Fulfilling the dream -- a.k.a. Obama Evening News.

He's a Muslim. He was sworn into office on the Koran. He doesn't say the Pledge of Allegiance. His pastor is an anti-Semite. He's a tool of Louis Farrakhan. He's anti-Israel. His advisers are anti-Israel. He's friends with terrorists. The terrorists want him to win. He's the Antichrist.

By now you've probably seen at least some of these e-mails and articles about Barack Obama bouncing around the Internet. They distort Obama's religious faith, question his support for Israel, warp the identity and positions of his campaign advisers and defame his friends and allies from Chicago. The purpose of the smear is to paint him as an Arab-loving, Israel-hating, terrorist-coddling, radical black nationalist. That picture couldn't be further from the truth, but you'd be surprised how many people have fallen for it. The American Jewish community, one of the most important pillars of the Democratic Party and US politics, has been specifically targeted [see Eric Alterman's column in the March 24 issue, "(Some) Jews Against Obama"]. What started as a largely overlooked fringe attack has been thrust into the mainstream -- used as GOP talking points, pushed by the Clinton campaign, echoed by the likes of Meet the Press host Tim Russert. Falsehoods are repeated as fact, and bits of evidence become "elaborate constructions of malicious fantasy," as the Jewish Week, America's largest Jewish newspaper, editorialized.

The fact of the matter is that you can't believe everything the media tells you about Obama or Hillary for that matter. So, the purpose of these diaries will be to get out accurate information about Barack Obama. Occasionally, I will give out a special comment instead, where I comment at length on one issue.

Barack Obama represents the fulfillment of the dream of Martin Luther King -- the dream that one day, all Americans would be created equal. Throughout the years of segregation, the hate, lynchings, anger, and polarizations tore this country apart. And even today, when we have made much progress towards equality, there is still widespread institutionalized racism in this country. Blacks are sent to jail disproportionately, denied the right to vote, live in poverty a lot more than whites, arrested for Driving While Black.

And on top of that, modern Republicanism is nothing more than recycled racism. It is simply an insidious attempt to mainstream hate by substituting the open racism of segregation with the dog whistle politics of the current Republican party. And Jeremiah Wright, for all his seeming irrationality, captures the rage and anger that we all feel at the current state of things:

But that is not the end point, but the starting point of understanding where Barack Obama comes from and where he would lead us. Martin Luther King had a dream that one day, we would be able to move beyond that anger that Wright captures and create a society where all people are equal, people are lifted out of poverty, and every child's life matters.

And now, Barack Obama is the fulfilment of the dream in many respects. He would not polarize the country; the whole point of his campaign is to move the country beyond the anger and the irrationality and the pain that is captured in Wright's sermons. Wright himself understands these concepts; hence, his Audacity of Hope sermon:

Asking Obama to totally disassociate himself from his pastor would be tantamount to asking him to totally deny who he is. No reasonable person should have to be asked that. Wright's sermons are very angry, irrational, and troubling. But Obama learned to redirect that anger into something for good; hence his choice, for instance, to become a community organizer instead of getting a cushy high-priced job.

Barack Obama compliments the teachings of Wright, but that does not mean that he will polarize the country. Instead, he will heal the anger and the divides between us.

Obama is the fulfillment of the Dream because of his huge coattails. Not only will he win, he will carry many downballot races on his coattails, meaning that we will get a working majority in Congress. That means that we can get rid of Don't Ask Don't Tell. That means that we can get the expansion of SCHIP passed. That means that we can think of things that were unthinkable before, like the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment and the codification of Roe into law. That means that we can give Africa the attention it deserves and bring about peace in that region. There would be no more scaremongering, Guantanamos, or
renditions like this one, where a Yemeni man tells Amnesty International about the three years he spent in CIA prisons.

Obama repudiates his pastor's controversial remarks:

The pastor of my church, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who recently preached his last sermon and is in the process of retiring, has touched off a firestorm over the last few days. He's drawn attention as the result of some inflammatory and appalling remarks he made about our country, our politics, and my political opponents.

Let me say at the outset that I vehemently disagree and strongly condemn the statements that have been the subject of this controversy. I categorically denounce any statement that disparages our great country or serves to divide us from our allies. I also believe that words that degrade individuals have no place in our public dialogue, whether it's on the campaign stump or in the pulpit. In sum, I reject outright the statements by Rev. Wright that are at issue.

