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As our friends at Raw Story noted this weekend, if President Obama is supposedly some "radical socialist" pushing an extreme "left wing agenda" as he's been painted by the the talking heads on the right, he's going a pretty lousy job at it, which was the subject of Bill Maher's New Rules segment this Friday evening.

Bill Maher: Obama ‘is a lousy socialist’:

Despite conservatives’ best efforts to paint Barack Obama as a “radical socialist,” Real Time host Bill Maher isn’t buying it.

Maher ended Friday night’s “New Rules” segment by calling out the Right’s ridiculous mischaracterization of the President.

“…Newt Gingrich called Obama the most radical Leftist President in history. Senator Marco Rubio called him the most divisive figure in American history. Michele Bachmann said Obama is the most radical President we have ever seen in the history of the country …John Bolton said Obama just doesn’t care about national security. Honestly, there are Mexican drug mules who don’t pull this much stuff out of their ass,” Maher said.

And as Mediaite noted, the rant started out as an attack on Ted Nugent and his recent tirades going after President Obama: Bill Maher: What Exactly Has Obama Done That Has Made Conservatives So Angry?:

Bill Maher finally got around to Ted Nugent in his final New Rule of the night, but used the rocker’s recent tirade against President Obama to ask the larger question about conservative outrage over the president. He argued that the country has really not changed that much from the George W. Bush era and, in fact, Obama has been making concessions that have not exactly pleased liberals. So what, Maher asked, are conservatives so angry about?

Here's more from Maher's rant in the segment above.

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Bill Maher sat down with CNN's Fareed Zakaria to discuss President Obama's first term in office and how he's reacting to the mid-term elections, the hypocrisy of the teabaggers and Glenn Beck's move from pundit to preacher among other things.

ZAKARIA: "Politically Incorrect" was the name of the show Bill Maher hosted in the 1990s. It's also an apt description of the man himself. Now host of eighth HBO's hit show "Real Time", I find Maher to be one of the sharpest observers of American politics and life in general out there. It doesn't mean I always agree with him. I always find him funny, though.

Several times over the past few years, he has asked me questions. This time it's my turn. Welcome to the show, Bill Maher.

MAHER: Nice to be here.

ZAKARIA: So Obama. How do you think he's responded to the shellacking so far?

MAHER: He looks beaten down. That's what disturbs me. You know, I thought when we elected the first black president, as a comedian, I thought two years in I'd be making jokes about what a gangster he was, you know. And not that he's President Wayne Brady. I thought we're getting Suge Knight.

And, you know, for him to be talking about compromising with the Republicans on the Bush tax cuts, where -- where are they going to draw a line in the sand? When are they going to remember who they are? I'm so disappointed and I still like him and still think there's hope. He could get it yet, but I'm so disappointed that he just seems to be another in a long line of Democrats that come across as wimpy and woozy and whatever word you want to as describe to it of not standing up for what they believe in enough.

The Republicans seem to continually stake out a position further, further to the right and then demand that the Democrats meet them in the middle except that that's not the middle anymore.

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Marsha Blackburn appeared on CNN's State of the Union with Candy Crowley and it seems she's hoping no one remembers this rant on the House floor from back in March when the health care bill passed where she was attacking Social Security.

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Marsha Blackburn Attacks Social Security

BLACKBURN: My colleagues are celebrating the birth of a great new entitlement program today. Only they see dependency on the Federal government and the death of freedom as a cause for celebration. My colleagues celebrate this day as being like the day when Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid were passed. They forget that today those programs are insolvent and will likely crush our children under their debt. My colleagues are overjoyed that soon their goal of having Americans dependent on the Federal government for mortgages, student loans, retirement and health care will be realized.

That is a chilling goal. My colleagues cheer that this bill is paid for. They ignore the fact that it is our children who will pay for their greed. My colleagues shame us for scaring the American people about the contents of this bill. We know the consequences of this bill will be frightening and horrible. Freedom dies a little bit today, unfortunately some are celebrating and I yield back.

As I said back then, it's too bad she didn't show the same indignation for those tax cuts for the rich or endless military occupations that she loves so much. I'm wondering if their direct attacks on Social Security have been giving them some headaches from real life voters because in her interview with Crowley she changes her tune a bit.

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MSNBC needs to give Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks his own show. It might help make up for them getting rid of David Shuster. Dylan Ratigan has taken a shine to Cenk and he let Ratigan fill in while he was away on his radio show and then Uygur subbed for Ratigan for part of the week on MSNBC while he was on vacation. This week they're letting him sub for the 3pm eastern spot while one of their other hosts is on vaction.

They're doing a big push over at FDL for marijuana legalization and Jon Walker has more on Cenk's interview with Bruce Fein.

Bruce Fein on Marijuana Legalization: “If It Is Broken, Then You Need to Fix It”

Ronald Reagan’s former associate deputy attorney general Bruce Fein, a member of the Just Say Now advisory board, appeared earlier today on MSNBC to make the conservative argument in support of allowing states to legalize and regulate marijuana.

When Cenk Uygur asked why Fein is supporting efforts to legalize marijuana, Fein’s response was simply that the current policy has proved to be a costly failure and needs to be re-examined.

There is an obverse to the proverb “if it’s not broken don’t fix it,” but if it is broken than you need to try to fix it. And I think at best you can describe the last 40 years and trillion dollars as an incomplete success. We see the marijuana trade fueling the drug cartels in Mexico, the incidence of drugs has really not been dented.

Read on...

Cenk came back on the air during the following hour on Ratigan's show and gave this rant on gay marriage. He's right. How can allowing gay people to get married ever do as much harm to marriage as Larry King and Elizabeth Taylor? The religious right love to have someone to demonize and fear monger about how "the gays" are going to destroy marriage but they never talk about banning divorce. And as Cenk points out there's a whole lot of other stuff that's in the Bible that they gladly ignore as well.

Here's MSNBC's contact page if you want to drop them a line.

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Bill Maher and Jesse Ventura talked marijuana legalization, how to give third party candidates a chance in our elections, alternative voting, states rights, whether you can be religious without being a member of an organized religion and the Vatican's problems on Real Time. I thought it was a pretty good show all around tonight. I don't agree with Bill and Jesse on everything by any means but I sure as hell would enjoy the cable "news" shows more if more of them were half as informative as Bill's show was tonight.

For those of you without HBO, they'll have the Overtime segment posted a bit later on the Real Time web site if you'd like to watch it.