Here come the TV ads hitting President Obama on Solyndra.

Americans for Prosperity -- the political organization that has received financial assistance from conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch -- says it's beginning a $2.4 million TV advertising blitz with a spot highlighting the failed clean-energy company that received a loan guarantee from the Obama administration.

The ad will air in Virgina, Florida, New Mexico, and Michigan.

(Note: Koch Industries is heavily involved in the petroleum business, and thus is hardly a champion of clean-energy companies.)

*** UPDATE *** Priorities USA's Bill Burton responds to this TV ad: “Never has it been so obvious that the Koch brothers political activity is motivated by preserving and growing their multi-billion dollar oil empire. It is against our nation’s interests to cede the clean energy industry to China. Americans of all parties support investing in clean energy because it will create jobs, reduce our dependence on foreign oil, and stop billionaire oil executives like the Koch Brothers from profiting just because energy prices are high.”

“Forget the rumors that he has been sneaking cigarettes; President Obama is ‘tobacco free,’ the president’s doctor said in reporting the results of the president’s second physical since he took office,” the New York Times says. “In a two-page report released by the ‘first doctor,’ Dr. Jeffrey C. Kuhlman gave the president a strong bill of health, saying he was a physically active 50-year-old who eats a healthy diet (the president regularly cites the influence of the first lady, Michelle Obama, for that one), stays at a healthy weight and ‘on occasion drinks alcohol,’ in moderation.”

The RNC is up with a new video hitting Obama.

“Beacon Power Corp., the energy storage company that received a $43 million Energy Department (DOE) loan guarantee last year, filed for bankruptcy over the weekend, prompting a fresh wave of GOP criticism of the embattled DOE loan program,” The Hill notes.

“A Virginia county GOP committee found itself in hot water after using an image of President Obama with a bullet through his head to make a Halloween joke,” the New York Daily News reports. “An email sent by the Loudoun County GOP that included an image of Obama as a zombie [with a bullet hole in his head] has been widely criticized by Democrats and Republicans alike. The image also includes a picture of a disfigured Nancy Pelosi.”

Reaction from the state party: "The disgusting image used today on a mass e-mail has no place in our politics. Ever," Pat Mullins, chairman of the state's GOP party, told the Washington Post website. "The Republican Party of Virginia condemns the image and its use in the strongest possible terms.”

“He ran one of Wall Street’s most powerful investment banks and used to live in the New Jersey governor’s mansion,” the New York Daily News reports. “Now he’s in the throes of one of the largest bankruptcy filings in U.S. history. The curtain on the third act of ex-Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine, 64, came down with a thud Monday as the Wall Street firm he took over just a year ago filed for bankruptcy.” The company, worth just over $1 billion took a big risk in buying up $6 billion in European country bonds. “As Europe melted down, Corzine’s big European investments spooked investors and trading partners.”

In the spring of 2008, the Hillary Clinton and John McCain campaigns ganged up on then-Democratic front-runner Barack Obama -- often hitting him with the same lines of attack. He's too inexperienced. He's naive on foreign policy. His promises aren't based in reality.

And the one-two punch certainly bruised Obama, although not enough to deny him the Democratic nomination or stop his decisive general-election victory.

Now we're seeing a similar sort of tag-teaming, with the Obama White House and Rick Perry making the same exact attacks on presumptive GOP front-runner Mitt Romney.

Just check out what White House senior adviser David Plouffe said on "Meet the Press" yesterday, and what Perry said on "Fox News Sunday," per NBC's Sarah Blackwill:

Perry: He's been for pro-abortion.

Plouffe: He was an extremely pro-choice governor. Now he believes that life begins at conception.

Perry: He's been for, you know, supporting gay rights.

Plouffe: He was to the left of Ted Kennedy on gay rights issues. Now he wants to amend the Constitution to further gay marriage.

Perry: We are very, very different from the standpoint of consistency.

Plouffe: What you need in that office is conviction. you've need to have a true compass and you've got to be willing to make tough calls.

*** UPDATE *** Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul emails First Read:
“Gov. Perry and President Obama have a lot in common, including their support for tuition breaks for illegal immigrants and opposition to a border fence. They also share abysmal jobs records. Under Rick Perry, Texas unemployment has doubled. And under President Obama more middle class American’s have lost their jobs than anytime in modern history. It is no wonder their only strategy is to issue false and negative attacks on Mitt Romney.”

