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Hello and welcome to the Slate Political GabFest for Friday, August 21st.

I'm June Thomas, Slate's foreign editor.

John, David, and Emily are all at undisclosed vacation locations.

So we've staged a coup and relocated the GabFest to New York, where I'm joined by Jacob Weisberg,

editor-in-chief of the Slate Group. Hello, Jacob. Hello, June. I believe in Spain,

they called this a gulp-a-de-gabfest. So is. And Julia Turner, Slate's deputy editor and a regular

on Slate's Culture Gab Fest. A very scintillating and fascinating and excellent and amusing gamfest that you should all listen to.

Post-haste.

Available every Wednesday.

All right.

Plug over.

Today we'll be talking about the latest developments in health care reform, elections in Afghanistan,

and a very August topic, the rivalry between New York City and Washington, D.C.

I'm putting down my script now.

So, healthcare.

This week, it seems like the big things are the administration dropping their commitment to the public option.

And Charles Grassley, pretty much seeming as if it's not only,

he wouldn't vote for a bill if it had everything he agreed with or he wanted to see if it didn't

have enough Republicans supporting it. So Republican support was more important to him than actual content. Is this crazy? What should we be

...