Because these particular statements by Rev. Wright are so contrary to my own life and beliefs, a number of people have legitimately raised questions about the nature of my relationship with Rev. Wright and my membership in the church. Let me therefore provide some context.

As I have written about in my books, I first joined Trinity United Church of Christ nearly twenty years ago. I knew Rev. Wright as someone who served this nation with honor as a United States Marine, as a respected biblical scholar, and as someone who taught or lectured at seminaries across the country, from Union Theological Seminary to the University of Chicago. He also led a diverse congregation that was and still is a pillar of the South Side and the entire city of Chicago. It's a congregation that does not merely preach social justice but acts it out each day, through ministries ranging from housing the homeless to reaching out to those with HIV/AIDS.

Most importantly, Rev. Wright preached the gospel of Jesus, a gospel on which I base my life. In other words, he has never been my political advisor; he's been my pastor. And the sermons I heard him preach always related to our obligation to love God and one another, to work on behalf of the poor, and to seek justice at every turn.

The statements that Rev. Wright made that are the cause of this controversy were not statements I personally heard him preach while I sat in the pews of Trinity or heard him utter in private conversation. When these statements first came to my attention, it was at the beginning of my presidential campaign. I made it clear at the time that I strongly condemned his comments. But because Rev. Wright was on the verge of retirement, and because of my strong links to the Trinity faith community, where I married my wife and where my daughters were baptized, I did not think it appropriate to leave the church.

Let me repeat what I've said earlier. All of the statements that have been the subject of controversy are ones that I vehemently condemn. They in no way  reflect my attitudes and directly contradict my profound love for this country.

With Rev. Wright's retirement and the ascension of my new pastor, Rev. Otis Moss, III, Michelle and I look forward to continuing a relationship with a church that has done so much good. And while Rev. Wright's statements have pained and angered me, I believe that Americans will judge me not on the basis of what someone else said, but on the basis of who I am and what I believe in; on my values, judgment and experience to be President of the United States.

Now, on to the REAL news:
The life story of Obama's mother:

In the capsule version of the Barack Obama story, his mother is simply the white woman from Kansas. The phrase comes coupled alliteratively to its counterpart, the black father from Kenya. On the campaign trail, he has called her his "single mom." But neither description begins to capture the unconventional life of Stanley Ann Dunham Soetoro, the parent who most shaped Mr. Obama.

Kansas was merely a way station in her childhood, wheeling westward in the slipstream of her furniture-salesman father. In Hawaii, she married an African student at age 18. Then she married an Indonesian, moved to Jakarta, became an anthropologist, wrote an 800-page dissertation on peasant blacksmithing in Java, worked for the Ford Foundation, championed women’s work and helped bring microcredit to the world’s poor.

She had high expectations for her children. In Indonesia, she would wake her son at 4 a.m. for correspondence courses in English before school; she brought home recordings of Mahalia Jackson, speeches by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. And when Mr. Obama asked to stay in Hawaii for high school rather than return to Asia, she accepted living apart — a decision her daughter says was one of the hardest in Ms. Soetoro’s life.

Obama lists earmarks:

Senator Barack Obama on Thursday released a list of $740 million in earmarked spending requests that he had made over the last three years, and his campaign challenged Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to do the same.

The list included $1 million for a hospital where Mr. Obama’s wife works, money for several projects linked to campaign donors and support for more than 200 towns, civic institutions and universities in Illinois.

But as the Senate debated a bill to restrict the controversial method of paying for home-state projects — a measure defeated Thursday evening — Mr. Obama’s presidential campaign also said that only about $220 million worth of his requests had been approved by Congress. And among those that had been killed were his request in 2006 for $1 million for an expansion of the University of Chicago Medical Center, where Mr. Obama’s wife, Michelle, is a vice president.

You can find his earmark requests here and here.

Target Date for Michigan revote June 3rd.

Bring it on!

Robert Scheer: Why we need Iran to get us out of Iraq:

Are the media dumb or just out to lunch? Sorry to be intemperate, but how else can one explain the meager attention paid to the truly historic visit of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Iraq? Not only is he the first Mideast head of state to visit the country since its alleged liberation, but the very warm official welcome offered by the Iraqi government to the most vociferous critic of the United States speaks volumes to the abject failure of the Bush doctrine.

