Quote of the day

Rather than debate the merits of the Obama budget---a plan that contained several major initiatives with the potential to fundamentally change American society---the Republicans seem determined to spend the next four years cutting class, shooting spitballs at Nancy Pelosi and telling reporters that the dog ate their budget. They completely sat out the budget vote; the final plan passed without a single GOP vote in either chamber. Instead they engaged in plenty of name-calling---in fact, some of their efforts in this area have been grossly insulting to America's otherwise outstanding legacy of political shit-slinging.

A stunningly wide array of Republican leaders---from Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa to Rep. Roscoe Bartlett of Maryland---crowed hysterically about Obama's "socialism." But the real prize for nutty went to Rep. Michele Bachmann, a drooling dunce of a Minnesota soccer mom who is now a serious contender for the title of dumbest person ever to sit in the House of Representatives. When the Chinese proposed creating a new system for international reserves, Bachmann---who founded a charter school that banned the movie Aladdin for promoting witchcraft---sponsored a bill establishing the dollar as the official U.S. currency for ever and ever, despite the fact that no one anywhere was talking about doing anything to the dollar. It was like calling for an end to aid to Turkey because we eat them on Thanksgiving anyway.

The real tragedy is that, at such a desperate moment in our history, true conservatives have a vital role to play. Add together the bank bailouts, the stimulus package and the Obama budget, and what you get is a massive borrowing plan destined to impact the lives of every taxpayer for a generation. What the country needs from the opposition is an intellectually serious attempt to rein in unnecessary waste and spending. But the Republicans pissed away their credibility on fiscal conservatism over the past eight years and then monstrously compounded matters this year by leaning on their shovels and generally half-assing their way through the budget debate, saving the few bullets they had left for a fucking estate-tax exemption. Way to take your jobs seriously, you assholes. And you wonder why you lost the White House?

-Excerpted from Matt Taibbi's essay on the modern Republican party titled "The Class Clowns" in the new issue of Rolling Stone. It's not available online so you'll actually have to buy the magazine to read it. I liked the piece so much I decided to transcribe a couple of paragraphs. So there.