Eye Candy: Jaswinder Guru

Jaswinder Guru was a find by Obvious magazine (in July 2018), where they say that he is 25-years-old and 5-foot-11. He's also on Instagram (@jaswindianlion).

GRAPHIC: Demographics of Immigrant Fraction Of United States Has Varied Over Time

This is an interesting graphic which shows the demographics of the non-native population of the United States has varied over time. Axios summarizes the changes over time thusly:

• For most of the 19th and 20th centuries, the vast majority of immigrants came from Western and Northern Europe. The Irish fled famine, the Germans fled political instability, and Italians primarily wanted better economic opportunity.
• The 1965 act ended a program that allowed Mexicans to work on U.S. farms but remain residents of Mexico. That changed the nature of immigration from Mexico and from Central America "to primarily unauthorized," Batalova says.
• In 1986, the U.S. gave legal status to almost 3 million undocumented immigrants — an overwhelming majority of them from Mexico. These new green card holders could then sponsor additional family members.
• There has been a surge of Central American asylum seekers in the U.S. over the past several years as political chaos, poverty and violence have ravaged many of those nations.
• New laws also opened the door to immigration from Asia — initially from India and Taiwan, and later China.
• Following the Vietnam War, there was an influx of Vietnamese people and other citizens of the region who fled to the U.S. as refugees.
• Most recently, there's been a wave of immigration from African countries that began in the 1990s and 2000s for a wide variety of economic, political and humanitarian reasons.

hat/tip: Axios

EYE CANDY: Hayden Monteleone (reprise)

Hayden Monteleone has appeared as Eye Candy once before (March 10, 2017). He has changed his Instagram account to @hayden_moneleone. You can tell from his pictures that he's a big guy. His Model Mayhem profile lists him as 6-foot-3 and 225 pounds (and 28 years old). I'm not sure what his ethnicity is but as I have said before, hawt is hawt! Don't you agree?

EYE CANDY: Blake Sciortino (reprise)

Blake Sciortino is a smoking hot model and former athlete who has appeared on MTV and was featured Eye Candy here once before (July 28, 2014). He has accounts on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. According to his Model Mayhem profile, he is 22-years-old, 5-foot-11 and 185 pounds. Yummy!

Mancrush seems to think he is black but I don't really know (or care). Hawt is hawt!

EYE CANDY: Blake Sciortino

Blake Sciortino is a smoking hot find by Gorgeous Sexy Guys. According to his Model Mayhem profile he is 21 years old, 5-foot-11 and 185 pounds. He has Facebook and Twitter pages.

I'm not sure what his ethnicity is but from his last name I suspect he is Italian. As I have said before. "Hawt is hawt"!

You're welcome!

EYE CANDY: Ryan Tongia (reprise)

Ryan Tongia has appeared as Eye Candy once before (October 21, 2013). He is a 23-year-old Australian rugby player. And incredibly hot. Or, in the words of Rod 2.0 he is a "super hotness slash fitness model slash sex siren." Any objections to seeing more of Ryan? I didn't think so!

Eye Candy: Lazar Angelov (reprise)

Lazar Angelov has some of the most amazing abs on the planet. He (and his abs) have been features as Eye Candy before (July 15, 2013). According to the biography on his website, Lazar is from Bulgaria, where he played baseball for 10 years before becoming a bodybuilder and fitness model. Aren't you glad that he found his calling? I am!

MOVIE REVIEW: Riddick

The original Pitch Black (2000) introduced the world to the muscular, ethnically ambiguous good looks of Vin Diesel. He has gone on to become more well-known (and well compensated) for his appearance in the "Fast and Furious" movie franchise about hot cars and hotter "chicks" but it was a surprisingly successful low-budget sci-fi/horror flick that started it all. Apparently Diesel is pretty fond of the character introduced in that film, named Richard B. Riddick because he has now played him in three films. In fact, after the spectactularly awful sequel The Chronicles of Riddick the studio refused to even cnosider making any more films in the franchise and Diesel bartered his appearance fee in one of the many Fast and Furious sequels for comprehensive rights to the Riddick character so that he could make sequels if he wished.

