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Batgirl tells Batman: Equal pay for equal work! (except Latinas?)

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Batgirl tells Batman she wants to get paid as much as Robin for the same work. Today’s Latinas need to stand up and demand their fair share too, since the benefits of the Equal Pay Act seem to have passed them by.

In 1963, President John F. Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act which prohibits gender discrimination in wages. At its signing women made 59 cents on average for every dollar earned by men. Although some small gains have been made, women today earn only 77 cents for every buck a guy gets. Latinas only earn 57 cents.

Enforcing existing laws is hard enough, but it CAN get worse. Across the country, Republican tools of big business are trying to undermine equal pay, all part of the GOP’s despicable War on Women. (We’ve got videos below.)

Mas…Batgirl tells Batman: Equal pay for equal work! (except Latinas?)

Ñewsweek: Karma 90210, Colombian high, Abuelita licks frog problem

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Karma or koincidence?

  • POCHO Jefe-in-Chief Lalo Alcaraz spoke to a digital media industry panel at the Taberna Mexicana in Beverly Hills in February
  • After the panel, a lady outside the restaurant profiled Lalo as the valet parking guy and wanted him to retrieve her vehicle
  • Taberna Mexicana suddenly closed last week

We’ve got Lalo’s Big Beverly Hills Adventure and this week’s other big stories below.  POCHO.com — breaking the ñews on and off since 1997.

Mas…Ñewsweek: Karma 90210, Colombian high, Abuelita licks frog problem

We’re selling young, mobile pochos! Who’s buying? For how much?

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The U.S. is getting Mex to the max

The meme started on a site called MetaFilter: If you are not paying for it, you’re not the customer; you’re the product being sold. 

Facebook — free to use — sells you and your friends and your information to advertisers. So does Google and so does Yahoo! When POCHO grows up, we’ll sell your “page views” too — hopefully to multitudes of high-spending advertisers who are appropriate and cool tambien.

This week the online ad world was excited about the latest estimates of the “Latino” marketplace from Nielsen.

Our No Shit Sherlock™ quick summary:

  • There are lots of Latino (Hispanic,Mexican,Chicano,Latin-American,Cuban, etc.) people
  • Latinos buy many products
  • Advertisers spend lots of money online, on TV, in print and over the air to get Latinos to buy their products
  • The Latino “market segment” is young, mobile and growing

Peep the surprising stats illustrated by purty graphs from the Nielsen survey:

Mas…We’re selling young, mobile pochos! Who’s buying? For how much?

Pocho Ocho ways the candidates are scheming to get the Latino vote

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8. Gastronamía

Going after the gastronomic vote, Dems and Repubs plan to offer Latino voters free tacos and salsa at the polls (all tacos made by immigrant labor.) Mitt Romney has even changed his tune about cheesy grits, now heralding cold maduros as his favorite breakfast.

7. Stereotypical Shows

Both parties are promising to fund and sponsor television programs about Latinos including shows about sexy maids, deep-thinking gardeners and homesick homeboys. Obama made his weekly address with the addition of two scantly clad Latina hotties by his side and a little person dressed as a sunflower. Romney is more timid in matters of sexuality but did allow a three-second shot of his butt to air in one of his campaign ads (for las viejitas.)

Mas…Pocho Ocho ways the candidates are scheming to get the Latino vote

Mitt Romney: Holographic Tupac is your best choice for VP!

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All eyez not on Princess Leia, they are on Tupac
Back from the dead and “live” on stage, Holographic Tupac Shakur was a big sensation at Coachella. Never really alive, and dead on stage, Mitt Romney is a mediocre “meh” across America.

That’s why GOP political insiders are urging the superwealthy robotic candidate to pick Holographic Tupac as his vice presidential running mate.

Holographic Tupac, they note, is way more lifelike than the GOP presidential candidate, although Mitt’s musical skills are nothing to scoff at.

“Tupac could be Mitt’s Joe Biden,” said one Romney campaign insider. “He has the common touch Mitt lacks and he’s big with the bitches. We think he might be the droid we are looking for.”

Dead or not, rapper Tupac Shakur (1971-1996) killed ’em in a short set at Coachella (video below.)

Mas…Mitt Romney: Holographic Tupac is your best choice for VP!

Beverly Hills Mexican restaurant where Lalo got profiled shuts down

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Facebook announcement Tuesday evening

One night in February, POCHO Jefe-in-Chief Lalo Alcaraz was waiting for the valet to retrieve his car outside a Mexican restaurant in Beverly Hills when a white lady repeatedly thrust her parking valet ticket in his direction.

Lalo was at the restaurant to speak on a panel for DigitalLA Latino Content professionals on the need for Latinos to create and control their own media content and channels because mainstream media stereotypes of Latinos are, you know, stereotypes.

