OK, what do you do when your wife comes home late at night unexpectedly, only to find you in the childrens playroom with two prostitutes, whereupon she begins beating on your dumb ass with a Guitar Hero controller and punching at you? Call the cops of course, and have her arrested! is the obvious answer.

At least that's what you if you're a former GOP Chairman in Illinois.

This story is from last week but is too good/awful to pass up.

According to the police report, Eni Skoien became enraged and attacked her husband early Sunday morning when she discovered him with two prostitutes.

The police report said Gary Skoien acknowledged to authorities that the women were prostitutes. But he later denied that and tried unsuccessfully to have the report changed.

Barrington-Inverness Police Chief Jeff Lawler reiterated Friday that the department stands by the report.

Furthermore, the department is eager to speak with the women, not to build a prostitution case but in their role as witnesses in the domestic battery case against Eni Skoien. The women had left the home by the time police arrived.

"Ordinarily, our victims supply us with the names of witnesses," Lawler said.

A prostitution case is unlikely, in any event, unless a police officer actually witnesses a solicitation of sex for money, Lawler added. Both women had left the premises before police arrived Sunday.

According to the report, 36-year-old Eni Skoien came home about 1:15 a.m. Sunday and, after discovering the women in the home, struck Gary Skoien, 55, with a closed fist and several times with a toy guitar. The beating left him bloodied, police said.

Charged with misdemeanor domestic battery, Eni Skoien is expected in court Thursday, March 19, in Rolling Meadows.

Earlier this week, Gary Skoien said he and his wife have been estranged and living in separate parts of the home they share with their three children, ages 5, 7 and 8.

Following Sunday's incident, Gary Skoien petitioned for and received an order of protection barring his wife from their home and from contacting him or their children for 21 days.

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Ouch. What can I say except the truth hurts. Of course there was just enough time for David Gregory to get a shot in at Democrats right before being saved by the bell and ending the conversation. Heaven forbid the panel is allowed to spend too much time talking about how Republicans are devoid of ideas. The difference David Gregory is who Democrats want to cut taxes for and it is not their only idea. I think the American public figured out over the last eight years, not just the last four months that most of the ideas the Republicans do have about how to run the country are bad ones.

MR. GREGORY: I want to talk some Republican politics here in our remaining moments. Michael Steele, head of the RNC, he got in more hot water this week. Gave an interview with GQ and talked about abortion, and his is how the conversation went. He was asked, "Are you saying you think women have the right to choose an abortion?" Steele says, "Yeah. I mean, again, I think that's an individual choice." "You do?" Steele, "Yeah. Absolutely."

David Frum, does that represent the Republican Party?

MR. FRUM: It should represent a view within the Republican Party. It should be permissible to say such a thing. Look, we need--I, I speak as a Republican. We need Michael Steele. He is exciting, he is warm, he has a marvelous TV presence. It--that's, that's the face that our party should be presenting to the country, and we need to support him. And the very fact that he is opening up the debate, talking with the constituencies that need to, need to be reached, these are valuable and fresh things. And I, I am just sick about the kind of level of, of attack he has taken, because we need him.

MR. SMILEY: I'm glad--I'm, I'm glad, David, that Michael Steele is there. I could never imagine 10 years ago that we'd have two parties, both headed by black men. But it's important to understand two things, very quickly. Number one, it's about the policy, not the personality. You can't put a colored face out and think that black people and brown people and women are coming just because you got a colored face out front. Number one, it's about the policy. And number two, all this infighting I think still underscores this party doesn't know who they are, where they're going or how they're going to get there.

MR. FRUM: Well, but both of those are positive things. He's not a black face, he's just a different face. We need different kinds of people. And it isn't that you think you put a black face on the party and you'll get black voters. You put a different face on the party and you'll get different voters.

MR. SMILEY: But the policy, but the policies have to change, too. That's my point.

MS. KAY: But...

MR. FRUM: And--but the first step to making the policies change is saying it's possible, there's room. And his kind of knocking down the walls is saying we can have a wider discussion in the Republican Party than we've allowed ourselves.

MS. KAY: Isn't...

MR. GREGORY: Katty:

MS. KAY: Isn't it even a bigger problem, the question of leadership within the Republican Party, is that I haven't heard a sensible Republican idea on this economic crisis, apart from reducing taxes, over the last four months.

MR. FRUM: The payroll tax holiday is a great idea.

MS. KAY: You--they have to come up with...

MR. GREGORY: Right.

MS. KAY: They have to start coming up with ideas that the American public is interested in. You've got some younger Republicans saying, "We need to get back to talking about health care, we need to get back to talking about education, the kinds of things that the American public are talking about, and not just talking about cutting taxes."

MR. LIESMAN: That's the parody of the Republican Party that goes around in economic circles. "Well, you have cancer, cut taxes." You know, that's the, the, the solution of the Republican Party to everything.

MR. GREGORY: But the payroll tax idea, Republican idea was also shared by some Democrats, as well.

MS. KAY: Right.

MR. LIESMAN: It's a big danger, though, David, which is that if you watch the savings rate go up, the fear is that people will get this money from the government and they will save it instead of spend it, which is the argument for government spending at this moment.

