November 2007 Archives

Myth:  Latinos threaten English language because they don't want to learn the language.

Fact:  Latinos are learning English.

This fact has been stated over, and over again.  I feel like a broken record by reiterating it.  But, it's necessary because they keep telling the same lies.

“The purchasing power of Hispanics will exceed $863 billion this year..."

Samantha Contreras, blogs at CitizenOrange.

It's Friday.  A Mariachi Hitler  Bwahahahaha.

Hattip.

Remember Halloween?  Remember Myers, the top immigration official for ICE giving out first prize for a white man dressed up as a dark-skinned, dread-locked convict?  Yeah her.

Now she has proved her incompetence (again), by planting questions with coworkers to ask her during a press conference.  Nobody seems to remember what the question was.

Yup.  Not only that, the Hispanic Paradox is that they get sick less often --totally surprising the establishment.  (Look up the links for that yourself - I am pressed for time today.)

English speaking Latinos adopt technology faster than those who prefer speaking Spanish.  There was a study done about a month ago on how those who prefer Spanish are avid readers of print media.

5.  Out of 100, 5 made the NYTimes top 100 list that have Latino authors.  Sound Taste is not satisfied.

""I can tell you my inclination would be to say as many Cubans as want to come here should come in..."

Romney, your a racist, hypocritical, opportunist, brown-nosing politician if I ever saw one.

Robert Lovato doesn't appreciate jokes made by late night show personalites, such as below:

“Well, police across the country now say they’re arresting more and more illegals who are prostitutes. But proponents say, ‘No, no. They’re just doing guys American hookers will not do.’”  -JLeno

"A man in Mexico weighing 1,200 pounds has lost almost half that weight and might enter the Guinness Book of World Records for most weight lost. The Mexican man lost the weight when the family inside him moved to America.”  - CO'Brien

"New Rule: No more produce-scented shampoo: avocado, cucumber, watermelon. Gee, your hair smells like a migrant worker.”  - BMaher

And ponders just how far media is going with this...

I am finally having a chance to catch up on some things.  In the far-right column there are some new links to some old and new friends, and associates.  Enjoy.

Thus sayeth NYTimes:

Fixing immigration is not a yes-or-no question. It’s yes and no. Or if you prefer, no and yes — no to more illegal immigration, to uncontrolled borders and to a flourishing underground economy where employer greed feeds off worker desperation. Yes to extending the blanket of law over the anonymous, undocumented population — through fines and other penalties for breaking the nation’s laws and an orderly path to legal status and citizenship to those who qualify.

Kos, seems to agree.

Can we get anymore Latino?  Two Latino groups seek the .LAT domain name for top-level domain:  To "identify, differentiate, and add value to Internet resources related with Latinos." 

Why stop there?  .RUS for Russians, .POL for Polish...or .GAY, .LES.
Will we see a rebuttal by the advocates of the term HISPANIC - .HIS? 

Someone make it stop, please.

The proposed NO-Match, system is officially in the can.  Unfortunately, this proves that our social security records are not accurate.

Or not...

I found this comment amusing.  She is explaining the benefit of an application called Flickrvision:

I hope then people will understand that not everyone in Brazil live in jungles or forests. Actually, a very small part of the people, formed by adventurers and some indians live there.

And actually, we don't see wild animals walking by the buildings (hell yeah, we do have buildings!) and the cars (WHAT?? CARS?? WEREN'T THEM HORSES??)

What I mean is that, I hope this will teach some geography most of these I-didn't-choose-geography-in-high-school.

"Por que no te callas?

The tension is there, but the numbers don't add up to a war.

(I thought I had posted this previously, so please excuse the belated entry.)

This is a beautiful read, one you shouldn't miss.  I will reflect on this when eating Turkey and cranberries tonight.

Say, hi Latinos

Who is he?  He's one of the financial backers of Rudolf Giuliani and he owns the trust that is trying to finance splitting up California's electoral vote.

If Mr. Singer (and those who support him) get his way, instead of California being a blue state it can be divied up between both Republicans and Democrats.  A major shift in how votes are counted.

(NOTE:  Events such as this can go unnoticed with the Latino population who are too bogged down fighting personal economics, education, and racism.  For this reason, I try to cover more news than just Brown news in hopes that with information we will not get counted out the bigger picture and can participate in the larger world.

"Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and television news reporter Mirthala Salinas have ended their romantic relationship."

Poll says Chavez behind on  expanding his powers for expanding his term limits to unlimited terms.

Bwahahahaha.

Now I won't feel as bad when trying to improve my Spanish.

These are ads from Sony, in Europe for white and black Playstations.

 

I can easily see Americans as saying yes, but some people overseas do not see it as such.

Sony's official stamteent is it's a contrast in color: the new white model vs. the black one. They could have easily done a white car vs a black car, and people would of still read it as racial.

In Brazil, as they celebrate Black Consciousness Day.

Facebook has enabled a feature for businesses to publish what their consumers purchase, want or subscribe to that users Facebook profile in order to be shared with the world. .

Facebook is truly looking at the business end first and the people second.  What they should of done is first have the business request to use the story of the users purchase and then ask if they can use it, rather than publish first and leave it up to the user to opt out later.  MoveOn allows you to fight back.