On Tuesday, Condoleezza Rice reiterated the administration's position that Iran is behind the turmoil that has engulfed the Mideast from Beirut to Baghdad and, most recently, Israel, where what she claims are Iranian-supplied rockets have totally destroyed the belated Bush peace plan. There is also the matter of Iran's nuclear program, which President Bush condemned once again over the weekend. But what leverage does the United States have over Iran when, as the image of Ahmadinejad holding hands with the top leaders of Iraq demonstrated to the world, we have put the disciples of the Iranian ayatollahs in power in Baghdad? There is no face-saving exit from Iraq without the cooperation of Tehran, and the folks who call America the "Great Satan" now hold the high cards.

How interesting that Ahmadinejad, unlike a U.S. president who has to be airlifted unannounced into ultra-secure bases, was able to convoy in from the airport in broad daylight on a road that U.S. dignitaries fear to travel. His love fest with Iraq President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd who fought on Iran's side against Iraq and who speaks Farsi, even took place outside of the safety of the Green Zone, adding emphasis to Ahmadinejad's claim that while he is welcome in Iraq, the Americans are not.

This is why Barack Obama is the most qualified candidate for our next President. Obama is the most qualified because he understands more than Hillary Clinton that we need to take bold diplomatic steps in order to extract ourselves out of the mess in Iraq.

Post-Wright tracking poll -- Obama 50, Clinton 42 (Rasmussen).
Obama 50, Clinton 44 (Gallup).

The American people simply don't give a rat's behind about Wright.

And neither does superdelegate Melissa Schroder, who endorsed him today:

Melissa Schroeder said: "After much consideration, I have decided to endorse Senator Barack Obama. My decision came down to electability and who I felt would do a better job of unifying this country for a common purpose. Obama's message of hope and change has touched millions of voters in a way that I haven't seen since the late 1960's.  People from every walk of life, young and the not so young, Democrats, Independentsand some Republicans, are all rallying around a belief that change can happen if we want it bad enough.  With Obama as our nominee, I am confident that this November we will increase our majority in the House and Senate and elect a Democrat to the White House."

Michelle Obama in the Main Line Suburbs of Philadelphia:

Mrs. Obama visited a day-care center here and read Dr. Seuss' "The Cat in the Hat" to some children. She then sat for a half-hour discussion with five women — in front of about 50 people, most of them women, and a phalanx of cameras — and talked about the pressures of trying to balance work and family life.

... Mrs. Obama said [her husband] wanted to build a new majority in Congress because without it, no Democratic plan for health care or anything else could pass.

"His ability to win in all kinds of states is something we haven't seen in a while," she added, noting that he was attracting both independents and moderate Republicans, of whom there are many in this area. "Welcome, welcome," she said to those voters. She said her husband's candidacy was "the first time in a while that people have felt energized, and that energy isn't just fluff."

... Her visit helped change the mind of at least one of her listeners. Michelle Daniszewski, 35, a teacher who lives in Drexel Hill and has two young girls, said she came to the event undecided. In fact, she came just to listen but ended up being asked by the campaign to be one of the women to sit and talk with Mrs. Obama.

More on Michelle Obama's visit here and here and here. You can watch a video of it here.

Big Tent Democrat on Obama's electability:

I favor Barack Obama in this contest because I see no substantive differences on the issues meaningful to me (others see such differences, it is due to their taking meaning in differences I do not find meaning in) and because I find Obama more electable than Clinton (mostly because of how each is perceived and treated by the Media and existing negative baggage (unfair baggage no doubt) for Clinton.) Obama is also an electoral map changer in the West, where Democrats can make real short and medium term gains (as opposed to the South.) The one worry on that front is his weakness with Latinos.

And Brownstein:

In a recent Pew Research Center survey, for instance, Obama carried independents against McCain by 6 percentage points, while McCain carried them against Clinton by the same amount; the difference mostly reflected Obama's stronger showing among independents earning at least $50,000 annually. Other surveys, such as a Quinnipiac University poll in the key battleground of Pennsylvania, have found that Obama also swipes more Republicans from McCain than Clinton does.

