Hello and welcome to this late political gap fest for the 19th of November 2010.

I'm John Dickerson in Washington with David Plotz and Emily Bazelam.

We are all here together in one happy family.

And we're going to talk about the lame duck session of Congress, extending the Bush tax cuts,

deficit reduction as the nation's

great unsolved problem. And then we're going to talk about the decision that came down on Wednesday

in the trial of Ahmed Galani. Then finally we're going to conclude by talking about children of royalty, both the

royal wedding that's coming up and Sarah Palin's daughter about which Emily wrote this week.

But first, the president returned from his overseas trip, and members of Congress returned from

either their therapists or their victory celebrations to engage in the lame duck session of

Congress. Important issues in front of them include extending the Bush tax cuts, the START Treaty with Russia, and the Don't Ask, Don't Tell,

in addition with, oh, funding the government. David, with all of these important issues in front

of the president, the members of the new leaders of Congress and the old leaders of Congress

were going to get to meet with President Obama on Thursday.

They couldn't even come up with an agreement about when to meet.

They had to kick it down the road for 10 days.

Is this a dire sign of the childishness that both sides are captive of or does it not

matter or do you want to talk about something else entirely?

I think I want to talk about something else entirely because there's a lot of substance going on.

But I think that each of them has a very strong incentive to behave like babies right now,

particularly the Republicans have a strong incentive because they know that any failures in the lame duck will be blamed on the president and the Democrats anyway.

They're not going to be held responsible for it.

...