For Riddick, Diesel again brought in the creative team behind all the Riddick films, writer and director David Twohy (most well-known for the disaster that was Waterworld). The film is cast with various unfamiliar faces, with the notable exceptions of Katee Sackhoff (Starbuck from SyFy's Battlestar Galactica) and Bokeem Woodbine.

The latest Riddick film has a sense of being very deliberately created to try and replicate the feeling of the first film. There are lot of scenes with just Riddick and a digitally created dog surrogate (which sort of looks like a cross between a hyena, wolf, cat and a rat) with almost no dialogue. As in the first one, the creature effects are well above average and, somewhat surprisingly, the creatures are very different from those that appeared in the other films.

The premise in this film is that Riddick gets abandoned on a harsh,barren planet through treachery and when mercenaries come to pick up the bounty on his head (which is doubled if he's brought back dead!) he is able to leverage the local deadly alien flora and fauna to convince his purported captors that he can can save their lives but in return they'll need to help get him off the planet.

Although it has a lowly 57% rating on rottentomatoes.com (65% from audiences), if you go into the film with low expectations and still have fond memories of the first film, Riddick is a perfectly pleasant way to spend two hours at the movies, which from the look at upcoming attractions for the next month or two is going to be a rare event in the near future.

Title: Riddick.
Director: David Twohy.
Running Time: 1 hour, 59 minutes.
MPAA Rating: Rated R for strong violence, language and some sexual content/nudity.
Release Date: September 6, 2013.
Viewing Date: September 12, 2013.

Writing: B+.
Acting: C.
Visuals: A-.
Impact: C-.

Overall Grade: B- (2.67/4.0).

White Gay Rapper F. Virtue Disses Homophobia In "Anita Bryant"

Rapper F. Virtue's song "Anita Bryant" is not your typical rap song, nor is F. Virtue you're usual rapper. He's white and openly gay. Apparently, he's also Canadian, 23 years old and a college graduate. How many of these descriptors does one usually associate with the word "rapper"? Anyway, check out the song for yourself below!


Now if you were in my class, we would have a discussion about intersectionality (how multiple aspects of one's identity can be combined). Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comment section!

Hat/tip to Upworthiest

EYE CANDY: Eliad Cohen

For all you fans of hairy-chested men, this one's for you! Eliad Cohen is a very famous model from Israel, known for appearing on the cover of the Spartacus International Gay Guide, a guidebook that helps gay male travelers find local spots of interest around the world, and the creator of the PAPA party, a huge gay event in Tel Aviv.

Eliad is 25 year old (born May 11, 1988) and according to a Facebook post he made in response to an inquiry, he is 1.83 meters tall and weighs 85 kilos. For all you metrically challenged people, that means he is roughly 187 pounds and 6 feet tall.

In addition to Facebook, Eliad has his own website at EliadCohen.net.

Last week, we had an Arab guy from Lebanon as Eye Candy and this week we have a Jewish Israeli guy. As I have said before "Hawt is hawt!"

Eye Candy: Lazar Angelov

Lazar Angelov is a 28-year-old Bulgarian bodybuilder and personal trainer known for his famously chiseled abs. According to his website, LazarAngelov.com, Lazar is 6-feet tall and weighs 195 pounds.

Clearly, Lazar is more than just a pretty set of abs, as you can see!

Eye Candy: Daniel Sisniega (reprise)

Daniel Sisniega has appeared as eye candy before on May 13, 2013. Even though he looks like a "cute white boy" he was born in Mexico City and is an openly gay underwear model for Andrew Christian. I think you can see why!

The Boston Bombers Were White. Any Questions?

As is the case whenever an event or incident which causes America to consider it's founding principles and self-identity, notions of race appear soon afterwards. Now that the pictures of Tamerlan and Dzokhar Tsarnaev,  the perpetrators of the first completed terrorist attack on American soil since 9/11, are ubiquitously distributed, one question being asked is: Are the Boston Bombers White?

Peter Beinart says the answer to this question is clearly yes in a thoughtful piece in The Daily Beast in which he discussed the historical shifting of racial categories in America, especially the conflation of racialization with religious affiliation.

But the bombers were white Americans. The Tsarnaev brothers had lived in the United States for more than a decade. Dzhokhar was a U.S. citizen. Tamerlan was a legal permanent resident in the process of applying for citizenship. And as countless commentators have noted, the Tsarnaevs hail from the Caucasus, and are therefore, literally, “Caucasian.” You can’t get whiter than that.