And now that restaurant has abruptly closed. No more gigantic fresh three-way chips of blue corn, yucca and plantains with both salsa verde and salsa habanera. No more empanadas. No more $5 Happy Hour specials like ceviche shooters.

We don’t know why they closed (the website is all white.)  It’s a shame — they were berry berry nice to us.  In memoriam, here’s Lalo’s epic account of  that evening.  The headline?

Standing While Brown: A white lady tried to get me to valet her car

Mas…Beverly Hills Mexican restaurant where Lalo got profiled shuts down

Colombia hails Secret Service bust: We’re not just for drogas anymore!

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There was no indication Shakira Isabel Mebarak Ripoll was involved

(PNS reporting from CARTAGENA) Top officials of Colombia’s Ministry of Tourism are high on happiness after the weekend recall of U.S. Secret Service officers caught in a prostitution scandal.

“Hookers? We love it,” Assistant Minister Rogerio Flauta said Monday. “It shows the world we have more to offer than drugs, guns and murder. Sex is always good for business! And hookers good enough for U.S. Federales? Can you say ‘organic search results?’ I knew that you could.”

“This is all new to us, and we need help.” he told reporters. “After careful consideration, we’re reaching out to Thailand, which artfully managed its transition from the home of high-potency marijuana “Thai sticks” to the top Asian destination for underage sex tourism. We’ve got a lot to learn.”

Mas…Colombia hails Secret Service bust: We’re not just for drogas anymore!

Ñewsweek: Curse like a Mexican, think like a vato, build an arcade

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This oddly-garbed teacher will show you how to curse like a Mexican

Attention pinche pendejos! Yes, you, culero! What? You don’t know what we’re talking about? Then you need to watch the one-minute video refresher course on How to curse like a Mexican, the biggest story on POCHO this week.

For the link and our other big stories, keep reading  below.

Mas…Ñewsweek: Curse like a Mexican, think like a vato, build an arcade

My name is Lady Justice and I endorse this message

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Lady Justice wears a Hoodie for Trayvon Martin. George Zimmerman, the killer of the 17-year-old African-American teenager in Sanford, FLA, has finally been arrested and arraigned — this only after national outrage and agitation by Americans of all races. We hope that Justice is truly blind, and also that she wears a hoodie.

Paranormal investigators investigate Argentina cornfield OVNI tracks

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Experts from Argentina’s leading ufologist group Vision OVNI are investigating strange skid marks where some say an objeto volador no identificado landed in a farmer’s field in the northeastern province of Santa Fe.

Inexplicita explains the inexplicable this way:

A cornfield that appeared to display strange marks caused astonishment to many citizens of the town of Pujato… The event prompted a visit from member of Visión Ovni, the Victoria-based group devoted to the study of unidentified flying objects.

On 5 April, cornstalks standing 2 meters tall were found flattened in the same direction in the middle of a lot. The field is some 2 kilometers distant from Route 33 and the marks were found by Rubén Marelli, the owner, who presented a complaint on the following day…During a field survey, they found a trail measuring 2.10 meters wide and nearly 600 meters long, which presents side trails that open and mark a sort of figure eight, doubling back on themselves.

Scroll down for two big photos of the tracks. What do you think?

Mas…Paranormal investigators investigate Argentina cornfield OVNI tracks

Ex-cyber-cop: Stop border infiltration by Internet-powered ‘netbacks’

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Mexican taquerias that double as Internet cafes are a launching-point for netback infiltration

(PNS reporting from CYBERESPACE) They slip across the border at night, invisible, hidden in the multitude of American web surfers, bringing with them accented characters, exclamation points turned on their heads and foreign ideas like “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

Mexican and Mexican-adjacent Internet users called “netbacks” are sucking up American bandwidth and adding so-called “salsa” to American websites — and right-wing forces want them stopped.

Mas…Ex-cyber-cop: Stop border infiltration by Internet-powered ‘netbacks’

POCHO remembers ñewsman Mike Wallace of CBS-TV’s ’60 Minutes’

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Mike Wallace, iconic hard-hitting interviewer and 60 Minutes OG, died Sunday at 93.

For one classic story, Wallace went to China to track down the manufacturer of counterfeit American toys and ended up confronting a smarmy, chain-smoking attorney, Nathan Thurm, Esq. Thurm was not pleased.

Ñewsweek: Tucson school board’s exercise in ignorance and hate

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'Hearsay evidence is all you need'

POCHO Migrant Editor Al Madrigal (he commutes coast-to-coast so he can work nights as Senior Latino Correspondent for The Daily Show) went to Tucson AZ to find out why students there aren’t allowed to take classes in Mexican-American history.

Cameras running, Al interviewed a school board official who was apparently high on ignorance, stupidity and hate.

