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Hello and welcome to the Slate Political GabFest for Friday, October 16th.

I'm John Dickerson here with David Plotz, as always, and Emily Bazelon has joined us in Washington.

I wish John was in New Haven today because John is sick, and I think he's like going to infect us here in our closet.

But your child is already sick and so is mine. So what do you have to lose? They're both,

it turns out. John probably has something worse. Yeah. I think I'm, I probably do have something

worse. But whatever it is, I'm not going to infect any of our listeners except with my bad ideas,

which will be in cereal first about health care, then about White House and policy towards gays.

And then finally, the White House's attack on Fox News.

But first, before we get to those three exciting topics, David, you have an announcement.

Yes.

So, as you know, we're going to do a fantastic live Gab Fest in a few weeks on Tuesday, November 10th here in Washington, D.C.

Emily will again come down for it and be a beneficent presence in the nation's capital.

At 6th and I Historic Synagogue at 7 p.m. Tuesday, November 10th, please reserve your tickets now from 6th and I.org or there's links on our

Facebook page or on the Slate GabFest page where you can see where to go and get tickets.

And we really hope to see you there and there will be prizes and ponies and there'll be ponies,

John.

And all sorts of great stuff. So please come and see us.

And now to our first topic, health care reform, and passed out of the Senate Finance Committee on Tuesday of this week with the votes of Democrats, but also somewhat surprisingly, the vote of Olympia Snow, who we thought might be behind reform,

but didn't know whether she'd vote for it in committee. Emily, tell us what you think about. Are you turning to me because now Olympia Snow, this woman in the Senate has so much power.

She's in the spotlight. What does this mean for women everywhere?

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