Did you see how red Joe Biden got? Talk about loose lips sink ships.

Jill Biden said on the Oprah show that she wanted her husband to be vice president instead of secretary of state, chiefly because it would involve less travel.

"If you're secretary of state, you'll be away, we'll never see you, you know," she said, describing how she and her husband had talked about it.

"I'll see you at a state dinner once and awhile. But I said, if you are vice president, the entire family, because they worked so hard for the election, they can be involved. They can come to our home. They can go to events, they can be with us all the time. And that's what's important to us," she said.

Biden, seated at his wife's side, looked sheepish and tried to shush his wife after she made the remark.

Via / ABC News and Reuters

Un zapatazo en contra de todas la guerras, not just the ones overseas, pero also the ones within and against communities here in the U.S. For New Orleans, the fronteras, the barrios, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Un zapatazo con tacon for Oscar Grant, Marcelo Lucero, all of those raided by ICE, all the children separated from their parents, for those young men of color sent to the front lines, for all those without health insurance and papers. For all those behind walls: prison walls, border walls, walls of poverty.

Time to feel my feet on the ground and dig into the earth with my toes and walk and work.

Throw your shoe up on your site and link to the shoe throwing throwdown at My Ecdysis.

"I hope I am wrong, but I believe Obama brings the same stench, to not say another word," Chavez said at a political rally on a historic Venezuelan battlefield.

"If Obama as president of the United States does not obey the orders of the empire, they will kill him, like they killed Kennedy, like they killed Martin Luther King, or Lincoln, who freed the blacks and paid with his life."

If you remember, Chavez said in a speech at the UN in 2006 that Bush smelled like sulfur.

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This man really hates being president. He really fucking hates it. All those people who said that Bush was a front for Cheney? Never believed it until this conference.

I tried to find a transcript of the conference online--but so far, this video clip of "Bushisms" is the only thing I can find.

It's sort startling to me--the reporter seems think these -isms are so cute and funny--I find them more than a bit horrifying.

Maybe someday, the press will catch up with the rest of humanity and realize it's not funny when a president talks about great job done as people drown.

Marc Anthony and Jennifer Lopez are scheduled to appear at the Latino Inaugural Ball (Obama's supposed to attend as well) on Sunday, January 18th, two days before the official Inauguration, and some high-profile Latino Dems are NOT pleased.

They're apparently furious because the high-profile couple didn't support Obama until after he'd won.

One major player called them "vile opportunists for worming themselves into anything Obama related even though they had nothing to do with his win."

Via / Perez Hilton

Image: AP/The Star.com

I suggest going online and asking/voting questions about immigration and hate crimes.

Amid the swirling controversy over the San Jose Police Department's practice of arresting large numbers of people — especially Latinos — under the state public-intoxication law, the department is damaging its reputation by choosing secrecy over transparency.

Before the city council hearing on Nov. 18, the American Civil Liberties Union submitted a formal request that these arrest reports be made public under the state open-records law. But days after the mayor and council said they wanted "broad-based community input" on the issue, the police department refused to publicly release the arrest records.

The council has directed the city manager to form a task force of community stakeholders to address this issue. But how will the task force members accurately identify the scope and nature of the problem if they are denied access to the most important records documenting it?

Indeed. Either way, however, I'm glad to see that the community is confronting this together and that they have the support of the media in doing so.

via the Mercury News

More Spanish speakers are speaking English very well despite a steady influx of immigrants this decade — a sign that they are blending in at least linguistically, according to a USA TODAY analysis of Census data released Tuesday.

The drop in the percentage who struggle with English is most noticeable in some of the largest counties and cities that have attracted immigrants for decades.

So once we speak "your language", we'll be more acceptable right? We'll fit in more and won't seem so "other", verdad? Latinos, like myself, who have always spoken English know that this goes way beyond language.

