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Hello and welcome to the Slate Political GabFest for Friday, October 12th, 2012, the Barka Loungeer edition.

I'm here in New York, sort of oddly, with John Dixon, Slate's political correspondent and the CBS political director.

Did I say that right?

You did, Emily.

Hi, yes.

And we have a special guest, Jacob Weisberg, editor-in-chief of the Slate Group.

I probably messed that up, too.

Not a bit. Emily, I'm delighted to be here in the plots chair, but not with the plot's personality.

That's right. A different personality is with us this morning.

Cheers go up from listeners everywhere.

No, sadness. I love the plot's personality.

We like your personality, too, though. We are going to talk about the Biden-Ryan debate, of course, and Romney's surge in the polls. And we're going to close with the Supreme Court's big affirmative action case this week. Before we start, there is a political podcast contest going on on iTunes. And it would actually mean a lot to us. If we could win this

contest, it would help us. We swear. So it would be super if you could go vote for us. If you think

we're the best, of course. You can find a link to the contest on our Facebook page, facebook.com

slash GabFest. And we thank you. Our super PAC will also be suspending in support of the campaign.

Okay, so we all watched the debate last night.

...