Senior adviser David Plouffe, who ran Obama’s 2008 campaign laid blame on congressional Republicans on Meet the Press: “Right now, we haven't been able to get largely Republicans in Congress to cooperate. So we're going to continue to push for things like cutting taxes for the middle class, putting construction workers back to work,” Plouffe said. “But in the meantime, the president's going to do everything he can, whether it's on housing, student loans, we're going to keep this up.” He also said Romney “has no core.”

David Axelrod on the economy yesterday on CNN: “The problems ... were years in the making. They are deep, they are complicated, and they’re going to require sustained perseverance and lots of ideas. There’s no silver bullet for them.”

“President Obama will issue an executive order on Monday that the administration hopes will help resolve a growing number of critical shortages of vital medicines used to treat life-threatening illnesses, among them several forms of cancer and bacterial infections,” the New York Times says.

President Obama at the National Italian-American Foundation: "I am biased, but I think Nancy was one of the best Speakers of the House this country ever had," Obama said after Pelosi had introduced him at the National Italian American Foundation gala, per The Hill. "She was no doubt the best Italian American Speaker of the House we ever had. And I believe that she will be the best Speaker of the House again in 2013." (A quick check of last names of past speakers shows there probably has never been an Italian-American speaker before.)

“Trick or treaters lucky enough to be allowed into the White House on Halloween will receive quite a treat - with a healthy twist,” the New York Daily News writes. “According to a press release, the White House will be giving out a box of special edition White House M&Ms, a proprietary sweet butter cookie and dried fruit.” On The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Obama joked, "She's been giving, for the last few years, kids fruit and raisins in a bag. And I said, 'The White House is going to get egged. You need to throw some candy in there. A couple Reese's Pieces or something.’”

Channeling a point we’ve made time and time again, the New York Times writes that Obama’s standing with African-American voters remains incredibly strong. “Despite a school of thought in Washington that Mr. Obama’s support among blacks has weakened because of the poor economy and a sense of unmet expectations, interviews and public opinion surveys show that his standing remains remarkably strong among African-Americans. The question now for the Obama campaign is whether it can energize those voters — many of whom were drawn to the polls for the first time in 2008 by the historic nature of his candidacy coupled with an aggressive registration program — even with a rate of joblessness among blacks that far exceeds national figures.”

AP

President Obama (left) during a taping with late-night talk-show host Jay Leno Tuesday.

On tonight’s episode of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, President Obama, asked whether he’s watching the GOP debates, he invoked a reference that is more 2000 than 2011.

"I'm going to wait until everybody's voted off the island," the president quipped, invoking the reality show "Survivor." "Once they've narrowed it down to one or two, I'll start paying attention."

In a more serious part of the interview, according to excerpts released, Leno asked the president about former Libyan leader Moammar Khaddafy’s death. President Obama said his demise should send a message to other dictators around the world.

“This is somebody who, for 40 years, has terrorized his country and supported terrorism," Obama said. "And he had an opportunity during the Arab Spring to finally let loose of his grip on power and to peacefully transition into democracy. We gave him ample opportunity, and he wouldn't do it.” 

The president continued, “You never like to see anybody come to the kind of end that he did, but I think it obviously sends a strong message around the world to dictators that … people long to be free.” 

According to pool reports, the president’s Tonight Show taping lasted for 25 minutes, and he will be seen in three segments. It airs tonight on NBC.

A White House official tells NBC News that President Obama this afternoon will make a statement about the U.S. security relationship with Iraq. Obama's remarks will follow a video conference with Iraq PM Maliki.

ABC is reporting that Obama will announce the complete drawdown of all U.S. troops there by the end of the year.

But NBC has yet to confirm that news.

*** UPDATE *** NBC can confirm that Obama will announce the complete of the Iraq drawdown by the end of 2011.

*** UPDATE II *** NBC's Jim Miklaszewski and Courtney Kube further report:

A senior U.S. military official says that the president will announce that ALL U.S. troops leave Iraq by the end of 2011. Some will remain there to secure the Embassy, etc. but that will be a small group (about 100 or so).

The U.S. and Iraq cannot reach an agreement on immunity for U.S. troops serving after Dec 31.

There are about 39,000 U.S. troops in Iraq now.

