Harry Truman

Friday's NBC Nightly News ran a report touting the prospect that President Obama could portray the current Congress as a "Do-Nothing Congress," based primarily on the number of bills passed rather than delving into the issues addressed, even making a comparison with the 1995 Republican Congress as if it could be similarly described as unproductive.

Correspondent Kelly O'Donnell's piece put most of the onus on Republicans for supposedly questionable results in Congress, as she featured early on soundbites of Democrats Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer complaining about House Republicans calling an end to the congressional session. Anchor Brian Williams set up the report:

The Washington Post treated President Obama's Detroit Labor Day rally to page A3 coverage, with a 19-paragraph September 6 story by staffer David Nakamura.

Controversial Teamsters president James P. Hoffa -- son of the late Jimmy Hoffa -- was quoted, but not the infamous "take these sons of bitches out" line that has been reported elsewhere.

Indeed, Nakamura aimed to paint the partisanship of the labor union rally in a positive light by comparing Obama to "give 'em Hell" Harry Truman's come-from-behind 1948 campaign:

It's going to be a long, hot campaign . . . Yesterday, Politico reported that the Obama strategy is to "destroy" or "kill" his perceived chief 2012 rival, Mitt Romney.  The Obamaoids are no doubt counting on close collaboration with their friends in the MSM.

Today we were treated to the kind of shameless smear that the left surely has in store.  On his MSNBC show this evening, Chris Matthews flatly stated that Rush Limbaugh . . . wants to end the integration of the public schools and armed forces. View video after the jump.

On Friday, this NewsBuster noted how Pres. Obama, questioned at a news conference in Japan, twice refused to say whether he thought the United States' dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was "the right decision."

Yesterday on Fox News Watch, Jim Pinkerton noted the NewsBusters nugget.  The Fox News contributor and New America Foundation fellow observed that PBO's failure had huge implications for America's nuclear deterrent.

Video after the jump of PBO's duck-and-cover at the Tokyo press conference.

If Obama wins on Tuesday night, Chris Matthews's mocking this morning of the notion that the polls are tightening will be soon forgotten.  But if McCain pulls off the upset, Matthews's smirking triumphalism will take its place in the halls of journalistic hubris near the famous photo of Harry Truman holding up the Dewey Defeats Truman front page.

Just before Matthews came on, Andrea Mitchell ended her set-up segment by mentioning that the McCain campaign had released internal polls showing the race tied in the battleground states.  When Meredith Vieira opened the Matthews interview by asking him to comment, the Hardball host went into full mock mode.

A beautiful woman, at once a scheming, ambitious right-wing ideologue, and the powerful, evil forces behind her, plot to seize the presidency from the man—foolish enough to have made her his running-mate—who may be concealing just how seriously sick he is, both physically and mentally!

As the stuff of straight-to-video filmmaking, not bad, perhaps.  But as the theory of an ostensibly serious column in America's newspaper of record?  And yet, that is the paranoid picture Frank Rich paints today in Pitbull Palin Mauls McCain.

Annotated excerpts:

[T]he 2008 election is now an Obama-Palin race . . .  and the only person who doesn’t seem to know it is Mr. Past, poor old John McCain.

Watch in horror, as the scheming woman plots behind the muddled McCain's back!