This all tracks Obama strengths familiar from the primaries. But primary-season trends more troubling for Obama are also persisting. In the national Pew survey, and in Quinnipiac polls of Ohio and Pennsylvania, Obama lost more Democrats to McCain than Clinton did. In the Pew survey, Obama struggled particularly among the same blue-collar white Democrats resisting him in the primaries: Fully 30 percent of white Democrats earning less than $30,000 a year preferred McCain over Obama. Clinton would lose only half as many of them to McCain, the polls indicate. In the Quinnipiac surveys, Clinton likewise outpolled Obama against McCain among white women without college degrees, a key general election swing group that has overwhelmingly preferred her in the primaries.

Findings like these help explain why many Democrats think Obama offers greater potential rewards as a nominee, but also presents greater risks. If Obama runs well, he seems more likely than Clinton to assemble a big majority and trigger a Democratic sweep -- not only by attracting independents and crossover Republicans but also by increasing turnout among African-Americans and young people.

Communications Workers of America organize for the Employee Free Choice Act:

The union movement’s nationwide drive to get at least 1 million signatures in support of the Employee Free Choice Act is gaining steam. Four hundred members of the Communications Workers of America (CWA) already have signed postcards to tell the new president and Congress that working families across America want them to immediately enact the legislation.

The cards will be presented to the new Congress after the November elections in a ceremony at the U.S. Capitol. (You can show your support for the Employee Free Choice Act by clicking here to sign our online card.)

CWA President Larry Cohen, who chairs the AFL-CIO Organizing Committee, says:

The corporate bullies who are scared to death of the Employee Free Choice Act have millions of dollars to spend to try to defeat it. Our side has millions of working families who are fed up with having their rights stomped on, and our postcard campaign is one way we will make that abundantly clear to lawmakers.

Obama supports the EFCA; from a 2007 union rally:

Downtown Chicago turned green today as nearly 2,000 green-shirted AFSCME members, waving signs and banners proclaiming "It’s Time for Justice" and "It’s Time for Respect," rallied in the Windy City in support of the Employee Free Choice Act and the 10,000 health care and support service workers fighting for justice at Resurrection Health Care (RHC).

The RHC workers’ struggle got a big shot in the arm from hometown Senator and presidential candidate Barack Obama, elected officials and top union leaders who joined the workers for the mass rally in Chicago.

The crowd, which overflowed the ballroom of a local hotel, cheered when Obama declared the House passage of the Employee Free Choice Act on Thursday and

said loud and clear that if most workers in an organization want a union, they’ll get a union.  And now we’re gonna make sure the Senate passes the Employee Free Choice Act too.  And then we’ll let the White House know that the working men and women of America believe it’s time to make this the law of the land.

Controlling Mercury Pollution:

From an Oceana email:

This week, Rep. Jan Schakowsky introduced The Missing Mercury in Manufacturing Monitoring and Mitigation Act, which would require chlorine companies to switch to mercury-free technology by 2012. Schakowsky and other Representatives are working to eliminate a major industrial source of mercury pollution. When released to the environment, mercury ends up in our oceans, contaminating seafood. Humans and other creatures exposed to high levels of mercury in fish can experience health effects, such as delayed neurological development in children.

Emitting mercury isn't good for public health, the environment or a company's bottom line. Our studies show that even though it takes a large initial investment to switch the technology, many companies that have switched can recover the majority of their costs in just five years. Over 115 plants around the world have invested in mercury-free technology and have seen that modern technology is more energy efficient, eliminates environmental fines and other costs associated with using mercury and can allow companies to increase production.

Sponsored by Barack Obama in the Senate:

U.S. Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) today reintroduced the Missing Mercury in Manufacturing Monitoring and Mitigation Act, which prohibits the use of mercury in chlorine or caustic soda manufacturing by the year 2012. This legislation was prompted by an in-depth report published by the Chicago Tribune that highlighted the extent of mercury contamination in the fish eaten by Americans. Much of the mercury emitted into the environment today is a result of chlorine and caustic soda production. Oceana, an environmental group, today released a report highlighting that several chlorine production plants continue to threaten public health through their mercury production.

