there's no candidates for ambassador to germany or france, both major allies. or greece for that matter, an important country. is the president having trouble recruiting people to fill some of the key slots that remain unfilled after six months? >> no, john, actually, the trouble isn't in the recruitment. it's in the vetting and getting them through the process. as i mentioned yesterday, there are over, i believe, 100 candidates in the queue waiting to be pushed through, but due to the historic obstruction, it's taking much longer than normal to get a lot of those nominees through, and frankly a lot of the people that are part of that process, one of the number one reasons we've had people take a step back is because that process is so lengthy. and hold on. i've got a skype question from chris burg in north dakota and we'll go to that. >> hey, sarah. thank you so much. i don't want to talk about any