[...]

Think about American history and you can understand why. For centuries, Americans were legally segregated by race. Thus, when newcomers from the Middle East came to our shores, Americans had to decide which side of the line they were on. And in the struggle to be classified as white, Middle Eastern Christians had an advantage: Jesus. In the 1915 case Dow v. United States, a Syrian Christian successfully argued that he was white because Jesus, the original Middle Eastern Christian, was too.

[...]

Today, Americans still often link Islam and dark skin. What’s changed is which category we consider more dangerous. For much of American history, the problem with being Muslim was that you weren’t considered white. Since 9/11, by contrast, one of the problems with not being considered white is that you might be mistaken for Muslim.

[...]

You can also glimpse this conflation of religion and race in the demand, which surfaces after every terrorist attack, to single out Muslims for special scrutiny at airports and the like. Often, the politicians and pundits most eager to profile Muslims are the same folks who in the 1980s and 1990s defended the “racial profiling” of blacks. And listening to them, you sometimes get the sense that they think the process would work the same way: just look to see who the Muslims are.

You should really go read the entire piece yourself. The only part I would quibble with is that Beinart does not explicitly use language saying that race is a social construction, a figment of our society's imagination, although the notion of its fluidity is clear throughout his piece. Just saying so does not undermine the very real impact that race has on the lives of very real individuals, but acknowledging its fictional nature is important when discussing it.

What do you think?

BOOK REVIEW: Tobias Buckell's Xenowealth series

Tobias Buckell is the author of the global warming eco-thriller Arctic Rising (read my review) published in 2012. He is more well-known for his debut series of novels, Crystal Rain, Ragamuffin and Sly Mongoose which are collectively known as the Xenowealth series.

Buckell is an unusual sci-fi author in that he was born in the Caribbean (Grenada, the same island where I was born) and even more rare is his decision to include aspects of his West Indian heritage in to his science fiction writing. So, the books of the Xenowealth series have people of color as the central characters. To be specific, his characters are Caribbean members of the black diaspora.  One could describe the series as an alien space opera populated by islanders.

Crystal Rain
The first book in the series, Crystal Rain, introduces the world of Nanagada and the Xenowealth Universe. There are 48 inhabited planets that are connected by various wormholes that are controlled by a governing alien entity called the Benevolent Satrapy. Crystal Rain revolves around the main character John deBrun, his 13-year-old son Jerome and John's friend (crewmate?) Pepper. John is a mysterious figure: he appeared 27 years ago out of the sea, missing one hand but impressive strength and survival skills he has become an integral and valued part of his community which no loger has access to advanced technology (although there are rumors that it existed and worked in the long, almost-forgotten past), and John appears not to have aged a day. Pepper is even more mysterious, since we are introduced to him as literally dropping out of the sky in a metal container and even though he starts by speaking gibberish, once he adjusts his throat somehow he starts speaking the local Nanagadan dialect perfectly.

Ahh, the Nanagadan dialect! Its a large feature of  In order to emphasize or centralize the idea that the characters involved here are of Caribbean origin, Buckell makes the decision to write much of the spoken dialogue to be in Caribbean patois. This can make the dialogue VERY hard to read and understand, although after awhile the reader gets somewhat used to it. My problem with the choice was not that Buckell included West Indian dialect, but his truly bizarre choices in how he punctuated the dialogue which made the text less like the actual spoken Caribbean patois I am familiar with. So in the end Buckell's well-intention decision just ended up being a distraction.

However, even with this flaw, and some plot holes one could fly a steam-powered airship through, Crystal Rain is still an enjoyable read. The main plot involves an invasion of the Nanagadan Capitol City by the neighboring Aztec-based civilization known as the Azteca who worship aliens called the Teotl who insist on live human sacrifice. The Nanagadans have their own aliens as well, who they revere but do not worship, called the Loa, who are in an existential predator-prey relationship with the Teotl. All the aliens (and we suspect, John and Pepper) have been stuck on this planet since the planet's access to the nearest wormhole was destroyed hundreds   of years ago and only John may have the keys to restoring that access somewhere locked in his amnesia-riddled head.