"The level of mercury in the fish we eat continues to remain high, posing a particularly acute health threat to pregnant women and children," said Senator Obama. "We know that mercury can cause serious developmental problems in children and problems affecting vision, motor skills, blood pressure, and fertility in adults. This bill will phase out the use of mercury in U.S. plants that manufacture chlorine and caustic soda. Cost effective technology is available today to transition these plants to safer production processes, keeping all of us and our environment safer and healthier."

Call your Congressman and ask them to co-sponsor HR 5580.

Georgetown Professor Emma Coleman Jordan endorses Obama over Ferarro flap:

Georgetown law professor Emma Coleman Jordan, an Obama supporter who sat on the fence for a long time because she so admired Hillary Clinton, sees the Ferraro episode as "part of a systematic project" to raise Obama's negatives. "It is so sad that we've come to this," she said, "that a Democratic Party liberal [Clinton] has chosen to pick up the dirtiest tool in the political box to win. I'm sad. You can put that in a quote. But it's no longer possible to avoid the conclusion that this string of events is not an accident."

The Ferarro affair is bleeding support from Hillary Clinton.

More on Hillary Clinton's scorched earth policy:

As I said, Obama was running well ahead of Clinton in head-to-head matchups a few weeks ago, and now they're tied. After several more weeks of Clinton reinforcing McCain's message against Obama, Clinton will probably be performing better than Obama against McCain. This is the point I made in my TRB column. She needs to convince the remaining uncommitted superdelegates to split for her by about a 2-to-1 margin. The only way she can get a split like that is if she can persuasively argue that Obama is unelectable. And the only way she can do that is to make him unelectable. Some people have treated this as an unfortunate byproduct of Clinton's decision to continue her campaign. It's actually a central element of the strategy. Penn is already saying he's unelectable. It's not true, but by the time the convention rolls around, it may well be.

Dahr Jamail: Where has all the happiness gone in Iraq?

After losing sight of what they knew to be normal life, residents across Baquba seem to have fallen into a depression.

Close to the fifth anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, March 19, Iraqis today say they feel humiliated in their own country. "People have forgotten how to be happy," says resident Bashar Ameen. "Each day, we have only more suffering."

On the two main Islamic festivals through a year, Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha, people customarily buy new clothes and decorate their homes. It is meant to be a time of happiness and reconciliation. Now it is on these days that depression is most apparent.

"We did not prepare for the recent festival because we do not feel it is the joyous occasion it used to be," Aiman Nory, an employee at the directorate-general of education told IPS.

Children are forgetting the joy of what were the big days for them. "Before the invasion, streets were full on festival days with children playing and families walking about," Abdul-Kareem Faraj, a 44-year-old who once owned a sweets shop told IPS. "This occupation has killed the happiness of children.

"We need to be happy for the sake of our children. Families used to buy large amounts of sweets for the festivals, and we used to prepare the shop to receive a large number of customers, but now I have closed my shop because people quit buying sweets."

And our troops are faring no better:

Viges, like others who spoke, said that U.S. troops routinely detained innocent people during home raids.

"We never went on the right raid where we got the right house, much less the right person -- not once," he said.

He also said it was common practice for troops to take photographs as "war trophies".

"We were driving in Baghdad one day and found a dead body on the side of the road," Viges said. "We pulled over to secure the area and my friends jumped off and started taking pictures with it, smiling. They asked me if I wanted to join them and I said no, but not because it was unethical, but because it wasn't my kill. Because you shouldn't take trophies with those you didn't kill. I wasn't upset this man was dead, but just that they shouldn't be taking credit for something they didn't do. But that's war."

More and more people are getting sick and tired of the occupation of Iraq. The International Longshoreman Worker's Union will shut down our ports on May 1st as a way of demanding an end to the occupation of Iraq. More and more people are seeing through the lies of the "surge."

Barack Obama is the one candidate with a specific end date for the occupation of Iraq. John McCain would continue the occupation for another 100 years.

