So we have mics on either side here. We can do, we'll do some questions. Why don't we start with you, sir?

Hi. Thank you so much for coming. In your second discussion, you touched briefly on,

whoa, you touched briefly on the idea of the filibuster, which I think is maybe more of a roadblock

than I think you gave credit for. Just the idea that 41 senators

representing, I think it's 11% of the population, can and often has stopped everything. So I was

wondering, to what extent you thought that was a huge roadblock, perhaps contributory to some

of this? I mean, we would have the public option and the Keystone Pipeline without it.

How much you thought that was contributory and also how much, to what extent,

maybe the legal challenges that are coming up to it might be successful.

I don't know. You know, I wonder about the public option. It's funny because I think there are a lot of people who

are not so certain that Democrats, if they were, that Democrats could have gotten the public option

through. There were a lot of, there were many Democrats who wanted it. There were a lot of

Democrats who weren't that excited about it. So I think in the final bill in the Senate,

I don't know if a public option could have gotten... Would be more easily constitutional, though.

You mean, if it passed?

Yeah. I mean, now that we know that, you know, the private enterprise solution turns out to be

so questionable. I'm talking about just whether it would have gotten the votes.

I know, I know. I just couldn't resist. Sorry.

So, you know, I don't know. The problem with the filibuster is that the people who wanted

are out of power and then they get in power. I mean, the people who want, you never can get

a coalition together of enough people to get, you know, to get the votes to reform it.

Right. But do you think it's a big problem? Do you think it has a lot of explanatory power?

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