This is a GabFest X for the 2013 government shutdown day 8. It's Tuesday, October 8th. I am Slate's editor David Plotz in our DC studio. Joining me today is not John Dickerson, who's getting the day off, not from studying the shutdown, but just from talking about the shutdown here. Instead, we have our other regular GabFest co-host, Slate Senior Editor, Emily Bazelon. Hi, Emily. Hey, David. Emily is a New Haven. Of course, this was a busy day in shutdown news. Lots of talk from both sides. Not so much apparent progress. President Obama held a long news conference. Let's start with a clip from that. Everybody out there should listen to the Slate political Gab Fest. Thank you. And one of the great things is happening right now is that until this particular crisis passes, there's a Slate Political Gab Fest every day. I'm loving it. It just puts me right to sleep at night. I'm so glad to hear that. Emily, thank you so much for joining me. Emily Bazelon, Blake. We'll be right back.

Oh, wait. That was a clip of Stephen Colbert with Emily on his show last night. How did that get in there?

You were very good on the show, and Stephen was very nice about us. So, hi, Stephen. Let's try again with President Obama. He used lots of home economics analogies to

explain why a failure to raise the debt limit would be a disaster. Think about it this way.

The American people do not get to demand a ransom for doing their jobs. You don't get a chance

to call your bank and say, I'm not going to pay my mortgage this month unless you throw in a new car and an

Xbox. If you're in negotiations around buying somebody's house, you don't get to say, well,

let's talk about the price I'm going to pay. And if you don't give me the price, then I'm going to

burn down your house. So the president's position basically boils down to this.

He is happy to negotiate with the Republicans on anything, but not until they reopen the government

and raise the debt ceiling with no strength attached.

Our dear John yesterday, John Dickerson, talked about the possibility of a short-term deal

with a sort of sidebar where the president would get, they would do a short-term debt ceiling

deal and the president and the Congress would do a short-term debt ceiling deal

and the president and the Congress would agree to certain things that they would negotiate with

afterwards.

President kind of raised the possibility of that today.

Before President Obama spoke, House Speaker John Boehner made a brief appearance before the

camera is to repeat his new mantra, which is we just want to talk.

We just want to have a conversation. There's no boundaries here. There's nothing on the table. There's nothing off the table.

I'm trying to do everything I can to bring people together and to have a conversation.

President Obama later did call Speaker Boehner. Neither side reported any significant movement. Meanwhile, financial markets

...