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Hello, and welcome to the slate, political gab fest for the 26th of February Friday.

I'm John Dickerson in Washington with David Plotz.

Emily Bazelon is in New Haven.

We're happy to be with you.

All of us are very happy.

We're rigorously and determinedly happy today as we talk in our first topic about health care, the president's meeting on the topic at Blair House.

Topic two is about the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibilities' verdict on the behavior of Bush administration, lawyers, and the handling of torture.

And the third topic will be about Toyota and its terrible problems and

woes. And next week, I just want to say, next week, no one could have possibly forgotten this,

but next week we'll be coming to you live in New York on March 3rd. We'll all be together

March 3rd at Housing Works and we're looking forward to seeing a lot of you in person and meeting many of you on March 3rd in the evening at Housing Works and then we'll put that up as a regular show. I can't believe you gave up your chance to say live from New York. We're not going to say live from New York. That is just such a cliche. We're going to avoid saying it. I've been, I just did. I got it out of my system.

Thank God you got it out of your system and didn't do it in the actual event because then we would have been stoned by the audience. Before we go into talking about what actually happened at this health care event, do you think it had any chance of doing anything productive in today's political environment.

Yes, I did think that because theatrics seem so crucial.

And it seems like what Obama needs out of this event is to persuade, not the Republicans,

but to persuade the Democrats that his plan is sound and politically sound, that enough people are in support of it,

that the Republicans don't have a good enough answer that are going to make the polls go against him

in a way that scares off the Democrats.

That seemed to me what he had to gain.

So Diddy, you were there.

Well, you want to add anything to that, David?

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