Ragamuffin
The second book in the Xenowealth series is Ragamuffin, but it is very different from Crystal Rain. For example, the first book takes places in its entirety on one planet (Nanagada) while this putative sequel, although set in the same Universe as Crystal Rain, takes place on multiple planets (and the space between them, on space ships) and features a new character named Nashara. One can enjoyably read the books of the series out of order because they work as stand-alone books as well as entries in a series, which is often a good sign of quality.

More information is provided about the bigger picture in Buckell's well-populated universe of aliens, dread-locked freedom fighters of Caribbean-descent (known as "ragamuffins"), technologically enhanced humans, space habitats and advanced virtual reality. Nashara is a great character, with as much kick-ass potential as the now-legendary Pepper (whom she is apparently remotely related to). We get a useful map of the entire wormhole system which illustrates the structure and extent of the Benevolent Satrapy. We find out exactly where New Anegada (better known as Nanagada in Crystal Rain) is in the grand scheme of things and the oppressed fate of most humans in the Universe as either living in habitats in space, or in reservations on alien-inhabited planets.

Technically, Ragamuffin is a much stronger book than Buckell's debut, and this was recognized by his peers when Ragamuffin was nominated for a Nebula award for Best Novel. For one thing, the use of dialect is minimized  and although it is not a long book, it is jam-packed with action and plot developments. The book is structured into three parts, and it is not until the middle section that Nashara is brought together with John, Pepper and other popular characters from the first book. The third and final section of the book is very exciting as our new characters and old characters work together to a surprising conclusion that most fans of space opera will enjoy.

Sly Mongoose
This is the third (and final?) book in what is known as the Xenowealth series. (I am sort of surprised the series is known by that name since the word "Xenowealth" literally is used once in the 1,000-plus pages of the three books of the series, and that happens in the very last chapter of the very last book!)

The only character that appeared in the first two books, Crystal Rain and Ragamuffin, that appears in this book is Pepper (who is really a great character--there's a very good television series that could be based around him). Pepper is near super-human, he has a technologically enhanced body and implants which allow him to be faster, stronger and deadlier than almost anyone around him. He also has a world-view which generally puts his needs and wants before anyone else's, regardless of typical social conventions.

But in the opening scene of Sly Mongoose, even Pepper more than meet his match when the ship he is on is overrun by space zombies! He has to eject from the ship and use a jury-rigged heat shield to crashland on a floating habitat in the atmosphere of Chilo, an uninhabitable planet. Even for the nearly indestructible Pepper falling a couple of miles through a poisonous atmosphere without a parachute into a solid object nearly kills him, and results in the loss of an arm and a leg.
We know that with time (or in an auto-doc), Pepper can recover from almost any kind of injury, given time. However, the plot rushes along at a headlong pace giving Pepper almost no time to catch his breath and heal.

Buckell introduces an entirely new cast of complex characters and unusual society in Sly Mongoose, starting with the main protagonist named Timas, a teenage boy with bulimia who is the sole breadwinner for his family as long as he stays thin enough to fit into the pressure suits which allow him to go down to the deadly surface of planet Chilo. Another interesting aspect of the book is the application of the computer technology from the previous books called "the lamina" to create a society where instantaneous virtual democracy is the rule: everyone gets to vote on every decision and the majority rules.

The plot of Sly Mongoose follows Timas and Pepper as the planet starts to be overwhelmed by the Zombie Army which spreads through the floating cities of Chilo like a virulent infection. Buckell is able to weave in the horrific events occurring on one planet with the ongoing fight for power between various factions of humanity (the mongoose men from Nanagada and the xenophobic forces of the League of Human Affairs) that are grappling for a dominance now that the overlords of the Benevolent Satrapy have been eliminated. The book ends in such a way that the story can be continued, with most (but not all) questions resolved. The third book in the Xenwealth series shows how much Buckell has grown and improved as an author since writing his first book and leads an interest and hope that he will continue adding to the stories in this rich universe he has created in the future.

Title: Crystal Rain.

Author: Tobias S. Buckell.

Length: 384 pages.

Publisher: Tor Science Fiction.

Published: May 29, 2007.

OVERALL GRADE: B+ (3.33/4.0).