These are the POCHO stories that broke the ñews this week:

Mas…Ñewsweek: Tucson school board’s exercise in ignorance and hate

From Coldrank for Trayvon: ‘Black Man’ (music video)

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Citing Malcom X, MLK and Michael Jackson, rapper Coldrank‘s Black Man explores, shall we say, discrepancies in society’s treatment of blacks killing blacks, blacks killing whites and whites killing blacks. And those that don’t learn from history, he reminds us, are doomed to repeat it. Directed by Joe Mexican.

Video: Tortilla-chip UFO buzzes York, England — again

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“The mysterious Dudley Dorito UFO has been spotted for the fourth time in five years flying through a cloudless sky over woodland in Yorkshire,” reports Britain’s The Sun:

The object, which looks like an extra-terrestrial tortilla chip, was captured by an amateur cameraman who posted the footage on YouTube. He can be heard saying “I don’t know what that is” as the triangular aircraft glides silently across the frame above a forest in the north of England.

The UFO was dubbed the Dudley Dorito after its first sighting over the Midlands in 2007 but it is unclear whether the YouTube footage is real or a hoax.

Chicano? Mexican? Cuban? Boricuan? Latino? Hispanic? What are you?

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NBCLatino asked POCHO Jefe-in-Chief Lalo Alcaraz whether he’s a Chicano or Latino or Mexican or Hispanic.

Lalo was commenting on the Pew Hispanic Center survey everybody is talking about:

Nearly four decades after the United States government mandated the use of the terms “Hispanic” or “Latino” to categorize Americans who trace their roots to Spanish-speaking countries, a new nationwide survey of Hispanic adults finds that these terms still haven’t been fully embraced by Hispanics themselves. A majority (51%) say they most often identify themselves by their family’s country of origin; just 24% say they prefer a pan-ethnic label.

Mas…Chicano? Mexican? Cuban? Boricuan? Latino? Hispanic? What are you?

GOP seeks Hispanic vote, taps Seagal for ‘You’re Busted, Beaner!’

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Publicity photo courtesy 4REELZ network

(PNS reporting from HOLLYWOOD) Republicans scared to death worried about the GOP’s ridiculously awful poor standing with Hispanic non-Mexican-American voters have launched an election-year scramble to put a better spin on their party’s immigration problem. Their solution? A TV reality show starring Hollywood flunkie and all-around jackass, Steven Seagal.

Seagal leads the list of C-level actors in You’re Busted, Beaner! a new Republican Party-backed reality series. Seagal stars as a cop who pursues “illegals” while promoting the GOP’s non-Mexican Hispanic-friendly agenda.

The show will be produced by Tinsel Town’s sole Republican, who prefers to remain anonymous.

Mas…GOP seeks Hispanic vote, taps Seagal for ‘You’re Busted, Beaner!’

Ñewsweek: @Astro_Jose is A-OK, Zimmerman’s ‘Latinidad’ revoked

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Formerly-Latino Zimmerman is shown on police surveillance video
This week’s ñews ran from A to Z as California Democratic Congressional candidate Jose Hernandez (@Astro_Jose on Twitter) didn’t need to show his papers to “prove” he is an astronaut, a national organization stripped alleged Trayvon Martin killer George Zimmerman of his official Latino credentials and our new columnist Dear Abuelita dispensed unexpected advice on love and life.

These were the big stories (plus Zimmerman’s 911 call, below) this week on POCHO:

Mas…Ñewsweek: @Astro_Jose is A-OK, Zimmerman’s ‘Latinidad’ revoked

Local man ‘sick and tired of sh*t breaking down and falling apart’

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bobbyfigueroa(PNS reporting from ROUTE 66) Area resident Bobby Figueroa is “so totally sick and tired” of the effects of the Second Law of Thermodynamics that he plans to fight the entropy, friends report.

People close to the situation say Figueroa began complaining about the universal tendency of elements in a closed system to flow to an increasingly disordered or entropic state last Thursday, the day he endured a flat tire, a broken tooth and repeated loss-of-signal during a hot game of “Words With Friends.”

“This shit is getting old,” Figueroa, 38, told his dinner companions at Babosa’s Route 66 Diner in Barstow after an evening of bowling in which he broke a nail and tore a shoelace.

Mas…Local man ‘sick and tired of sh*t breaking down and falling apart’

GOP to José Hernández: Where’s your space certificate? *Updated

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CLICK HERE FOR  MORE POCHONAUT COVERAGE

*(SACRAMENTO) A judge ruled Thursday afternoon that Democratic candidate José Hernández can indeed call himself an “astronaut” on the official ballots for U.S. Congress, according to a late report from the California state capital.

Yo no soy astronauta?

