Hello and welcome to this late political Gab Fest for Friday, August 14th, 2009, the darkest, most dreary, most unpleasant week of the summer.

I so disagree already. Okay, that's good that you disagree. Emily, I'm David Plotz here in Washington.

John Dickerson is, I don't know, John, you know, he's somewhere doing something interesting probably.

Emily is kind of quasi on vacation in some undisclosed location on the Atlantic seaboard.

And we're joined today by a special guest. This is a, this is a thrilling moment for us.

Jefferson Pestrunk, who is our incredible intern, or one of our incredible interns, is joining us as a, as the third Gab Fester today. Jefferson, welcome to.

Thank you. It's like being called up from the minors. It's very exciting.

It is. Well, I'm sure you're going to like hit five home runs in your first game and then

you're going to retire because this is also Jefferson's last week as our intern because

he's gotten a job of all things.

A great loss for us and a great gain for the rest of the world.

We're sure.

You got the only job that the Obama stimulus program has created, it looks like.

So we are going to discuss three topics today.

We're going to discuss the health care town halls that are occurring around the country and the death panel controversy.

We're going to discuss the death of Eunice Kennedy Shriver.

And we're going to discuss what else.

Oh, President Obama's vacation.

And so let's start.

You know what?

Actually, I have to start by doing one thing, which is, so I got so much hate mail for last week's show on last week's show. Emily, you weren't here. Jefferson, you were observing. Obviously, I wasn't there because, you know, I'm sure it would have all been different if I'd been there. Yeah, well, so guesting for Emily last week was Slate's business business columnist Daniel Gross, who is a dear friend of mine and with whom I have a, hey, a towel snapping relationship.

And so the show consisted of a lot of towel snapping with me, you know, badgering Dan and Dan badgering back, but more gently.

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