PLOT: A-.

IMAGERY: B+.

IMPACT: B+. 

WRITING: B.

Title:  Ragamuffin.

Author: Tobias S. Buckell.

Length: 352 pages.

Publisher: Tor Science Fiction.

Published: June 3, 2008.

OVERALL GRADE: A- (3.66/4.0).

PLOT: A-.

IMAGERY: A-.

IMPACT: A. 

WRITING: B+.

Title:  Sly Mongoose.

Author: Tobias S. Buckell.

Length: 384 pages.

Publisher: Tor Science Fiction.

Published: March 27, 2012.

OVERALL GRADE: B+/A- (3.5/4.0).

PLOT: B+.

IMAGERY: A-.

IMPACT: A-. 

WRITING: B+.

Eye Candy: Gui Costa

Gui Costa is a Brazilian model (and photographer!) that I found at Male Model scene. He has his own Tumblr website, http://slimanizing.tumblr.com/ where he has a large number of images featuring his slim, taut frame and handsome face.

What's curious is that even though there are literally scores of pictures of him all over the internet I have been unable to find basic information about Gui like his age, height and weight, which is usually the bare minimum I like to have for an Eye Candy model. But, since diligent readers will be aware of my weakness for Brazilian men, you can understand why I am making an exception for Gui!

Obama's Vote % of White People and Uneducated

There are some interesting analyses of the presidential vote which illustrate the contours of President Obama's re-election victory and the characteristics of the coalition he brought together to carry him to 332 electoral votes and nearly 51% of the popular vote.

Previously I had blogged about the crucial role of the LGB population (5% of the electorate) voting 76% to 22% for Obama-Biden 2012 but today I want to talk about the people who did NOT vote for the President.

The graphic at the top of this post indicates that all of the top 10 states that have the highest percentages of people with college degrees (MA, MD, CO, CT, VT, NJ, VA, NY, MN) voted for Obama, while 9 of the bottom 10 (WV, MS, AR, KY, LA, AL, IN, TN, OK) voted for Romney-Ryan 2012.

Additionally, Charles Blow in The New York Times noted some other interesting features of the election results:

 This year was the first presidential election in which there were more Asian-American voters (11 percent) in California than African-American ones (8 percent). In 2008, 6 percent were Asian-American and 10 percent were African-American. In fact, there were more Asian-American voters than African-American voters in Washington and Oregon, the other two Pacific Coast states, this year, too. 

[...] 

In fact, Obama won the white vote only in states with small minority voting populations. The others Obama won were Iowa (93 percent white), New Hampshire (93 percent white), Oregon (88 percent white), Connecticut (79 percent white) and Washington State (76 percent white). 

[...] 

 Obama won all four states that begin with “New” (New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico and New York), but he lost all five that begin with a direction (North Carolina, South Carolina, North Dakota, South Dakota and West Virginia).

It's interesting that conservatives have been focussing on how how people of color voted for the first Black president but they haven't noticed how places (in)famous for unapologetic racial prejudice voted overwhelmingly for Mitt Romney. For example, Obama won a mere 10% of the white vote in Mississippi.

Hat/tip to Wonder Man and Sentient Meat.

GOP's Good News: "Americans Slightly More Racist"

MARK MARTURELLO/THE REGISTER

Wow, now here's a headline you don't see every day: "Americans Slightly More Racist." This is referring to the results of a new poll conducted by the Associated Press which compared a similar poll taken in 2008.

Here's the Washington Post's take:

In all, 51 percent of Americans now express explicit anti-black attitudes, compared with 48 percent in a similar 2008 survey. When measured by an implicit racial attitudes test, the number of Americans with anti-black sentiments jumped to 56 percent, up from 49 percent during the last presidential election. In both tests, the share of Americans expressing pro-black attitudes fell. 

[...] 

Most Americans expressed anti-Hispanic sentiments, too. In an AP survey done in 2011, 52 percent of non-Hispanic whites expressed anti-Hispanic attitudes. That figure rose to 57 percent in the implicit test. The survey on Hispanics had no past data for comparison.

There are immediate political implications, of course. And, unsurprisingly, there are differences in how racist adherents to the political parties are.

