Quick. Name one thing George Bush accomplished during the eight years he was president — one successful endeavor that benefited the citizens of the United States that did not blow up the deficit or utterly fail later on.

Now name one thing that Republicans in Congress have done since Bush left office that could be called an unvarnished success and that, in some way or other, improved the lot of the people they represent, rather than their corporate masters.

On Bill Maher’s HBO show “Real Time,” last Friday, he asked, in the wake of the killing of bin Laden and the ongoing financial crisis caused by the Bush recession, what is it Republicans are actually good at.

The obvious answer is that Republicans are excellent at propaganda, lying, cheating and stealing elections, both outright, as they did in Florida in 2000, and by creating wedge issues based on hatred and fear, as they did in Ohio in 2004. No one can beat them at manipulating the news in order to, as Karl Rove once put it, create their own reality.

A better question would be, what is it Republicans are good for? Other than handing the goods, resources and treasury of the United States over to their big-money sponsors as fast and as efficiently as they can, it’s hard to say why the GOP even exists.

Here is a partial transcript of Maher’s take down of the GOP:

Now that it’s become clear that the Republicans, the fiscally conservative, strong-on-defense party are neither fiscally conservative nor strong on defense, they have to tell us what exactly it is they’re good at.

Because it’s not defense: 9/11 happened on your watch, and you retaliated by invading the wrong country. And you lost a 10 year game of hide and seek with Osama Bin Laden. And you’re responsible for running up most of the debt, which more than anything makes us weak. You’re supposed to be the party with the killer instinct. But, it was a Democrat who put a bomb in Kadafi’s bedroom and bullet in Bin Laden’s eye like Moe Green.

Raising the question how many Muslims does a black guy have to kill in one weekend before crackers climb down off his ass?

Let’s look at some facts. Now, for you Fox News viewers, feel free to turn down the sound until the flashing “Facts” light at the bottom of your screen disappears. When Bill Clinton left office in 2001, the Congressional Budget Office predicted that by the end of the decade, we would have paid off the entire debt and had $2 trillion surplus. Instead we have a $10.5 trillion dollar public debt. And the different in those two numbers is mostly because Republicans put tax cuts for the rich, free drugs for the elderly and two wars on the layaway plan, and then bailed on the check. So much for fiscal responsibility.

But, hey, at least they still had the defense thing, right? The public still believed Republicans were tougher when it came to hunting down dark-skinned foreigners with funny sounding names. But, Bush had seven years to get Osama. He didn’t. He got Wesley Snipes.

Only six months after 9/11, Bush said he didn’t spend that much time on Bin Laden that he was no longer concerned about him. Just as he wasn’t before 9/11, when he blew off that mysterious inscrutable memo entitled: “Bin Laden determined to attack inside the U.S.”

In under a year, Bush went from who gives a shit, to “wanted dead or alive,” and back to who gives a shit.

Why focus on the terrorist who reduced Wall Street to rubble when you can help Wall Street reduce the whole country to rubble.

In 2008, the candidates were asked if they knew for sure that Bin Laden was in Pakistan, would you send our guys in without permission to get him? McCain said, no, because Pakistan is a sovereign nation. Obama said, yes, he’d just do it. And McCain called him naive. Who’s being naive, ‘kay? And why can’t you just admit that Barack Obama is one efficient, steely nerved, multi-tasking, black Ninja gangsta president?

In one week he produced his birth certificate, comforted disaster victims, swung by Florida, said hello to Gabby Giffords, did stand up at the Correspondents’ Dinner, and then personally repelled [sic] into in Bin Laden’s lair and put a Chinese star though his throat without waking up any of his 13 wives.

That’s how it went down, I saw it on MSNBC.

Connect: