Monday morning roundup and response to comment

More awesome OWES signs.

Herman Cain thinks you're stupid.

This, my friends, is why (some) conservatives piss me off. The federal government is imposing marriage? Imposing marriage on whom? How is someone else's marriage an imposition?

Muscular women are sexy, too.

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In all fairness, I don't pretend to have known better than the people who bought at the height of the market; I, too, just didn't have the money to buy earlier. The only thing I did right was not buy in spite of not having the money. I had people tell me that it didn't matter how much a house cost, because it would keep going up in value. I chose to disregard those people. I had (smarter) people tell me that no market goes up indefinitely and to wait until I found something I could afford. And I had the sense not to buy for the sake of buying; I bought only when I found the house that worked for me. So I don't stand in judgment of people who bought at a less opportune time; I just don't see why they should get their mortgages forgiven, when I won't.

The truth is, you can follow all the best advice and best conventional wisdom and still get burned. That's what the OWES protests, at their essence, are largely about. Just like I was "lucky" that I wasn't in the market for a house when prices were uber-inflated, I was lucky to get out of college, and then grad school, in a better economy. But there's a generation of people who followed the rules, and got screwed. They were told that student debt was good debt, that it was an investment in their future. And it probably is. But for now, they're in debt because they followed the rules, and the bankers who broke the rules and f*ed everything up for everyone got bailed out.

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I don't know whether you read the entire Atlantic article and/or some of the comments, but the comments are truly revealing. A ton of them are from guys who say "ha! women are getting burned for thinking they can ignore their biological predetermination! What did they think was going to happen?" It's that old line about how men get more desirable with age (because they get wealthier) and women get less so (because they become less good looking, theoretically, and less fertile). Let's take the first half of that equation first: these guys are failing to realize that as women become more financially independent, men's financial situation is less important. So that leaves the second half, to which I say, less fertile, sure, less attractive, bullshit. Leaving aside the reality that women of all ages partner up and get married, and that a lot of people who marry younger get divorce or stay stuck in unhappy marriages, it's just absolute bullshit that older women are inherently less desirable. I just *don't* buy it. And I personally hope that there are children in my future--particularly biological children--but, like the author, I refuse to let my biology dictate my future. In other words, I refuse to devalue myself as a partner just because I'm no longer 25. If anything, I think I'll make a much better partner and mother in my 30s than I ever would have in my 20s. Some people will disagree, but I'm sure I disagree with their value as partners and parents, too.