"You can have English-only rules . . . if in fact that English-only rule is relevant to job performance, safety, efficiency and so on," countered Rep. Charlie Gonzalez (D-Texas). "If it is not relevant, if it is discriminatory, if it is gratuitous, if it is a subterfuge to discriminate against people based on national origin -- which we know that's what it is -- the EEOC doesn't allow it."

Mas.

I enjoyed this article.

"We tend to romanticize the past," Chavez explained. "We think immigrants of the past wanted to be American. It was easy to be American. They assimilated so rapidly. In reality, none of that happened."
[...]
According to Chavez, racism is based on ethnicity rather than genetics. Anti-immigrant groups promote what he labeled the "Latino Threat Narrative."

Examples of these include popular beliefs about Latinos, such as the notion that they are unable to assimilate into society, Latino women are just "baby makers" and Latino immigrants pose a kind of conspiracy to reclaim the Southwest, a region of the U.S. that once was a part of Mexico.

"I'm 13th generation in the Southwest. My question is: How come no one sent me an e-mail that the conspiracy is still on?" Chavez joked.

The statistics prove many alarmists claims wrong.

Will Obama, be the most 'friended' candidate yet?  He is already on MySpace, MiGente, Facebook, Blackplanet, MiGente, AsianPlanet, GLEE, Faithbase, and now Batanga.com.  All hail the social-network King!

I thought CAFTA was supposed to bring trade barriers down?  Not when the US outlaws an industry it doesn't.

Some would do it for a year's tuition, and others for a mere iPhone.  Is this the most materialistic generation ever, or is voting and youth synonymous for undervalued? 

Hattip.

I have a couple of days off from work this week (and last), so I've been on a semi-vacation.  A semi-vacation means your off from work, but are not going anywhere to spend your vacation.

In the news a few days ago was the last name article.  It was reported just about everywhere of how Spanish surnames are now in the top 10.  The coolest of the articles may be the original in the NYTImes, where you can actually plug in your last name and see how it ranks amongst last names in the US.    For instance, my last name ranks 387 (down from last year), and occurs 8 times per 100,000 people.

Another cool happening is VotoLatino has their voting widget up and operational.



More to come.

"In fact, for the malcontents of Hollywood, academia, and the catwalks, Chávez is an ideal ally. Just as the sympathetic foreigners whom Lenin called "useful idiots" once supported Russia abroad, their modern equivalents provide the Venezuelan president with legitimacy, attention, and good photographs. He, in turn, helps them overcome the frustration John Reed once felt—the frustration of living in an annoyingly unrevolutionary country where people have to change things by law. For all his brilliance, Reed could not bring socialism to America. For all his wealth, fame, media access, and Hollywood power, Sean Penn cannot oust George W. Bush. But by showing up in the company of Chávez, he can at least get a lot more attention for his opinions."

- –Anne Applebaum

Hattip.

A look at Venezuelan economics under Hugo including oil and state-run energy institution, and other questionable Hugo-nomics.

    Am I beating a dead horse...am I that dead horse?  All this effort, all this work equating to nothing more from where I started:  a brown blogger.  Ironically, we do it to ourselves - how happy, I was seeing myself included among the other rebel-like brown bloggers.  Ah, the pleasures of a masochist!  Do we not pride ourselves and revel in our browness yet, speak sideways of our exclusion in big media and our brother/sister (white) bloggers?

It's a catch-22.  Damned if we do, damned if we don't.  The very issues that we cover are by which, the very issues that label us.  God forbid...if I talk about sewing or knitting it will be classified as a Latino point of view. 

I'm not as ecstatic of the article that included me as a Latino voice, as I was previously.  Why be a brown blogger and not just a blogger?  "Brown-OMmmmm," is the mantra that we think lifts us, but only serves to shackle us.  

"People of color challenge mainstream views online."  Don't most bloggers challenge mainstream views?  Isn't this what Firedoglake does?  Instapundit?  MyDD?  TalkLeft?  Ornicus?  Are people of color --snicker-- bloggers, so different from other non-color --snicker, snicker-- bloggers?  Say yes, and you reinforce the very things you state to hate.  Madness.

Call me ignorant for not seeing the paint on the wall (and it's not brown!) and accepting that that is how others see me.  Call me an illogical fool for believing that what I believe is my reality and not the opposite.  Look at the big picture.  How most of use our browness does not help.  It further alienates us and worse, serves to feed our inflicted self-pleasure of being Colored Folk.

Just be.

"You got to know when to hold em, know when to fold em,
Know when to walk away and know when to run.
You never count your money when youre sittin at the table.
There'll be time enough for countin when the dealins done."

-Kenny Rogers

Isn't that true?  - nobody backed up Spitzer's Aces.

"Bargaining with pharmaceutical firms to bring down the price of Aids drugs and producing cheap generic versions...Infection rates in the Latin American country have been kept at a similar level to the US...."

That is contrary to popular opinion.

