LEave anything below of course, but as a convo starter, I'd be curious to hear explanations for the following:

Aggregate polling from Pollster.com as of today -

National Approval Barack Obama:
Disapprove: 51%
Approve: 44.5%
==

State of Country:
Wrong track: 58.5%
Right track: 31.6%
==

National Congressional Ballot
Republican: 46.8%
Democrat: 40.9%

You can see the polls aggregated here: http://www.pollster.com/ (apologies to those who had to put up with a slow page load earlier when the data was embedded.)

This is just a list of celebrity atheists I wasn't aware of and found interesting. One thing that did occur to me is that the world's two largest philanthropists - Warren Buffet and Bill Gates - are both atheists, which has implications for the claim that belief in God is necessary for morality.

Lance Armstrong

You've got one lecture on business ethics to give to a group of people getting their MBA in business school. What points would you make? Are there any topics you think are essential? What message would you send to our new management class?

Haven't heard what you folks are listening to in awhile. 

Quite a case.

An Arab Palestinian pretended online to be Jewish and looking for a serious relationship, met up for the first time in downtown Jerusalem with a Jewish woman, and "the couple then went to a nearby building and had sex:

I'm sure you've heard of the group, formed by Obama, of alleged bi-partisan elders who will "study" the debt and then encourage the population to take its needed medicine of entitlement cuts. There won't be any defense cuts proposed, nor will the commission advocate raising taxes on the wealthiest 1% (who now own nearly 50% of the wealth). It's been obvious since this group was formed that if the WH has its way, Obama will do what Bush couldn't and make a move on SS.

I'm curious, for people who've had em, whether or not they regret the decision, and why.

I'm curious, for folk who haven't, whether or not they regret not having children, and why. 

I'm asking in part b/c I've got a g-friend who wants children. I'm not against the idea - the older I get the more often I have warm thoughts about kids, but am uncertain overall. So this is relevant to my life somewhat, but I'm also just curious about y'alls personal lives 'cause I'm generally nosey.

I wanted to outline the leftist critique, b/c I read Harley's Eric Alterman link from thenation and it didn't seem as if Alterman had dedicated 5 minutes to understanding the position he was supposed to be targeting. (Here's a link to Harley's comment in another thread which contains a link to Alterman's piece http://theforvm.org/diary/bird-dog/new-regime-open-thread#comment-225296).

Allow me to rectify!

Leave your latest and greatest here.

We are now, I fear, in the early stages of a third depression. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/28/opinion/28krugman.html?hp

Wouldn't it be nice if the rest of the econ profession was trying to scare politicians into spending on jobs rather than convince them they need to cut benefits? Go Paul!

Merkel's austerity: Total savings of more than €85 billion by 2014 including:

* cutting 10,000 jobs in the federal administration