It gets angrier from there:

- “the DNC is running insidious advertisements and the White House has launched its “Great American Snitch” program at flag@whitehouse.com.”

- “dare you speak of the anointed one and you are a racist.”

- “Left wing blogs attack Governor Sarah Palin and made allegations that her young Son Trig is not hers.”

- “No one is questioning the law license inactive status of First Lady Michele Obama. And what is up with twenty-two staffers for the First Lady Michele?”

- “The Bush twins were regularly part of media attacks, dare no one speak of the Obama daughters who attend wonderful — and very expensive — Sidwell Friends private school.”

- “As a 22 year US Army combat veteran I can tell you when I smell fear, and the left wing liberal socialists are stinking up the place.”

Now, the district that West is trying to take for the GOP is a classic swing seat; it voted only 52-48 for Obama in 2008, and West lost an underdog campaign to Rep. Klein by only 10 points. It’s saying something that West would eschew an under-the-radar moderate campaign and instead breath fire on a national conservative Website in order to gin up support from the party’s base. Was there any successful 2006 Democratic challenger who launched a campaign by asking why no one was investigating First Lady Laura Bush’s scandals?

Just sayin’.

After two nights of “jokes” at the expense of Palin and her family, Letterman tried to explain himself and offer something of an apology. On his June 10 show, Letterman said he was referring to Palin’s 18-year-old daughter, Bristol — not the 14-year-old daughter who actually accompanied Palin on her New York trip. Letterman said “I recognize that these are ugly” jokes. NOW agrees. Comedians in search of a laugh should really know better than to snicker about men having sex with teenage girls (or young women) less than half their age.

The organization appends a request that “all the conservatives who are fired up about sexism in the media lately will join us in calling out sexism when it is directed at women who aren’t professed conservatives,” but curiously it dredges up the old example of Rush Limbaugh mocking Chelsea Clinton instead of the very fresh and nearly omnipresent sexist jokes about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and first lady Michelle Obama. If nothing else, this negates Roger Pilon’s atypically fatuous question about Palin and Letterman: “Where is the outrage from the Left? Where are the feminists?”

Why was the tape never revealed and used? One theory is that the hardline conservatives in possession of the tape did not want John McCain to win, a plausible theory given the hard right’s reluctance in general to aid McCain’s campaign.

It’s at least as plausible as Johnson’s other theories. But why did I bring this up in the first place? One: The “whitey” hoax was a fascinating little election subplot, a race-baiting hoax that made it all the way from Johnson’s blog to the campaign rumor mill to Fox News broadcasts. Two: It’s a quaint story, in retrospect, and the effort to paint Michelle Obama as a hateful, bitter racial separatist seems almost like science fiction today.

I now have it from two sources that there is video dynamite–Michelle Obama railing against “whitey” at Jeremiah Wright’s church. Republicans may have a lousy record when it comes to the economy and the management of the war in Iraq, but they are hell on wheels when it comes to opposition research. Someone took the chance and started reviewing the recordings from services at Jeremiah Wright’s United Church of Christ. Holy smoke!! I am told there is a clip that is being held for the fall to drop at the appropriate time. The last thing Barack and Michelle need is a new clip that raises further questions about her judgment and temperament.

Johnson posted a video of a then-current Tennessee Republican ad attacking Michelle Obama, then continued his argument.

When the ugly video tapes about Jeremiah Wright’s racist ravings first broke Barack Obama told us he could no more disown Jeremiah Wright than his own Grandmother. Well, we all know how that turned out. So will Barack stand by Michelle when the tape emerges of her verbally attacking “whitey?” Republicans, who are otherwise gloomy about prospects in November, recognize that this recording will create real problems for Barack and give them a shot at the White House. It is their October surprise.

Does Barack have an obligation to tell the Democrats, super delegates in particular, about this tape? Did Barack and his campaign do their basic homework and identify this tape as a potential problem? And, more importantly, do they have a copy? Probably better to deal with this issue before the convention rather than wait for October. What do you think?

The post drew more than 600 comments and kicked off three heated weeks of blog-driven rumormongering which I recapped at the time for The American Prospect. One year later, no such tape has ever surfaced.

First lady Michelle Obama called her “current life” in the White House “a very blessed situation, because I have what most families don’t have — tons of support all around, not just my mother, but staff and administration. I have a chief of staff and a personal assistant, and everyone needs that.”

“Everyone should have a chief of staff and a set of personal assistants,” Obama said with a laugh as she spoke before a crowd of business executives…

Drudge links it, with the headline: “Everyone should have a chief of staff and a set of personal assistants.”

Hilarity, as seen in the comments of the Washington Post’s article, ensues. From the obvious:

That ranks up there with “Let them eat cake.”

Unlike most working parents Michelle doesn’t have to worry about the quality of the private school her children attend. She has a choice that most of us are denied by the Democrats and the Teachers’ Union. Between Arugela and Wagu beef, and obnoxious airplane jaunts on AirForce one that terrorize a city – where does it end?

To obscure stories from New York tabloids:

Meanwhile, the rest of us toil to support the “$540 Tennis Shoes” lifestyle.

“Everyone should have a Chief of Staff, and a set of personal assistants.’ Yeah. But what everybody REALLY SHOULD HAVE, is a pair of $500 SNEAKERS, when they go out to feed the poor. Wouldn’t you agree?

From historical racism:

Do not ever forget that it was their own black brothers that sold the Africans into slavery. Michelle seems to enjoy servants, eh?

Michelle deserves a “chief of staff and personal assistants.” She’s “entitled.” Thanks Abe, you emancipated this crap.

To straight-up racism:

Tell the Ari to go back to Chicago. This chimp is a disgrace to this nation. Although Laura Bush will get no credit she was one of the most eloquent First Ladies ever.