Overall, the survey found that by virtue of racial prejudice, Obama could lose 5 percentage points off his share of the popular vote in his Nov. 6 contest against Republican challenger Mitt Romney. But Obama also stands to benefit from a 3 percentage point gain due to pro-black sentiment, researchers said. Overall, that means an estimated net loss of 2 percentage points due to anti-black attitudes. 

The poll finds that racial prejudice is not limited to one group of partisans. Although Republicans were more likely than Democrats to express racial prejudice in the questions measuring explicit racism (79 percent among Republicans compared with 32 percent among Democrats), the implicit test found little difference between the two parties. That test showed a majority of both Democrats and Republicans held anti-black feelings (55 percent of Democrats and 64 percent of Republicans), as did about half of political independents (49 percent).

Read that again. "Republicans were more likely that Democrats to express racial prejudice in questions measuring explicit racism (79 percent among Republicans compared with 32 percent among Democrats)." Discuss!

Andrew Sullivan makes the connection, in case it is not as obvious to you as it is to me:

Close to 80 percent of Republican voters expressed "explicit racism." Maybe that's why they are comfortable with a candidate from a church whose theology remains based on white supremacy and that barred African-Americans from full membership as recently as 1978.

I was struck by the connection between the two stories as I read that Iowa's largest daily newspaper, The Des Moines Register, after endorsing every Democratic presidential candidate since Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964 (including Obama in 2008), has endorsed Mitt Romney for president in 2012. The results of the poll showing Americans are more racist in 2008 is clearly good news for the Republican Party's goal to re-take the Presidency, which is why I decided to lead this post with the stylized (hagiographic) portrait of Mitt Romney.

Reading the Register's reason(s) for endorsing Romney is like entering bizarro-world. They basically endorse all of the Republican's talking points regarding the rationale for his presidential run and ignore the President's. They attempt to divorce Romney's economic positions from his extremist views on social issues. When a decision is made that literally is not rationally related to the facts on the ground, I believe one can look to external reasons for the decision, and often times one can see an animating force for the decision fueled by animus. I hope that is not the case in this situations, but it's hard to think otherwise when you see things like this:

(Photo: A supporter of Mitt Romney and Rep. Paul Ryan waits for a campaign
event to begin on October 12, 2012 in Lancaster, Ohio.
By Jamie Sabau/Getty Images.)

Hat/tip to Political Wire and Andrew Sullivan.

Saturday Politics: Update on the GOP War on Voting

There are now 17 days to go before the election and early voting has started in many states around the country. This seems like a good time to get an update on what has become to be known as the Republican War on Voting.

Most analysts think that many more Democrats than Republican have taken advantage of early voting procedures so far, and this is most likely one of the reasons Republicans have been trying so hard to suppressing voting rights all over the country, by making it harder for people to register to vote, by literally dropping likely Democrats from voting rolls, reducing early voter hours and by making voting more difficult by enacting voter identification laws. I have previously discussed how racial animus fuels this movement to restrict voting.

Of course, the most notorious of these battles in the War on Voting have occurred in some of the most important states, namely Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania. I have previously discussed the nakedly partisan actions of the Republican Secretary of State in Ohio to restrict early voting in order to make it more difficult for people to vote in his state.

Ari Berman of The Nation has the deets on Ohio:

The Supreme Court on Tuesday unanimously rejected an appeal by Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted to overturn a lower court decision upholding early voting in Ohio three days before the election. The ruling was a major victory for voting rights—and yet another defeat for voter suppression efforts—allowing Ohio voters to cast a ballot when it’s most convenient and hopefully forestalling the long lines that marred the outcome of the 2004 election in the state. 

That’s the good news. The bad news? Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted swiftly limited early voting hours on those crucial three days to 8 am–2 pm on Saturday, November 3; 1–5 pm on Sunday, November 4; and 8am–2 pm on Monday, November 5. That means Ohio voters will have a total of only sixteen hours to cast a ballot during those three days. And before the weekend before the election, Ohio voters will still not be able to cast a ballot in-person on nights or weekends. 

