#rebelleft

soy nuts taste like popcorn kernels would if they were edible. #healthisnotafoodgroup

Shout out to the ladies out there, both young and old, struggling with an eating disorder.

Being poor is knowing exactly how much everything costs.

Being poor is getting angry at your kids for asking for all the crap they see on TV.

Being poor is having to keep buying $800 cars because they’re what you can afford, and then having the cars break down on you, because there’s not an $800 car in America that’s worth a damn.

Being poor is hoping the toothache goes away.

Being poor is knowing your kid goes to friends’ houses but never has friends over to yours.

Being poor is going to the restroom before you get in the school lunch line so your friends will be ahead of you and won’t hear you say “I get free lunch” when you get to the cashier.

Being poor is living next to the freeway.

Being poor is coming back to the car with your children in the back seat, clutching that box of Raisin Bran you just bought and trying to think of a way to make the kids understand that the box has to last.

Being poor is wondering if your well-off sibling is lying when he says he doesn’t mind when you ask for help.

[...........]

"Boob play," "pics of kitty," "topless housecleaning" and "hypno role play." The list, scribbled in a lined yellow notebook, is followed by a double-underlined figure: $725.

It's 9 a.m. on a Friday and 30-year-old Marie is sitting on her couch clad in Donald Duck pajamas, munching on buttered toast and staring at her cellphone like she can will it to ring. If someone calls in response to the ad she posted this morning on Craigslist, she can add $75 to her projected income for the month.

Five months ago, before being laid off, Marie was bringing in $45,000 a year at Enterprise Rent-A-Car. Now, she operates out of two offices: her living room and a regularly changing hotel room. Her uniform is different, too: Instead of conservative business attire, she dons a lace bra and booty-hugging capris. The former corporate supervisor has become a sex worker.

MEMORANDUM FOR THE SECRETARY OF STATE

SUBJECT: Waiver of Restriction on Providing Funds to the
Palestinian Authority

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution
and the laws of the United States of America, including
section 7040(b) of the Department of State, Foreign Operations,
and Related Programs Appropriations Act, 2009 (Division H,
Public Law 111-8) (the "Act"), I hereby certify that it
is important to the national security interests of the
United States to waive the provisions of section 7040(a) of
the Act, in order to provide funds appropriated to carry out
chapter 4 of part II of the Foreign Assistance Act, as amended,
to the Palestinian Authority.

You are directed to transmit this determination to the Congress,
with a report pursuant to section 7040(d) of the Act, and to
publish the determination in the Federal Register.

BARACK OBAMA

Poor Joe Biden has spent his entire term as vice president being privately rebuked and publicly corrected by his boss. Every time Biden gives an interview, Obama comes out a couple days later and says, “I stand behind everything Joe said, except just to clarify, he meant the opposite,” and Biden has to sit in the Naughty Circle for ten minutes.

HAAAAAAAA I LOVE IT.

In the end, Netanyahu also knows that America is stronger than Israel, and that luck will not always be on his side.

How long before Netanyahu's ideology conforms to Obama's will? ... or Obama's will to Netanyahu's ideology? For isn't Obama the more conciliatory and pragmatic of the two?

“Let them beat us in the mosques if they dare,” said one. “Let them beat us while we are fasting and praying.”

"Iran Goes on Strike" by Reza Aslan, Iran scholar and personal intellectual crush.

The streets of Iran have been largely silenced, but a power struggle grinds on behind the scenes, this time over the very nature of the state itself. It is a battle that transcends the immediate conflict over the presidential election, one that began 30 years ago as the Islamic Revolution established a new form of government that sought to blend theocracy and a measure of democracy.

[...]

Most telling, and arguably most damning, is that many influential religious leaders have not spoken out in support of the beleaguered president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, or the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Indeed, even among those who traditionally have supported the government, many have remained quiet or even offered faint but unmistakable criticisms.

Clarification

Speaking to CNN while on a visit to Russia, President Obama said the US would to try to resolve the Iranian nuclear issue "in a peaceful way through diplomatic channels."

Vice-President Joe Biden had said in an interview with ABC TV on Sunday that "Israel can determine for itself... what's in their interest and what they decide to do relative to Iran and anyone else".

Asked whether the comment meant that Washington had given Israel the go-ahead for an attack, Mr Obama said: "Absolutely not."

Still, what Biden says is technically dead on: Israel will continue do as it pleases, with U.S. officials politically powerless to rescind military and diplomatic support.