Although he led the full-court press for Chicago, including the first-ever in-person lobbying effort by a sitting U.S. president for the host site for an Olympic Games, Barack Obama wasn't the biggest political loser from today's stunning fourth-place finish in selection process, MSNBC's Chuck Todd insisted. [audio available here]

It was Mayor Richard M. Daley (D-Chicago).

See the video embedded at right, where you should also take note of how MSNBC's Monica Novotny attempted a first-draft of face-saving talking points for the Obama White House.

You might call it a decided understatement. Still, it was refreshing to hear a member of the White House press corps state an inconvenient truth about Pres. Obama: that he is under-supplied in the sense of humor department.

Julie Mason, White House correspondent of the Washington Examiner, offered the observation this afternoon on MSNBC. She was on to discuss the awkward situation created by the separate meetings with Pres. Obama that Hillary and Bill Clinton are having this afternoon.

When Monica Novotny asked whether PBO might take the occasion to rib her about her sharp response to the student in the Congo who asked about Bill's views, Mason offered her candid comment.

At the top of the 4:00PM ET hour on MSNBC Friday, fill-in co-anchor Monica Novotny issued a dire warning about protests at health care town hall meetings: "The town hall confrontations are turning violent....Where is all of this heading? New fears for the safety of America’s first African-American president." [Audio/video (0:33): Mp3 | WMV]

In a later segment, co-anchor David Shuster interviewed Virginia Democratic Congressman Jim Moran and asked: "We know that threats to President Obama are up by like something 400% compared to the Bush administration. Is this putting our president in some sort of danger because of some wacko that will see this stuff and say, ‘oh, yes, it’s fascism and the way we dealt with Adolf Hitler was to try to kill him, so therefore, let’s do this with our president.’"

Congressman Moran responded to that outrageous scenario by remarking: "Well, you know, it only took – takes one person. It took one person to shoot Ronald Reagan, Jack Kennedy, and so on. But I think the Secret Service can be trusted to protect the President. But it does discredit those people who are using such extreme measures to achieve an objective which is really corporate profit."

During live MSNBC coverage in the 9AM EST hour on Monday about the murder of abortion doctor George Tiller, guest Dr. Warren Hern, a fellow abortionist and friend of Tiller, declared: "Dr. Tiller's crime was that he helped women and the man who killed him tried to kill an idea. The idea is freedom. So we don't have to invade other countries to find the terrorists. They’re here killing doctors who do abortions. The difference between – the main difference between the American anti-abortion movement and the Taliban is about 8,000 miles." Instead of challenging such an incendiary statement, correspondent Monica Novotny simply concluded the segment: "Dr. Warren Hern, thank you for joining us today. We appreciate it." [audio available here]

Earlier in the interview, Novotny asked Hern: "You were quoted as saying that Dr. Tiller's death was ‘predictable.’ What was your reaction when you heard and why do you say that?" Hern explained his statement: "This was not the act of a lone deranged gunman. This is a result of 35 years of relentless and merciless anti-abortion harassment, violence, and intimidation, hate speech and violent rhetoric, and this is the absolutely predictable consequence of that kind of mindless harassment and fanaticism."