At the height of the U.S. surge in October 2007, there were more than 166,000 U.S. troops there.

*** UPDATE III *** Per a White House official: "Today, the president will announce that we will fulfill our commitment and complete the drawdown of US troops from Iraq by the end of the year. This will allow us to say definitively that the Iraq war is over, and that the partnership between the US and Iraq will be a normal one between two sovereign nations. During their conversation, President Obama and PM Maliki strongly agreed that this is the best way forward for both countries."

“For President Obama, the image of a bloodied Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi offers vindication, however harrowing, of his intervention in Libya, where a reluctant commander in chief put strict limits on American military engagement and let NATO allies take the lead in backing the rebels,” the New York Times says in an analysis. “Mr. Obama’s carefully calibrated response infuriated critics on the right and left, who blamed him either for ceding American leadership in a foreign conflict or for blundering into another Arab land without an exit strategy. But with Colonel Qaddafi joining the lengthening list of tyrants and terrorists dispatched during the Obama presidency, even critics conceded a success for Mr. Obama’s approach to war — one that relies on collective, rather than unilateral, action; on surgical strikes rather than massive troop deployments.”

The Obama campaign once again went after Mitt Romney on another conference call. “Campaign manager Jim Messina went straight from a brief introduction to telling reporters, ‘Last night at the debate, Mitt Romney proved he will stand for and say anything to get elected,’” Roll Call reports.

While the New York Times reported earlier that Romney is beating the president in Wall Street campaign cash, the Washington Post writes that Obama “has still managed to raise far more money this year from the financial and banking sector than Mitt Romney or any other Republican presidential candidate, according to new fundraising data.” (A reason for the discrepancy: The Post is counting Obama’s combined DNC-campaign contributions, while the Times apparently looked at just individual contributions.)

The Richmond Times-Dispatch on Obama’s day in Virginia yesterday: “He capped a three-day bus tour through North Carolina and Virginia in a fire station where he asked attendees to urge Congress to pass his $447 billion jobs package that includes funding for firefighters, police and teachers.”

“Vice President Biden ripped Republicans Wednesday during a Democratic rally on Capitol Hill, claiming the GOP puts millionaires before teachers and first responders,” The Hill writes. Biden: “I don’t know where these guys live. The critics say this costs money. Surprise, surprise — it does cost money,” Biden added. “My dad used to say if everything’s equally important to you, nothing’s important. Everything’s about priorities. … But these guys want to curry favor with guys who aren’t even asking for it.”

And this: “Are you going to put 400,000 school teachers back in classrooms, are you going to put 18,000 cops back on the street and 7,000 firefighters back in the firehouses? Or are you going to save people with average incomes of $1 million a one-half of 1 percent increase in tax on every dollar they make over a million?” 

President Obama doesn’t want his daughters keeping up with the Kardashians.

FLETCHER, NC -- In the first remarks of his three-day bus tour through North Carolina and Virginia, President Obama asked for bipartisan passage of components of his jobs bill -- before blasting Republicans on their jobs plan.

“My plan says we're going to put teachers back in the classroom, construction workers back to work rebuilding America, rebuilding our schools, tax cuts for small businesses,” he said here. “And then you got their plan, which is let's have dirtier air, dirtier water, less people with health insurance.”

The president dismissed the Republican’s ideas as ineffective. “One of the same economists that took a look at our plan took a look at the Republican plan, and they said, ‘Well, this won't do much to help the economy in the short term.” Obama continued, “We could actually lose jobs with their plan.”

He also tried to turn a negative -- having to break his bill up into its component pieces to get it through Congress, after the Senate blocked the full measure last week -- into a positive. “We’re going to break up my jobs bill. Maybe they just couldn't understand the whole thing all at once,” Obama said with a touch of humor. “I'm going to ask members of Congress to vote on one component of the plan, which is whether we should put hundreds of thousands of teachers back in the classroom and cops back on the street and firefighters back to work.”

Last month, the White House estimated that this part of the plan would cost about $35 billion and go towards aiding the states in preventing more teacher and first-responder layoffs. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said he expects an announcement from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid soon on when and how this part of the bill will be voted on. (It is unclear how this component or any individual part of the jobs plan will be paid for.)

