Hello and welcome to the Slate Political Gab Fest. I'm John Dickerson in Washington here with David Plotz, and Emily Bazelon is in New Haven, and I'm talking extra fast because it's taken us a while to get the show going, but we're happy to be with you now. The first topic is going to be about health care reform and its quiet progress forward.

The second topic is going to be about vaccines.

And the third will be a couple of different stories about the Obama presidency and marriage.

But before we start on our first topic, Emily Bazelon has an announcement for us.

We are very excited to be doing another live Gab Fest on November 10th at 7 p.m. at the historic Sixth and I Synagogue in Washington, D.C. We want all of you to come. And to buy tickets, you should go either to the Gab Fest page on Slate or our Facebook page or Sixth and I spelled out.org. So go buy your tickets and it's

going to be really fun. Sixth and I being the word and is spelled out. I being just the letter.

Because in Washington sometimes when you say spell out I, it's actually they spell out EY.

It's very confusing. But in this case it's just the letter I. That is super not very confusing. But in this case, it's just a letter I.

That is super not interesting. Well, it's not, it's just I'm just trying. I'm trying to keep people

from injuring themselves at their computer. Can you stop talking to that? The first topic. Thank you. Yes. I'll slow down now. The first topic is health care reform.

We had two developments this week.

The first was that the Senate in the Senate, the bill has been melded and it's going off to the Congressional Budget Office to get its official scoring, which will determine how much it's going to cost and or save over a period of time. And Joe Lieberman announced that he was going to filibuster the bill at the end if it includes a public option that is in the legislation at the moment.

On the House side, the House dropped.

Finally, their bill, 1900 pages, the combination of three bills, it seems like they just tacked them onto each other with 1900 pages, which suggests progress is moving forward there. Emily, at times in life, you have weighed in on Joe Lieberman.

He is, in fact, the senator from your state. How do you come down on the Lieberman question

at this moment? Well, I was completely gnashing my teeth. And then you wrote about people like me

who sort of live to be frustrated by

Joe Lieberman. And suddenly I felt like a big fat Connecticut cliche. But I mean, come on. This is

like, how can this man be a Democrat? I mean, I guess he's not. Well, well, it was easily solved.

Our second topic today.

How can this man be a progressive independent?

I mean, he lives to be a spoiler for the Democratic Party.

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