ROME had Nero, who fiddled while it burned. Washington has its negro, while the USA is going down in flames.

This is sort of crazy: It doesn’t take some deep reading of the text to see that the First Lady was making light of all the advantages of White House life. If there’s a larger lesson here, it’s that the flowering of conservative media outlets are leading to the creation of so many “gaffes” and “scandals” that none of them are really sticking. Michelle Obama’s approval rating is above 70 percent.

Der Spiegel reports on the shock that has rippled through the German-speaking world after Klaus Emmerich, the “Wolf Blitzer of Austria,” said on a TV talk show, “I wouldn’t want the Western world to be directed by a black man.” Emmerich has refused to apologize, arguing that “blacks aren’t as politically civilized” — but he did call Michelle Obama a “very good-looking woman.”

In Rome, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi asserted that Obama would have no problem establishing good relations with Russia because Obama is “handsome, young and sun-tanned.” In response to accusations of racism, Berlusconi called his critics “imbeciles without any sense of humor.”

El Pais, Spain’s leading paper, which has obsessively covered the U.S. presidential election for months, leads its “Estados Unidos” page with a long analysis of Michelle Obama’s election-night outfit.

And Le Monde of France calls Obama the first spammer president under the headline, “With Obama, ‘Yes they spam!’”

Take a look at these and other stories from the Old Continent. Bonus points if you’re bi- or trilingual:

Austrian Journalist Slammed for Racist Obama Rant (Der Spiegel International)

Gaffe su Obama, Berlusconi rilancia “Le critiche? Ci sono tanti imbecilli” (On Obama Gaffe, Berlusconi Retorts, “The Criticisms? They Are All Imbecilic”) (La Stampa)

El vestido de cambio (The Dress of Change) (El Pais)

Avec Obama, “Yes they spam!” (With Obama, “Yes they spam!”) (Le Monde)

Obama’s victory: a change the world should believe in (Financial Times)

Where’s Europe’s Obama? (Der Spiegel International)

Obama GOTV literature today.

“I feel great and it was fun, I had a chance to vote with my daughters,” Obama told reporters later on the airport tarmac, “I feel really good.”

Another reporter asked if Obama felt “sentimental.”

“You know I’m sure I will tonight – that’s when polls close,” he said, just before the campaign plane departed for Indiana. “The journey ends but voting with my daughters, that was a big deal. I noticed that Michelle took a long time though. I had to check to see who she was voting for,” he added.

Obama voted at Beluah Shoesmith Elementary School. With more than 50 state and local judges on the ballot, the Democratic presidential nominee spent quite a bit of time at the booth. NBC’s “Today Show” carried a live feed of the long ordeal, and, at one point, an anchor felt compelled to tell viewers that voting did not usually take that long, so people should not be dissuaded from turning out today. A pool report detailed the family scene:

Michelle, Sasha and Malia accompanied [Obama]. Malia went into the polling booth with Michelle and Sasah hung out in her own polling booth looking very grown up. She then looked on as Obama cast his ballot. Later, she hugged Obama’s leg looking impatient… Michelle took longer than Obama to finish her ballot. She did not look up from the ballot at all, while Obama grinned occassionally at his daughters.

With seamless timing, the Obama campaign had Sen. Joe Biden cued up to vote for the cameras as soon as Obama left the booth.

Meanwhile, it seems there will be no footage of President George W. Bush voting today. Both nominees ended up running against the incumbent. Bush already voted by mail to avoid being seen today — and maybe further damaging the possibilities of Sen. John McCain.

But wait, weren’t all the experts and pundits worrying about Obama’s demise just one month ago? Well times change.

Markets fall. Running mates get exposed as embarassingly unqualified. So now this week’s conventional wisdom — first teed up on the front page of the Sunday New York Times and now spreading across the chattering class — is that Obama will not only win, but win big.

The Times analysis focused on the economy, reporting that pocketbook issues were powering Obama “in at least nine states that voted for President Bush in 2004, including some that neither side thought would be on the table this close to Election Day.”

The piece included caveats, but flip to the back of the paper and you’ll find bolder predictions. On Monday, conservative columnist David Brooks flatly “called the election for Obama.” (He was speaking at the American Magazine Conference, as Advertising Age reported.) Even Clintonites are getting in on the act.

“It’s over,” says Howard Wolfson, the Clinton press strategist turned Fox News commentator (and sometime blogger). “If the election were tomorrow, Obama would win all of the states John Kerry carried and add Iowa, New Mexico, Colorado, Virginia, Nevada, Ohio and Florida,” he blogged this week. “This dynamic is very unlikely to change. John McCain’s goal in the first debate was to discredit Sen. Obama as a credible commander in chief… He didn’t come close. Absent a domestic terror attack the economy will remain the No. 1 issue in the race, and there is little Sen. McCain can do to make up [the] gap.”

I found the August hand-wringing about Obama’s problems overblown. While these have obviously been two great weeks for the Democratic nominee, this new narrative is also over the top.

Perceptions change quickly in politics. A “terror attack” is not the only event that could upend this race. Let’s dial it down — how about a gaffe in the remaining debates? Or new revelations about any of the candidates?

In this volatile market, you’d think people would be more careful about hedging their bets.

Her husband has already done three visits, but Michelle never found the time to sit down with Stewart. The interview will air after the second presidential debate — a night of politics and high ratings.

Michelle held her own against a more challenging Comedy Central host, the conservative/liberal firebrand Steven Colbert.  In April, she joined him for his hyperbolic, week-long Pennsylvania primary special, the “Doritos’ Spicy Sweet Pennsylvania Primary Coverage From Chili-Delphia – The City of Brotherly Crunch!”