MR. GREGORY: All right, lot, lots more to talk about. Unfortunately, we're out of time.

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John King get his Fox on while interviewing Dick Cheney and cites a headline from Human Events to frame his question.

KING: You disagree with that. I want to show you one more newspaper headline in this segment. This is a newspaper many Americans might not recognize, but I read it and I know you read it.

CHENEY: Human Events.

KING: It's the conservative weekly Human Events. And in the lead article this week, they call it Obama's brazen deception to sell agenda. Essentially the point you just made, that they have, under the umbrella of an economic crisis, you must support us, there is urgency to act now, that they are putting, in this newspaper's view, a lot of items like health care, like the environment, other priorities and saying, we have to do this all now. Is the president of the United States trying to brazenly deceive the American people?

CHENEY: Well, I think they've taken liberties, if you will, with the arguments. Given the importance to the country and to all of us of having a healthy economy and getting the economy back on track, it seems to me an administration does have an obligation to set priorities and go after that first. It also occurs to me that one of the tools that is most important to doing that is tax policy, and cutting taxes, especially for those who invest and create wealth and create jobs. That's not what we're seeing.

We're seeing an argument made that we've got economic difficulties, therefore, we're going to have a cap and trade program with respect to carbon emissions. That's a huge energy tax that's going to be applied across the society.

Or that we're going to fundamentally change the health care system, we haven't had a debate is on the health care system, well, since '93. Perfectly fine to have a debate on it, but we're not having a debate on it.

I was concerned when the first stimulus program wasn't put together in the administration but, rather, was something they sort of chucked up on Capitol Hill and let the Congress write that legislation which says, to me, there really isn't a coherent approach at this point to try and improve the economy.

Well we all know where King gets some of his "news" now. Maybe next time he could quote some Freeper articles and ask Cheney if Obama is a secret Muslim as well.

For anyone who is not familiar with Human Events, here's the list of their authors. Wingnuts galore.

The County Fair has more: CNN's King asked Cheney several leading questions, inviting him to hammer Obama

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The Republicans in Congress have opposed President Obama's plans to revive the economy at every turn but don't seem to have a plan of their own. Rep. Eric Cantor told NBC's David Gregory that the press was to blame for the perception that the Republicans don't have a plan.

"The Republicans will have a plan, we had a stimulus plan, the problem with being in the minority, David, is that sometimes your colleagues in the press don't want to cover the ideas that the minority has," said Cantor.

Cantor should probably have talked with his buddy, Mitch McConnell who told ABC's THIS WEEK that the GOP didn't need to have any new ideas.

Stephanopoulos: But shouldn't you have to have a comprehensive approach that lays out the trade offs? If you just have rifle shot amendments then you don't have to make all the trade off that you have to make in an overall budget.

McConnell: Well we're just sort of getting down in the weeds here on procedure. Through the amendment process we would absolutely reformulate the Democratic plan. Whether you have a comprehensive approach or whether you offer an amendment approach is something that parliamentarians can debate. But the point is, we're going to have alternatives just like we had alternatives when they offered the massive stimulus package. We would have spent half as much money. We would have fixed housing and put money back into the pockets of taxpayers. So we have offered alternatives all along the way and we will offer numerous alternatives on the budget when it comes up.

So in other words, NO. They have no proposal and again they're going to do nothing but obstruct. Stephanopoulos is right and the GOP's "rifle shot" approach allows them to take shots at what the Democrats are doing without having to actually say what they would do instead.

Because all their old ideas worked for us, oh--so--well.

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Joan Walsh and Peter Beinart do a pretty good job here of tag teaming Nancy Pfotenhauer on her punishing the rich talking point. It was nice to watch a panel where they didn't let her talk over everyone the entire time as she likes to do if they let her.

HUGHLEY: Nancy, what do you think? Is he a communist?

PFOTENHAUER: I heard communist and socialist thrown around, and they are two different things. If you want to talk about communism, that's more "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs." So it would be more the redistribution of wealth aspect.

I do think his tax the rich thing is punishing prosperity, which is an antithetical to the American dream, and completely ignores the fact that the top five percent of the earners in this country, they do earn about 36 percent of the income. They pay about 60 percent of the income tax, and the bottom 40 percent pay zero. So I'm not sure that's the way he should be going. So that would speak to the redistribution act.

WALSH: But why is it --

PFOTENHAUER: Excuse me?

BEINART: Sorry, go ahead.

HUGHLEY: We just turned into Jerry Springer. Who is going to say -- Joan, what were you saying? You were about to say something.

WALSH: I think that we have had a situation. We are not punishing the rich. Let's be honest. In this country, we have a game that is rigged. If you're born wealthy, you stay wealthy. It's very hard to climb out of the middle class into wealth.

It's still possible. It's a great country. We provide a lot of opportunity. But the rich are finally about to pay their fair share, and Obama, finally a president did what he promised to do. He gave a tax cut to 95 percent of the country. And if you're lucky enough to be in the top five percent who will pay a little bit more, well, you're a lucky person to start with and you should be paying more.