Obama's tone was not lost on congressional Republicans. Speaker John Boehner's press secretary fired off a note calling the president’s words “hyperbole,” adding that it was the speaker and Majority Leader Eric Cantor who “first proposed working together to break up the president’s bill to see parts of it passed.”

Obama's fired-up rhetoric -- coupled with the big black bus waiting to whisk the president to his next event in Miller’s Creek, NC and previously unannounced stops like at Countryside BBQ Chicken in Marion, NC -- was also not lost on an audience that chanted “four more years” in the middle of the speech.

Obama quickly tried to quiet them, “I appreciate the 'four more years,' but right now I'm thinking about the next 13 month. Because, yes, we've got an election coming up, but that election is a long ways away and a lot of folks can't wait.”

The Detroit Free Press: “President Barack Obama and South Korean President Lee Myung-bak visit General Motors' Orion Township assembly plant today to promote a free trade agreement that could stimulate exports of U.S.-made products to South Korea, Colombia and Panama. In a show of bipartisanship, both the House of Representatives and Senate have passed the legislation. South Korea has used taxes and tariffs to make imported vehicles much more expensive than those produced in that country.”

“President Obama arrives here on Friday on another visit to Michigan, seeking not only the electoral votes that are essential to his re-election effort, but a platform for a far bigger message,” the New York Times adds. “He has returned again and again, nine times since taking office, to argue that his decision to bail out two of the Big Three automakers helped workers here and across the industrial Midwest. He has offered up a rebuttal to criticism about the value of government intervention.”

“Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood ‘let it slip to reporters that he would leave his post after 2012 at the end of President Obama's first term,’ the Wall Street Journal reports,” per Political Wire.

NEW YORK -- This Saturday marks one month since Occupy Wall Street protesters set-up camp at Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan. Since then the demonstrations have spread to dozens of cities across the country. This weekend, a global day of protests is planned, and organizers say they expect events to be held in more than 800 cities in 71 countries.

Clearly, the movement appears to be growing. Now we have some new information about how the rest of the country views what’s happening in Zuccotti Park and beyond.

From an NBC News/Wall Street Journal Poll released Wednesday:

• 37% of the country tends to support the movement; 18% oppose; 25% have no opinion. That’s more than those who say they support the Tea Party -- just 26% say they support it, while 64% say they do not.

• The movement is most popular in the Northeast, where people tend to support it 48%-15%. It is least popular in the South where 30% support, 22% oppose.

• Perhaps counter-intuitively, the movement has its highest support among the highest income earners, (those making more than $75,000 year): 40% support, 24% oppose. Among the poorest, however, it is also popular (less than 30K year): 35% support, 11% oppose.

• Among ethnic groups, the protests are popular among African-Americans, 41% support, 7% oppose; among Hispanics 35% support, 15 oppose; among Whites 37% support, 18% oppose.

• Among political parties, unsurprisingly, the movement is most popular among Democrats (56%-6%), and least popular among Republicans, where a plurality do not support 17%-34%. Independents support 34%-17%.

Since the demonstrations started there have also been nagging questions about what protesters believe in, and what they want. Early last week New York Magazine conducted an informal survey of 100 protesters at Zuccotti Park to gauge their views on everything from President Obama to capitalism. A few snippets are below.

What do you think of Obama?

• I believed in him, and he let me down: 40
• He’s doing great: 1
• I never believed in him: 27
• He’s doing the best he can: 22

Did you vote in the 2010 midterm elections?

• Yes: 39
• No: 55
• No, but only because I wasn’t 18:

Rank yourself on the following Scale of Liberalism:

• Not liberal at all: 6
• Liberal but fairly mainstream (i.e., Barack Obama): 3
• Strongly liberal (i.e., Paul Krugman): 12
• Fed up with Democrats, believe country needs overhaul (i.e., Ralph Nader): 41
• Convinced the U.S. government is no better than, say, Al Qaeda (i.e., Noam Chomsky): 34

For more from the field on Occupy Wall Street, check out msnbc.com's Field Notes blog.

*** UPDATE *** We checked to see how the supporters and opponents of Occupy Wall Street broke down in their approval or disapproval of President Obama.

Those who tend to support the protesters, said they approved of the president's job 61%-35%.

Those who tend to oppose the protesters, did not approve of the president's job by an 11%-88%

Those with no opinion were 42%-49%.

The margin of error on this question is +/-3.55%.