You can wrap your javascript inside a self-invoking function, then pass jQuery as an argument to it, using $ as the local variable name. For example:
(function($) {
$(document).ready(function(){
$("ul.vimeo_desc_feed li a").click(function(){
alert($(this).attr('href'));
return false;
})
});
}(jQuery));
should work as intended.
If I remember correctly the WP-supplied version of jQuery (the one you get if you wp_enqueue_script('jquery')) puts jQuery in no-conflict immediately, causing $ to be undefined.
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solved $ not defined using jQuery in WordPress