I, Breadwinner?

Peter Duffy claims men have traded their traditional desires for a job, a wife, and a house for loans and a fear of commitment.

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0451,duffy,59417,6.html

EXCERPT:

As I morphed from a twentysomething into a thirty-nothing, the realization began to dawn: Will the supersized student loans and maxed-out credit cards stay with me until the bitter end? Will I spend the rest of my life barely making rent, forever beholden to myriad creditors? Will I be able to purchase a home? Will I be solvent enough to provide, God help me, for a family? Will, in other words, there be consequences to an early life of profligate borrowing?

How to Lose an Army

http://www.amconmag.com/2006/2006_12_18/article.html

EXCERPT:

The Iranians have said that this time they have 140,000 American hostages, in the form of U.S. troops in Iraq. If either Israel or the U.S. attacks Iran, we could lose an army.

How could such a thing happen? The danger springs from the fact that almost all the supplies our forces in Iraq use, including vital fuel for their vehicles, comes over one supply line, which runs toward the south and the port in Kuwait. If that line were cut, our forces might not have enough fuel to get out of Iraq. American armies are enormously fuel-thirsty.

Our Religious Destiny

Even people who don’t want the influence of Christianity to grow recognize the influence on religion on birth rates children’s church attendance. Beautiful!

http://www.maxwell.syr.edu/news/online_clips/070820_brooks_wsj_9.asp

EXCERPT:

In all likelihood religion will grow as a social force in American culture and politics over the coming decades. The reason: A secular nation needs secular citizens. And nonreligious Americans are outstandingly weak when it comes to the most efficacious way to achieve this: by having kids.

If you picked 100 adults out of the population who attended their house of worship nearly every week or more often, they would have 223 children among them, on average, according to the 2006 General Social Survey. Among 100 people who attended less than once per year or never, you would find just 158 kids. This 41% fertility gap between religious and secular people is especially meaningful because people tend to worship more or less like their parents. According to data collected in 1999 by Gallup, 60% of adults who were taken to church at least once per month as children grew up to attend at least this often; only 15% stopped attending as adults.

The demographic implications are even more profound for the political left, where a disproportionate number of secularists are located. Religious people who call themselves politically “conservative” or “very conservative” are having, on average, an astounding 78% more kids than secular liberals. Studies show that people are even more likely to vote like their parents than they are to worship like them. The secular left, therefore, has to rely on the tough slog of bringing people from the political and religious middle over to their views. The religious right simply has to keep having lots of babies.

Best Cities For Jobs: Oklahoma City Ranks 10th in Forbes’ New List

Forbes has announced its annual Best Cities For Jobs list, and the South and West is where job-seekers should be looking….

Another rapid mover, Oklahoma City ranked 67th on last years list. It ranks sixth in income growth, 15th in cost of living and 25th in unemployment. Oklahoma City has been a traditional base for energy companies like Chesapeake Energy and Devon Energy, but its economic growth has partly been fueled by diversification into fields like information technology and health services.

http://www.koco.com/smallbusiness/14413661/detail.html

Oklahoma City (rank: 10th) and Tulsa (rank: 6th) are the only two cities in the list that are heavily invested in energy. What will happen if we go to war with Iran and oil goes above $100/barrel? It’s above $90/barrel now, almost as high as it was in the late 1970s (adjusted for inflation).

Will we be ready to influence a rapidly growing city?

The fun is about to begin.