Ohio is Ground Zero in predatory lending industry:

Ohio is ground zero in a battle for the industry's survival. The industry has a privileged position in the marketplace due to special-interest legislation passed in 1995. During that time, the industry received an exemption from Ohio's usury laws that permits them to charge 391% interest on a typical $300 two-week loan. They use a postdated check as security and are not interested in a borrower's ability to repay. When the loan comes due, borrowers are more often than not forced to seek another cash advance to pay off the first one. This starts them down the path of multiple loans, which places them into a debt trap by which they end up owing their soul to the neighborhood payday lending store. A report by the Ohio Coalition for Responsible Lending, titled "Trapped by Design: Ohio Payday Lending by the Numbers," found that the average Ohio payday borrower takes out 12.6 loans per year. More than 300,000 borrowers find themselves ensnared in a debt trap from which they cannot easily escape.

Barack Obama's plan to reform payday loans:

Cap Outlandish Interest Rates on Payday Loans and Improve Disclosure: In the wake of reports that some service members were paying 800 percent interest on payday loans, the U.S. Congress took bipartisan action to limit interest rates charged to service members to 36 percent. Barack Obama believes that we must extend this protection to all Americans, because predatory lending continues to be a major problem for low and middle income families alike. Obama also believes that we need to ensure that all Americans have access to clear and simplified information about loan fees, payments and penalties, which is why he'll require lenders to provide this information during the loan application process...

...Barack Obama will work with his Secretary of Treasury and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to encourage banks, credit unions and Community Development Financial Institutions to provide affordable short-term and small dollar loans – and to drive the sharks out of business.

Obama announced his plan at an Albuquerque press conference with Federico Pena, former Mayor of Denver and U.S. Secretary of Transportation and Energy; Bill Daley, former U.S. Secretary of Commerce; Patricia Madrid, former New Mexico Attorney General; Austan Goolsbee, an economics professor and senior Obama economic advisor; and Bonnie Greathouse, the lead organizer for ACORN New Mexico. Greathouse (ACORN) also announced her endorsement of Obama.

Barack Obama's position on Tibet, as of 2007:

"His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled leader, stands among the great moral figures of our time. His mission is reflected by personal example – a life led in humility, moral courage and the belief in the redemptive power of human compassion.

"Today we celebrate the Dalai Lama, not only as the spiritual rock for the Tibetan people, but also for his tireless advocacy for religious harmony, non-violence and human rights throughout the world.

"I am proud and honored to join my colleagues and all Americans in paying tribute to the Dalai Lama. By bestowing on him the Congressional Gold Medal, we send a clear message of our commitment and support for his efforts to find a peaceful solution to the Tibet issue through dialogue with the Chinese leadership.

"The people of Tibet have a distinct and rich culture, and the Dalai Lama occupies a special place in their Buddhist beliefs and practices. The Dalai Lama has been consistent in his message that he does not seek independence for Tibet, that he supports the integrity and unity of the People's Republic of China, and that he aims for a solution based on Tibetan autonomy within China.

"I am pleased that China has been willing to enter into discussions about Tibet's future, including inviting the representatives of the Dalai Lama to China for a sixth round of talks earlier this summer.

"But it is now time for the Chinese leadership to engage in a dialogue with the Dalai Lama directly, allow him to return to Tibet, and work with him to assure the identity and cultural integrity of Tibet and to address the legitimate needs of the Tibetan people.
"Taking such steps will build the basis for long-term stability in this strategic part of that country."

The Tibet situation is continuing to deteriorate.

Obama's union support has these corporate welfare supporters crying the blues:

Does the acceptance of hundreds of thousands of dollars and resources from union PACs mean the Senator will be beholden to organized labor as President? Perhaps a passage from his memoir, via the Investors' Business Daily, will shed some light on the question:

"For seven years I had been (the unions') ally in the state legislature, sponsoring many of their bills and making their case on the floor," Obama wrote in his political memoir, "The Audacity of Hope."

He credits unions with saving his U.S. Senate bid. After the AFL-CIO backed a rival for the Democratic nomination, several big service worker unions endorsed Obama anyway, helping him get the nod.

"So I owe those unions. When their leaders call, I do my best to call them back right away," he wrote, adding, "I don't consider this corrupting in any way. . . . I got into politics to fight for these folks, and I'm glad a union is around to remind me of their struggles."

Perhaps his views on PAC campaign-funding are indeed "still evolving" -- particularly when the PACs belong to unions. But just this week, campaigning in Ohio, Sen. Obama left no doubt about his future legislative priorities as President:

"It is time to let unions do what they do best: organize," Obama said during a stop at a drywall factory in Lorain, Ohio. "That&