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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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Real Time's Bill Maher who is between seasons of Real Time and out on the road touring comedy clubs discussed the teabaggers, mid-term elections and false equivalencies with Keith Olbermann.

Time for your weekly podcast with The Professional Left, our own Driftglass and Bluegal. Have a great weekend everybody.

You can listen to the archives or make a donation if you'd like to help keep these going at http://professionalleft.blogspot.com/.

Mentioned in this episode are:

the Glenn Beck / John Birch Society article in The New Yorker,
Jay Rosen on Breitbart and ABC,
and the Joe McCarthy 'vindicated' sign.

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From The Last Word: Lawrence O'Donnell explains the right and wrong way to give a concession speech, with examples from this year's mid-term elections.

From Democracy Now -- EXCLUSIVE: Filmmaker Michael Moore on Midterm Elections, the Tea Party, and the Future of the Democratic Party:

AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to renowned filmmaker, author, activist, Michael Moore. For the past twenty years, Michael has been one of the most politically active, provocative and successful documentary filmmakers in the business. His films include Roger & Me about the corporation General Motors; Fahrenheit 9/11 about Bush and war; Bowling for Columbine, for which he won the Academy Award, about gun violence; he did Sicko about healthcare; and his latest film, Capitalism: A Love Story.

Michael Moore came to our studio late last night to take part in our election special. Michael began by talking about President Obama and the midterm elections.

[...]

MICHAEL MOORE: In the morning, President Obama is going to hold a press conference, and he’s going to take the wrong path. He’s going to say what we really need now is more bipartisanship and more kumbaya. And the other side wants none of that. And I don’t know—I don’t know how much you have to be battered and bruised to understand when the abuser is not going to stop abusing.

So, let’s look into the crystal ball and see what 2012 looks like. If the tea party thing keeps its mojo killing, they have a very good chance of, in the primaries, nominating one of their people, Sarah Palin or others, Rand Paul maybe. It’s not unlikely. That will—if that doesn’t happen, and if a more mainstream Republican gets nominated, they will probably be so upset they will run a third party person. And somehow, there’s going to be a very strong possibility of a potential split, and there’s going to be two people from that side running for president of the United States.

Obama, if he continues this war, if he expands the war, if he doesn’t get a hold of Wall Street and wrestle them to the ground, if we have another crash in the next ten years because he didn’t do the job that he was supposed to have done—he left it up to Geithner and Summers to just take us into the next crash—it is not unlikely that there will be a Naderesque-type challenge from the left. And maybe not in the primaries, but actually an independent candidacy. So we’re going to have, for maybe, I think, the second time in the last 150 years, potentially a four-candidate race. In a four-candidate race, Abraham Lincoln—that was the first one, and that was—I think he won with thirty—thirty-some—do you know, John?

JOHN NICHOLS: Thirty-nine.

MICHAEL MOORE: Thirty-nine percent of the vote. And Harry Truman in '48, with Dewey, Strom Thurmond and Henry Wallace. It, first of all, presents perhaps the only opportunity in our lifetime where someone from the left could actually win the presidency with a plurality of votes. What it could do is deny Obama his second term. And I think that instead of the Democrats and President Obama taking all of us who are the base that he criticized for the last two months—you know, if he doesn't take seriously why we went out to work for him and got him elected, there’s a very strong possibility that that challenge is going to exist. And they should think about that, as they think tomorrow, the next day, that they should be moving more to the right in order to sustain themselves. The right is going to get—it’s going to be a very crowded freeway heading toward 2012. He doesn’t need to go over on that road. He needs to solidify this road to get things done that we need done and to get that second term.

Full transcript at Democracy Now.

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Well, here's your next Speaker of the House, America: Cryin' John Boehner, who almost turned on the waterworks during his speech after it became clear last night that Republicans are going to win back the House. Boehner -- who, as Keith Olbermann pointed out after his speech, was overpainted himself as just a man of the people rather than on old-time pol -- complained about how "out of touch" Washington has become. Pot, meet kettle.

Get ready for endless investigations, gridlock and craziness that's going to make us long for the days of Bill Clinton in comparison. Ugh.

Like every election year, right-wing media are undermining confidence in the election process through baseless voter fraud fear mongering.

