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Hello and welcome to the Slate Political Gab Fest for January 11th, 2013, the $1 trillion edition.

I'm David Plotz, the editor of Slate in Washington, D.C., and I have a coin in my pocket.

It is worth 25 cents.

That's your joke? It wasn't much of a joke. It was trying to build tension. It was only 25 cents. I was trying to build tension about that. Oh, right. The trillion dollar coin. Okay, sorry. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. You didn't even get the joke. Right. You just thought he was making a joke about having a quarter in his pocket totally detached from the news.

Exactly.

So, joining me in Washington is John Dickerson, the less mentally deficient member of the Gab Fest.

John Dickerson, Slate, Chief Political Correspondent, hello, John. Hello, David.

And in New Haven, slower than usual, Slate Senior Editor, Emily Battle. You're going to get in so much trouble with our listeners for calling me the more mentally deficient. I'm sure. I'm sure I will. Pointing that out to you. I'm sure I will. But I'll take it. If you need to get the listeners to help you, Emily, if you can't fight your own battles, that answers your own question there.

You know, have you guys seen Zero Dark 30 yet?

Yes.

I wrote about it.

We talked about how I wrote about it.

So my feeling about this room that we tape in, that it's like the Osama bin Laden house, one of the rooms of Osama bin Laden house.

It's like really

claustrophobic and it's filled with old electronic gear and like the stale air. As I was watching

that movie, I thought, these rooms remind me of something. Oh, yes, they remind me of our studio.

...