"For a novelist, intuition is essential. Basically it's contrary to intellectualism, which is probably the thing that I detest most in the world - in the sense that the real world is turned into a kind of immovable theory. Intuition has the advantage that either it is, or it isn't. You don't struggle to try to put a round peg into a square hole."

                                                                                                                          - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

...start to make mainstream big media.  Hey, I'm in there too!  Along with some other brown bloggers.

Reading Latina Lista's headline:  Will Latinos Lose the Most Valuable Player Status (a.k.a. Swing Votes) to Women in Next Presidential Election, I said to myself "good we finally, won't be sought after as a sore thumb of a vote."  But then I thought that if our issues, as in our communities and economic status are not addressed, then it won't be a good thing after all.

How can we ever become mainstream if our needs as a whole are not matched?  It's an upstream battle for us as individuals, and as a whole.

• It wasn't a problem when they won elections, but now that they've lost their state vote in the last few years Republicans seek to change how California votes count in future elections.  They want to divy it up!\
• Republicans may not be able to count on Florida anymore.
• For the same reasons Republicans didn't go on some more or less Democratic debates, Dems should go on Fox.
• Hillary camp has a great plan for future voters.  Yeah right!
• No street vendors = Less Noise in Mexico. 
• How Latin America Subsidizes the U.S.  We're talking trillions!
• 'Bad hair' versus 'good hair'.
  

"Why don't you Shut UP?!?"

Carl Rove is no longer in politics, but he can still be an influence.  And even though he reads blogs, he undoubtedly is disturbed of the democracy it opens for all and levels the public pulpits.

“People in the past who have been on the nutty fringe of political life, who were more or less voiceless, have now been given an inexpensive and easily accessible soapbox, a blog,” Mr. Rove said…. “I’m a fan of many blogs. I visit them frequently and I learn a lot from them. But there also blogs written by angry kooks.”

“My point is not that liberals swear publicly more often than conservatives. That may be true, but that’s not my point,” Mr. Rove said. “It is that the netroots often argue from anger rather than reason, and too often, their object is personal release, not political persuasion.”

His statements here disturb me on many levels.  But, all I have time to say right now is...jeez....excuse us for having a heart.  

...in Brazil.  (Holy superhero costumes, Batman!)

Seriously, has anyone ever dressed up as a white person?  This DHS employee is really too much.  Does the word embarrass come to mind?  How about FIRED?  The boy was dressed like a dark skinned convict all day!

No, I haven't forgotten.  This site is still in upgrade mode.  Many - MANY - things from the old version still has to be put up here...as well, as a new design

Very much so.

The WGA is on strike. TV shows are in peril while the writers walk the picket line. However, there is another side to the story. While it is important to support the strike, it is also important to note that the WGA is a White male club that traditionally has a minimal minority, and female representation. The picket lines reflect that. There are few if any Asians, Latinos, or Blacks carrying placards. So, while we engage sympathy, we should also engage scorn at the lack of a true representation of writing talent.

UPDATE [2007-11-10 00:06:00]:  Forget that...I'm with the Gadfly - where all the brown folk?

"If you really want to watch the presidential candidates squirm, ask them about immigration reform."

Source.

Luis Alberto Urrea, rants (rages?) about something....I don't know.  But, then again, he's a novelist so I guess it's pretty normal.

It was my girlfriend's birthday last week, and we went to see Platanos & Collard Greens with her family to celebrate.  This play brought to light some of the issues experienced between blacks and latinos, which not many are talking about:  The Afro-Latino Connection.  And I commend them for tackling this topic.

Growing up in a small part of the Bronx, where neither blacks or Latinos (or whites) were the hegemonic factor, our friends were filtered equally among the three ethnic groups.  So, I consider myself old school Latino, in that I embrace the connection that many Puerto Ricans and Blacks in NYC shared throughout the 60's and 70's. 

A lot of immigrants who are coming south of the border have no idea what commonalities and strengths can be derived from working together with (what is perceived as rival or competitive) other groups.  I remember my talk with Luis Mendoza, when he said 'different should just be that - different' and not necessarily mean competition. 

Many Latinos need to start scratching, and look for that place where the black is in them, because it is said that "all (Latinos) have a little Black behind the ears."

Now, isn't this just stupid?  We are going to base our budget for reasons of immigration?  Out the window goes educational needs, security needs and allocating money based on populations...you know, stuff that really matters.

Look to leave the smudged print day job and jump to a dynamic digital format and get your press pass down-graded.  Huh?  That's what happened to Rafael Martinez Alequin.   Read it in detail.

I find it strange that the video is unavailable via both blogs.

I privately took my cue from the 10Questions top 10 videos the a couple of days ago when I mused to myself that immigration is no longer a wedge issue for the 2008 election.  WaPo has just verified my suspicions. 

There are other more pressing issues Americans are concerned about such as religion in government, privacy, corporations in government, drugs, Iraq (this issue seems to have fell down in the totem pole for more interesting questions:  Is a two party system bad?).

So you have one racist who dresses up as a black prisoner and another racist awarding the best costume award, and all the other racists standing around condoning it with non-action. 

We are second class citizens and one big joke to them.  And this is the head of the agency who is responsible for apprehending Mexican hispanics illegal immigrants?!?