Via / Hispanic Tips and USA Today

On early Sunday morning Jose Sucuzhanay from Ecuador and his hermano Romel Sucuzhanay, were walking arm in arm in Bushwick, Brooklyn, just a block away from home, when a carload of men pulled up nearby. A man who got out of the car yelled anti-gay and anti-Latino epithets at the brothers, then broke a bottle over the 31-year-old man’s head.
His brother ran, and at least three other men who were in the car set upon the 31-year-old, beating him with a baseball bat and kicking him. The beating stopped when the brother returned, holding his cellphone, and told the attackers he had just called the police, the official said.

Jose is now on life support at Elmhurst Hospital in Queens and it looks like the family has had to make the heartbreaking choice of not letting Jose suffer anymore.

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Last month, Vazquez vetoed legislation that would have legalized abortion in the first trimester due to hardship on the basis of economics, family, age, health, or risk to the mother's life. A three-fifths majority vote to override the veto was attempted but failed.

Current law in Uruguay criminalizes all abortion except in cases of rape or endangerment of the mother's life. A public opinion poll found that 57% of Uruguayans support legalized abortion, according to Agence France Presse.

Vazquez could always join the U.S. Republican Party, after all they are looking for Latinos.

Via / Feminist Majority

George Bush has bought a new house in a wealthy part of Dallas, called Preston Hollow. The impending presence of a former President is ratcheting up security fears. "I am afraid with all the negative press the president has been getting, the whole neighborhood is going to be a target," said a woman, who wouldn't give her name. She carried her King Charles spaniel Friday past the Bushes' new abode.

Other vecinos include Dallas Mavericks' owner Marc Cuban and former presidential candidate Ross Perot.

Via / The Huffington Post

Obama took alot of heat during his presidential campaign for saying that he would be wiling to sit down with so-called "enemy" Latin American countries, namely Cuba and Venezuela.

"With Obama, talks could happen anywhere he wants," Fidel Castro, America's longtime Cold War enemy, wrote in the latest of a series of columns he has published in state-run media since falling ill in 2006.

"He should remember the carrot-and-stick approach will not work with our country," Castro wrote of Obama. "The sovereign rights of the Cuban people are not negotiable."

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Clinton's presidential campaign committee sent an e-mail to supporters on Thursday, inviting them to participate in a conversation with the former first lady in New York City on Monday, Dec. 15, which will feature special guest Bill Clinton and will be hosted by America Ferrera, the "Ugly Betty" star who first announced her support for Clinton in January 2008 and campaigned for her in Nevada and Pennsylvania.

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From Nezua:

Flagstaff. AZ — At approximately 10AM on Thursday December 4th, Flagstaff Immigrant Rights Enforcement (FIRE) confronted Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in a daring raid, serving a notice of deportation to ICE representatives at an ICE Management meeting. FIRE agents pinpointed the location of the ICE management
meeting at the Flagstaff Radisson Hotel in the Kaibab Meeting Room and staged the raid. FIRE agent Del Fuego read the notice of deportation to more than 15 ICE associated criminals, some of whom appeared to possibly be illegal immigrants themselves, as they were not Indigenous People. Agent Del Fuego called for the immediate withdrawal of ICE from the Flagstaff community and notified ICE of the cease and desist order for all future raids.

Read the Order of Deportation after the jump.

Post extendido - Leer más 'I.C.E Gets Served.....Deportation Papers'...

This October 31st, I - along with a big group of people - protested in front of the San Francisco ICE office, with the purpose of stopping the raids happening in Sanctuary Cities, such as San Francisco and Oakland. It was one of the first major protests I have attended and I felt proud to be out there making a stand for all immigrants who are being treated unjustly. Again, I know that Frank committed a serious crime but I believe it is unfair that my brother is being deported, because it does not solve anything, there are still gangs in El Salvador. If someone does a crime make them do their time, but do not move them far away from their families, it not only hurts them but their families as well.

The last time I talked to him on the phone, was about four days before he was deported. He sounded like the same Frank I knew. When I asked him if he was going to still be in a gang after all that happened he simply said "no." None of his gang friends visited him during the time he was in jail. One of his friends did write letters to him. All the people in his gang that were his "family" never visited him. On the other hand, his mother, sisters, my dad, my brothers and I visited him every chance we had. Now he is alone in El Salvador, because his only family is here.