This is a GabFest Extra, the 2013 government shutdown day four. It is Friday, October 4th. And I'm Slate's editor, David Plotz, here in our DC studio. With me is my regular GabFest co-host and Slate's chief political correspondent John Dickerson. Hello, John.

Hello, David. So just a quick update on the news. If you missed this

morning's regular GabFest podcast, that contains a bigger picture look at the shutdown politics and lots

more. But we're going to do a short take on what's happened today on Friday. First,

House Speaker John Boehner had a closed-door meeting with fellow Republicans, and he came

out with no new plan to end the standoff, but he called on President Obama to negotiate

on the budget and Obamacare. Meanwhile, President Obama and the Senate Democrats are still saying

they won't negotiate until the government reopens. The president canceled his planned trip

to Asia next week, the entire trip. He had

canceled portions of it. Now he canceled the whole thing because of the shutdown.

Senator John Kerry, excuse me, Secretary of State John Kerry is going to go in his place at the

APEC summit. The Democrats in the House are going to try. They may try. The dreaded John

Dickerson not stamped with approval

discharge petition, which would bring a clean funding bill to the House floor. They might do that

as early as October 14th. It would require at least 18 Republicans to sign onto that at the moment.

Seems like a long shot, but who knows whether that will change. Some state

governments, including the government of South Dakota, are asking petitioning and

sort of actively spending state funds to do functions that previously were funded by the federal

government. So South Dakota wants permission to spend state money to keep Mount Rushmore open. At the moment they have not gotten permission, other states have spent our spending money to keep their National Guard troops employed and doing things that the National Guard was doing. And then there's this weird story, which is just popping up as we're taping, which is that someone has self-immolated on the mall in Washington, D.C. There's someone who seems to upset himself on fire. This follows

on yesterday's bizarre Capitol Hill, White House lockdown with a shooting of a apparently crazy woman.

There's just this sense of a heightened drama, and there's an edge, there's an edge to the city.

And we don't know why this woman had her car chase yesterday. And we certainly don't know anything

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