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Hello, and welcome to the Slate Political Gab Fest for Friday, August the 5th, 2011, the first day of Barack Obama's second half century.

Maybe two of three, maybe he'll have two or three half centuries, maybe four half centuries.

We'll see.

If he did come up with immortality drug, I think that might get him a second term.

You think so?

Yeah.

I'm sure the Republicans would find some reason to say that he was trying to bankrupt Medicare and Social Security or something like that.

He lived long enough to not just run again, but to possibly run again even, to see term limits repealed on presidents. Yeah, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, this is this is, this is a

this is a whole new topic. So I'm David Plotz, the end of slate. You've heard our two special guests, John Dickerson and Emily Bazelan are off wandering in the desert somewhere.

I don't know what they're doing.

They're skipping out on me.

So we have as guest number one, wandering in the desert somewhere. I don't know what they're doing. They're skipping out on me.

So we have as guest number one, our very regular Dave Weigel, Slate political reporter, Dave,

great to have you back. Good to be back. And a GabFest Virgin. Adam Surwer, he is a staff

writer for the American prospect. And have you been a Slate contributor? You've been a root contributor, haven't you? Yeah, I've been a root contributor. I don't think I've ever contributed to Slate before, but I've contributed to your, I guess, sister, sister publication. It is our sister, sister or brother publication. So, Adam, it's great to have you here.

Welcome. It's great to be here. And we were going to have three topics, as always, this week.

We have just at the last minute changed our third topic. So it'll be really haphazard. Our three topics are going to be first, the debt ceiling deal.

Second, we will have the debt ceiling deal as it relates to our Republican presidential

candidates, what it does to the Republican race. And third, we're going to talk about the

incredibly crummy state of the economy and what that means for Barack Obama's next 350 years

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