(CROSSTALK)

BEINART: What happens is Republicans always play this game, Republicans always play this game when they start talking about taxes. They start talking about taxes, and then they add the word "income taxes."

PFOTENHAUER: I will talk about payroll.

BEINART: Payroll taxes are much more regressive. They fall much more aggressively on poor people. So do sales tax. So Republicans always talk about income taxes are so weighted against the rich. That is actually the most progressive part of our taxes.

PFOTENHAUER: Let me talk then, particularly, to payroll taxes. When you include payroll taxes with income taxes, the numbers do drop, but not demonstrably.

So you can look at it. You still see the top earners paying the lion's share of both the income and the payroll taxes, and you see the prime earners -- I'm not arguing for anybody to pay more taxes. In a recession, no one's taxes should be raised.

Since President Obama is not talking about raising anyone's taxes other than the upper earners I don't think Nancy is really too worried about everyone's taxes. Just the types she used to lobby for. Just a hunch.

Full transcript to follow.

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Mitch McConnell on This Week was asked if the GOP had a comprehensive altervative budget proposal to what the Democrats have offered. McConnell's replies that the GOP is going to be offering amendments rather than a comprehensive proposal.

McConnell: We are going to offer a number of amendments to the Democratic proposal.

Stephanopoulos: But no comprehensive budget?

McConnell: Well it will reframe what the Democrats recommend for America for the next five and ten years and I assure you that the amendments that we offer will not lay out a blueprint for doubling the national debt in five years and tripling it in ten years. That is not what we think.

Stephanopoulos: But shouldn't you have to have a comprehensive approach that lays out the trade offs? If you just have rifle shot amendments then you don't have to make all the trade off that you have to make in an overall budget.

McConnell: Well we're just sort of getting down in the weeds here on procedure. Through the amendment process we would absolutely reformulate the Democratic plan. Whether you have a comprehensive approach or whether you offer an amendment approach is something that parliamentarians can debate. But the point is, we're going to have alternatives just like we had alternatives when they offered the massive stimulus package. We would have spent half as much money. We would have fixed housing and put money back into the pockets of taxpayers. So we have offered alternatives all along the way and we will offer numerous alternatives on the budget when it comes up.

So in other words, NO. They have no proposal and again they're going to do nothing but obstruct. Stephanopoulos is right and the GOP's "rifle shot" approach allows them to take shots at what the Democrats are doing without having to actually say what they would do instead.

From Headzup the Week in Cartoons.

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Former Vice President Dick Cheney gave a long interview to CNN's John King this morning. Cheney repeated his previous assertions that President Obama's policies on terrorism have made the country less safe.

Cheney praised the Bush administration's terrorism efforts. "I think those programs were absolutely essential to the success we enjoy, of being able to collect the intelligence that let us defeat all further attempts to launch attacks against the United States since 9/11," he said.

David N: Of course, this would be a dubious thesis at best, given that, logically speaking, Cheney and Bush might as well proclaim that they prevented any further Hurricanes after Katrina. But it's particularly hollow in light of that 2006 National Intelligence Estimate, which concluded that the decision to invade Iraq, and the Bush administration's mishandling of the post-invasion occupation, had made America more vulnerable to terrorist attack over the long term:

A stark assessment of terrorism trends by American intelligence agencies has found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks.

Thanks for nothing, Dick.

March 14, 2009 C-SPAN

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Chris Matthews frames his question for this week's panel around the GOP talking point that President Obama is letting Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Rahm Emanuel run the show and that he's ceding his power to "tax and spend" liberal Democrats. Our favorite little concern troll Erin Burnett tries to say that this is going to hurt Obama because Congress' ratings are so bad. Even Tweety gets forced to call her out for it and reminds her that their ratings are actually going up, not down. Her lame response is that their poll numbers are still lower than Obama's.

Andrew Ross Sorkin tries to say that President Obama has been on the road campaigning for his ideas so much that he isn't actually making any decisions and letting Rahm Emanuel make them for him.

There are a ton of other things that could be picked apart from this segment but here's what gets my goat after watching it. When did we ever hear any criticism of Bush and just who his "brain trust" was? When did we hear any criticism of how the Republicans spent money when they were in charge?

We just went from a guy who spent the first two months of his presidency on vacation and clearing brush at the ranch to one who could potentially be one of the most intelligent and hands-on presidents in the history of the country. As an outside observer, what I see is a President who is highly involved in the decisions that are being made and who knows how to bring in all parties, listen to what they have to say and then makes a decision.

So what do we get from the Villagers? Obama is taking orders from Nancy Pelosi and he's not running anything. Really?

The other thing is I wonder is if any of these people would ever care to remind viewers of something they should have learned in a third grade civics class. We have three co-equal branches of government. President Obama is not ceding anything. He does not write the laws. The Congress does. He can sign them or veto them but he alone cannot get anything done. What in the hell do they think he's supposed to do?

I know we had a President who thought he was some sort of dictator and a compliant Congress willing to rubber stamp anything he wanted, but that's not the case now. We've got a hair-slim majority in the Senate and if President Obama does not work with them, absolutely nothing will get done. Tweety and his panel need to lay off the Republican Kool-Aid.