(SACRAMENTO March 26) He’s a NASA veteran who has been to the International Space Station and back and here we have a photo of him in his pinche space suit, but GOP lawyers who oppose Democrat José Hernández’s bid for seat in the U.S. Congress are demanding he stop calling himself an “astronaut.”

Unless Californian Hernandez can prove he is still an astronaut, the lawyers say, he has to stop referring to himself using that title.

“Astronaut is not a title one carries for life,”  Republican operatives  asserted in a lawsuit filed in Sacramento County last week.

The suit notes that Hernandez did not make any money from NASA last year. From the Fresno Bee:

Mas…GOP to José Hernández: Where’s your space certificate? *Updated

Flying chupacabra kills 35 sheep in Michoacan (three videos)

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Almost three dozen sheep lie dead in a corral in Michoacan and one witness blames a creature with fangs and wings. From Britain’s Daily Mail:

When farmers in Mexico found 35 of their sheep slaughtered with significant claw and tooth marks around their necks, they had one creature to blame – the legendary chupacabra. One man tending to the sheep overnight in the small Mexican town of Paracuaro said he saw animals with sharp fangs and wings kill the livestock. Dubbed the ‘Bigfoot of Latin culture,’ the chupacabra is a legendary four-legged creature that many think is responsible for attacking and killing livestock.

But how does a flying chupacabra compare with a flying purple people eater? And who wants to actually SEE a flying saucer? Two music videos below provide the answers

Mas…Flying chupacabra kills 35 sheep in Michoacan (three videos)

Ñewsweek: New Mexico wants tourists — light-skinned tourists

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State tourist official does the New Mexican hat dance when a reporter asks about the casting call advertisement

This POCHO ñewsweek is brought to you in living — and dying — color.

In the Southwest, New Mexico’s tourist board is casting a commercial to promote visits to the state. Who do they want to play the tourists in their commercial? “Caucasians and light-skinned Hispanics.”

And in the Southeast, Florida cowers in the Spotlight o’ Shame as the country asks why an unarmed teenager was killed by a self-styled neighborhood watch vigilante.

These are the stories that made the ñews this week:

Mas…Ñewsweek: New Mexico wants tourists — light-skinned tourists

New Mexico Tourism Board’s racist want ad: ‘Morenos need not apply’

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When your casting call includes skin color, people are going to think one of two things: Either you’re filming a sunblock ad or you’re a stone racist.

The New Mexico Tourism Board’s little gaffe (nicely summed up here from local news clips by the sharp folks at Cuentame) pretty much says it: Arizona Cerebral Fever – which renders bureaucrats completely tone-deaf to their own cluelessness about race – is contagious. You catch it from the pendejos next door in the Hate State of Arizona.

What’s priceless is the third-class backpedaling the spokeswoman offers – about how they’re looking for “a wide range of people” and this spot is “the first of many.”

Mas…New Mexico Tourism Board’s racist want ad: ‘Morenos need not apply’

Romney campaign tries to shake off Etch A Sketch remark

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The Romney campaign is one built on strong policy principles, unless, of course, they need to change them to pander to primary voters.

“Well, I think you hit a reset button for the fall campaign. Everything changes,” Romney campaign advisor Eric Fehrnstrom said Wednesday on CNN. “It’s almost like an Etch A Sketch. You can kind of shake it up and restart all over again.”

Shake it up baby!

Mississippi bill would require ‘green cards’ from Pocho Ricans

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(PNS reporting from OLE MISS) Inspired by the members of the University of Southern Mississippi marching band, state legislators passed a harsh new anti-immigration measure Wednesday and expect the bill to pass the Senate and be signed into law soon by Gov. Phil Bryant.

HB 488 requires law enforcement to investigate the immigration status of any person in custody thought to be in the country illegally and specifically targets American citizens from Puerto Rico. They are obligated to present a green card as well as prove proficiency in English.

The bill originally included provisions that would have required public schools to check the immigration status of all enrolled students and test their spelling proficiency. Those provisions were removed from the bill when it was discovered that many students could not spell Mississippi without singing it.

Mas…Mississippi bill would require ‘green cards’ from Pocho Ricans

Searching for Eldorado’s City of Gold, modern ‘goldbugs’ infest AZ

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Photog Diego Rivera visited an Aztlanian gold mine before the locals hid it from the 'Conquistadors'

(PNS reporting from THE HATE STATE OF ARIZONA) It’s a mystery from history that’s too shiny to die:

Where exactly is Eldorado, the famed City of Gold built by ancient Aztlanians and hidden from the brutal “conquistadors?”

A  swarm of recession-smacked out-of-towners asked the question again last week in Yuma County, AZ. The answer included injuries, Hollywood and politics as usual.

Mas…Searching for Eldorado’s City of Gold, modern ‘goldbugs’ infest AZ

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