates St. Elizabeth's Medical Center and other Catholic hospitals. The event raised $900,000 for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, officials said...

...A few minutes after we showed up, as we walked toward a group anti-Obama protesters, we were waylaid by some of hist supporters, shouting profanities at us and making fun of my hat. I'm pretty profane myself, so I returned in kind. We argued for a while, with the Deval supporters issuing vague threats and demanding to know where we lived. I grew weary of it and decided to disengage and continue walking toward our compatriots. There's not a lot of point in arguing with people in these sorts of venues. At that point, though, somebody smacked me in the head, presumably trying to knock my hat off. He then ran off. There was a cop right next to me, so I complained that I had just been smacked. The cop asked me if I could describe the guy, so I said "It's the bald guy in the pink shirt holding a Deval sign that just hit me in front of you, and ran off." He grudgingly sauntered off in his direction.

I decided not to make a big deal of it and continued toward my group. It seemed like every single Deval supporter was a bused-in union member holding identical mass produced signs that had been left on the street for them in bulk. My sister overheard some of them talking about how they were being paid $40 apiece to show up and hold signs (apparently they've had a pay cut since the $50 they were paid during the Scott Brown campaign).

I stood next to a friend of mine who was waving the Taunton "Liberty and Union" flag. On my right was another union guy, who kept putting his sign in front of mine. That's fine, as I'm used to that at political rallies like that. What wasn't fine, however, was how he and the people around him kept "accidentally" elbowing me and hitting me with their signs. I told them to cut it out, but they shrugged it off, saying "I can't control the wind." Any time I talked to my friends (usually joking about the impending end of the days of public sector unions suckling at the public teat) or asked the thugs to leave us alone (or regrettably argued with them), they responded by issuing more vague threats like "You'd better stop flapping your gums... or else."...