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Hello and welcome to this late political gab fest for Friday, the 27th of February.

I'm John Dickerson here with David Plotz to my left, and Emily Bazelon is coming to us on a MacBook Pro

on top of a stack of copy paper from New Haven, where she is in an arboretum surrounded by plants.

We're going to talk today about the president's speech before Congress. We're also going to

talk about the budget, his budget, his choice of a new dog. The budget itself may also be a

dog, but we'll leave that up to our analysis. And then third, we're going to talk

about the another Supreme Court case, the summonims, which is a Utah religious cult. It's also,

not to be confused with homonyms. John, that was a lot of good jokes all at once. So I think that

might be it for you because you used them all up.

So, Emily, what did you think of the president's speech before Congress on Tuesday?

Not a state of the union speech, but essentially it looked exactly like one.

It did.

I thought he was great, and I was so relieved because I had been feeling worried that he was not hitting the right notes, that he was, you know, he'd seemed so sober and professorial and just like absent in this weird way.

And then it was like he was back to being his kind of jovial, winning campaign self.

I basically totally agreed with your piece about all that.

Yes, it's always nice when that happens.

I'd much rather agree with you than, you know, say,

Maureen Dowd or David Brooks,

which I always find faintly disturbing when that happens.

Yeah, I just thought he, it was reassuring to listen to him,

...