Adam Zyglis at EditorialCartoonists.com has an excellent rendition of the media's recent shift to scrutinizing Obama's every word.  

(click here to view)

Adam Zyglis The Buffalo News Apr 19, 2008 EditorialCartoonists.com

They say everything is big in Texas, and with the democratic primary coming up, this is proving to be true.  The stakes are big, and even bigger for Hillary who is faced with must wins and must landslides in Texas and Ohio.  But her desperation is showing through with some of her attacks and claims on Obama.  Let's just take a look at one of them, shall we?  At the Austin debate,  the question was raised whether or not Obama plagiarized a line from his own National Co-Chair who told him to include it in his speech.  Clinton claims this is "xeroxing hope".  However, Hillary's seems to feel just fine with her xeroxing Obama's campaign slogan. 

http://youtube.com/watch?v=nw0T25e7pK8

What's worse is that Hillary obviously doesn't know Spanish.  "Puede" is the indicative, but "pueda" is the subjunctive.  Not that "si se pueda" is proper Spanish, but it sounds more like she's saying "What if it could be done?"  Sounds like a cry of desperation to me...poorly plagiarized desperation.

*A guest post from Cheryl Lynn Cain

Growing up as a Colombian-American, I often remember people assuming that I liked spicy food, that I spoke "Mexican" and that Cinco de Mayo was "my holiday".   This confused me because Colombian food was not spicy at all and I didn't know any Mexican lingo.  But the Latino stereotype stuck, no matter how different politically, culturally, or linguistically the twenty different countries were.  It's funny because if you ask a Latino if there is a difference between Puerto Rican culture and Chilean or Bolivian culture, they emphatically answer, "Yes".  But in the media, the answer is...NO.  We are all latinos and, coincidentally, we all vote the same way. 

Huh?  What about the pro-Bush Cuban contingent who wants Fidel ousted?  What about the Venezuelan population that embraces leftist Chavez and his anti-American agenda?  What about the Colombians who are almost at war with the Venezuelans and would probably want a more conservative government in America? What about the Puerto Rican vote that has primarily stood with Obama, even authoring the "se llama obama" reggaeton ringtone?   And what about all those who disagree even with these stereotypes and boxes? 

I guess what I want to see clarified in the media is that, although Clinton apparently has the majority of the Mexican vote, this does not mean that she has the whole Latino vote, in the same way that no candidate has the whole american vote.  People are people.  Our national and personal issues are not all the same.  And, for the record, this Latina is for Obama.  I speak Spanish and don't like spicy food.

Wolf Blitzer interviewed Nancy Pelosi on the issue of the SuperDelegates today:

 
Pelosi says, "SuperDelegates were established to give many more people at the *grassroots* level the opportunity to go to the convention and be really the overwhelming majority of who will decide this convention."

Pelosi then tries to defend the notion of the SuperDelegates by claiming that they would decide within their state delegation.  Well, if they're going with the popular vote of the state, then why do we need SuperDelegates? 

She goes on to say "Hopefully a candidate will emerge soon..."  However, when Wolf asks Pelosi if she would prefer that a candidate would emerge before the convention, Pelosi backtracks and talks up the vitality that Obama and Clinton have brought with their campaigns.  "There are advantages to both" a candidate emerging before and during the convention.  Oh, and by the way, your vote is irrelevant but it doesn't matter because, "There are no losers in this..."  

Although I'd love to talk about the 13 states Obama took on Super Tuesday or the potential advantage he has in the next few primaries,  I am forced to ponder another reality that no one is talking about: superdelegates.  Because at the end of the day, with a race this tight, it's not the American people who are going to choose the nominee, it will be the Democratic Party's establishment.  And as we talk round and round about this election, I'm wondering, why isn't anyone exposing this undemocratic practice?

Superdelegates, which include democratic party members and elected officials varying from congressmen to mayors and governors, each have a vote which equals the equivalent about 153,636 voters.  As Wikipedia puts it, "Percentage wise, this means that 0.000007% of the voting population has 19.6% voting power in the 2008 Democratic Primary."   It's aristocracy guised in democracy and it reeks to me.

So the irony of course becomes that we have a candidate telling us to believe in our power to bring change and an establishment behind the scenes who is making sure we don't.   Our hopes now lie in the rest of the country's primaries to prove this otherwise. 

(Guest entry from Cheryl Lynn Cain) 

Super Tuesday was a true test of Barack's staying power.  Across the country, he won more states than Hillary, and the delegate count was about even.  So, why is the press emphasizing Clinton's lead?  A number of the Super Delegates, that group of elites who can make or break the DFL nomination, are expected to support Clinton as the Democratic nominee.  In fact, Obama could gain a larger number of delegates across the country and still lose because of these status quo, establishment Super Delegates.  Ultimately then, when all is said and done, Hillary may become the nominee and even the president because of a few people in Washington.  A few...it rings of her speech in Minneapolis on Super Bowl Sunday in which she criticized Bush for having a government "of the few, by the few and for the few."  Can we really expect anything different from Clinton? 

The real issue lies with the media.  Several of my less political friends called me today with their condolences...as if Obama had lost!  I explained that this in fact was a good day for Obama and that he is likely to drum up significant numbers of delegates as he moves forward.  The media, however, continues to depict Obama as the underdog.  Why?  The answer is: Super Delegates.  

After Obama packed out the Target Center on Saturday, Clinton made a last minute visit to Minneapolis, on SuperBowl Sunday afternoon.  Then, she showed up an hour late.  I was surprised to hear her refer to Bush's government as "of the few, by the few and for the few".  That is, another Clinton in the office would produce the same effect...Bush...Clinton...Bush...Clinton.  She also surprised me with talk of diplomacy with Iran and Syria.  Didn't Clinton say that Barack was naive for wanting to talk with the leaders of the Middle East?  Moreover, she talked about how she wants to create a unified American foreign policy by sending Democracts and Republicans around the world.  How will you get Republicans on board when they're "so mean to you"?