Hello and welcome to the Slate Political Gab Fest.

I'm John Dickerson.

It's Friday, September 18th, with David Plotz and Washington, Emily Bazelon in New York City.

We're all, unfortunately, in full faculties, unlike last week.

We got so much love and mail, Emily, about you being drunk.

The world wants to hear you drunk.

We should explain to that one listener, though, that Emily was tipsy as a part of an experiment

that will become known to you later when the film and experiment she was doing gets published

on Double X or Slater, wherever it's going to show up. so that it wasn't just Emily decided that day to drown her sorrows in the tub of gin. So that you guys could make fun of me the whole time. Because she normally does that on Wednesday anyway. It's weird that you were so lucid and everyone, why do you think you were so lucid as a drunk person? Well, I wasn't super drunk.

I was sort of well lubricated.

And in the beginning, it was kind of a disaster.

And then I felt like I really had to pay attention.

Speaking of beginnings that are disasters, our first topic will be health care and the

Bacchus spill that was finally unveiled after an infinite summer.

Then we will talk about race and the president and the anger directed towards the president

and whether it is all about race, as the former president Jimmy Carter has suggested.

And then finally we will end with ACORN, the extraordinary story of two undercover activists.

Twelve-year-olds?

Yes, activists who uncovered regular abuse of the system at Acorn offices across the country, or the East Coast.

No, across the country.

Let's start with health care, Bacchus, Max Bacchus, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, put out his bill, the fifth of the health care bills in the Congress right now, much anticipated, much derided, now that it's out.

Emily, you're shaking your head. Give us your view of the senator from Montana's offering.

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