From our friends at Media Matters -- The voter fraud & intimidation stories you won't hear about on Fox:

For the past several months, Fox News has hyped GOP accusations of voter fraud, no matter how little evidence exists to support them, and Bret Baier has promised that Fox will cover voter fraud allegations "in every show." But Fox has failed to report on, or has dismissed and distorted, numerous accusations of voter fraud or intimidation carried out by individuals linked to right-wing groups and politicians.

Much more there, so go read the rest.

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Apparently Bob Schieffer's irony alert button is broken given these rigged voting machines we're dealing with all over the country or stories the media completely ignored like this one. Democracy Now: Mark Crispin Miller on the Death of Mike Connell and Election Theft in 2008.

Schieffer: Nix Deciding Bowl Games by Computer:

And aren't you glad that even though our system isn't perfect, we still finish our elections the right way - we vote!

Too bad we can't figure out the right way to pick a national champion in college football!

Instead of a playoff to determine the national championship, which is how the other sports do it, college football has something called the BCS - the Bowl Championship Series - a mysterious organization that feeds statistics and other mumbo jumbo into computers to determine who plays for the national championship. [...]

If we did our politics like that, computers would decide who wins our elections - maybe based on the strength of their opponents, or positions, and maybe there would be style points for the best yard signs.

But we don't do it that way (thank goodness), so I pass on the advice from my mother that I always pass on before elections: Go vote, it makes you feel big and strong.

. . . And if you can figure out a way, vote against the BCS!

I don't want to discourage anyone from voting. Get out there and do it this Tuesday. But avoid those electronic machines if you've got a choice. We need to get rid of them entirely.

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I'm sure President Obama knows full well he's not going to get any cooperation from Republicans, but I can understand why he's already laying the ground work for making them look like the obstructionists they are when they continue blocking anything that might get our economy back on track after the mid-terms.

We've got a rough two years ahead of us when we can't afford any more of their political games. Even if they don't win back either house of Congress, they're going to gain enough seats to grind everything to a dead halt.

From The White House blog -- Weekly Address: President Obama Calls on GOP Leadership to Put Aside Partisan Politics and Focus on Strengthening the Economy:

In his weekly address, President Obama called the recent comments by the GOP leadership, which put scoring political points over solving the problems facing the country, “troubling,” and asked Democrats and Republicans to work together to move the country forward. Regardless of the outcome of Tuesday’s elections, leaders on both sides of the aisle owe it to the American people to put aside politics and work together on a number of issues that have traditionally had bipartisan support, like tax breaks for middle-class families and investing in infrastructure.

Transcript below the fold.

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Neil Cavuto interviewed former welfare recipient and now wingnut welfare recipient Star Parker who is running for the US House of Representatives in California. What's sad is her incoherent nonsense actually represents what the Republicans are running on this year, Social Security privatization. And the voters are going to love an "independent thinking" Republican that promotes this platform. There's nothing "independent" about it and if they think the voters are going to like this, they're sadly mistaken.

That won't stop them from coming on the air day after day pretending we need to hand our social safety net over to Wall Street though in order to "save it" though.

Parker: Well we know that Republicans are going to sweep the House and perhaps even the Senate because people are looking at what Nancy Pelosi has done which is build out bigger government and they are frustrated. We've already seen the damage of large government. We can look into any inner city in this country and see the damage of big government.

And even union workers now are getting pink slips. We're falling apart in California and we're falling apart as a nation, so she's... the referendum is on Nancy Pelosi.

Cavuto: But it's not necessarily a love hug for you and the Republicans right? I mean they just hate you guys less pretty much, right?

Parker: Well, that might be true. It just depends on what type of Republican is sitting in that room when we have our orientation. I'm going to win my district, the 37th here in California. So it just depends if it's an independent thinker, if it's somebody that perhaps has looked out at this type of debt and said we cannot go this way any longer and we're going to be willing to make the hard choices, then they will fall in love with Republicans.

Cavuto: When you say hard choices, so what are they? […] I always hear there are hard choices... like what?

Parker: Hard choices like the collapse of Social Security. Hard choices like the collapse of Medicare. (crosstalk)

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