In 2008, the most populous counties in Ohio allowed more time for early voting—both in terms of days (thirty-five) and hours (on nights and weekends in many places). For the three days before the election, early voting locations were open for a total of twenty-four hours in Columbus’s Franklin County (8-5 on Saturday, 1-5 on Sunday and 8-7 on Monday) and 18 and a half hours in Cleveland’s Cuyahoga County (9-1 on Saturday, 1-5 on Sunday, 8:30-7 pm on Monday). During those final three pre-election days in 2008, 148,000 votes were cast and “wait times stretched 2 1/2 hours,” reported the Columbus Dispatch.

While the Huffington Post reported on the suspension of the most odious aspects of the Pennsylvania voter id law by a judge on October 2:

In a much-anticipated ruling, Commonwealth Court Judge Robert E. Simpson Jr. ordered that voters without government-issued photo ID should be allowed to cast regular ballots. 

[...] 

Simpson's injunction "will have the effect of extending the express transition provisions of [the new law] through the general election," the judge wrote. That means that, just like during the primary election, voters will be asked for ID but still be allowed to vote if they don't have it. 

The law as passed by the Republican legislature and signed by the Republican governor had only allowed people without ID to cast "provisional" ballots, which would be thrown out unless they returned with ID within six days.
The Pennsyvlania legislature is one of several that, after Republicans took control in 2010, passed legislation to make it harder, rather than easier, to vote.

The ruling doesn't stop the state and other groups from publicizing false information that voter id is still required in Pennsylvania, so the good guys are going back to court to get that activity prevented under a new injunction.

Meanwhile in Florida, Think Progress reports on Republican Governor's failed attempt to strike as many 180,000 people from the voter rolls has fizzled to a list with just 198 names on it:

Initially, Florida identified 180,000 potential non-citizens to be purged from the voter rolls. That list was subsequently narrowed down to 2600 “sure fire” non-citizens. When it became clear in early June that even the smaller list was riddled with errors, elections officials stopped the effort. 

According to the Miami Herald, Florida has sent just 198 names to local election supervisors. (Of those, no more than 36 have ever cast a ballot.) But there is already evidence that the latest list still is not accurate.

And just for completeness the Los Angeles Times reported this week that a Republican operative in Virginia was arrested for illegally throwing completed voter registration forms in the garbage:

A man who was being paid to register voters by the Republican Party of Virginia was arrested Thursday after he was seen dumping eight registration forms into a dumpster. 

Colin Small, 31, was working as a supervisor as part of a registration operation in eight swing states financed by the Republican National Committee. Small, of Phoenixville, Pa., was first hired by Strategic Allied Consulting, a firm that was fired by the party after suspect voter forms surfaced in Florida and other states. 

[...] 

Strategic Allied is owned by Nathan Sproul, an Arizona political consultant for Republicans whose companies have faced charges in past elections of submitting forged forms and of dumping Democratic registrations. None of the charges were proved, and Sproul continues to do get-out-the-vote work for conservative causes this election.

Hopefully the election will not be close enough in any state for the War on Voting to actually determine the result but honestly that is unlikely.

New Report Analyzes Latino Views On LGBT Issues

There's an interesting report called LGBT Acceptance and Support: The Hispanic Perspective (pdf) funded by the Arcus Foundation and written by David Dutwin, Ph.D. of Social Science Research Solutions which has a lot of insight about attitude in the Latino community in America about homosexuality and LGBT people.

An excerpt from the overview summary:

We find, in fact, that Hispanics, if anything, are slightly more likely to support legal gay marriage and be open more generally toward gays and lesbians in society. As well, Hispanics are as likely to be gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender as any other group in the U.S. today. They are the most Catholic of ethnic groups, and yet Catholic Hispanics, we find, are more open than Protestant Hispanics with regard to LGBT attitudes and policy support.  

 Indeed, the great concern over Hispanic homophobia, according to our data, is highly exaggerated. That said, there are of course groups within the Hispanic community that are more intolerant than others. We find that if there is one concern with LGBT acceptance in the Hispanic community, it resides at the intersection of Hispanicity and religion. While the differences are not there for every measure of LGBT acceptance and policy support, for the majority of measures it is the case both that the most traditional, that is, unacculturated, Hispanics are among the least tolerant. Moreover, the most religious, at least as measured by born again status, Church attendance, and views on evolution and Biblical literalism, lead Hispanics in intolerance.

Hat/tip to Gloria Nieto

U.S. Same-Sex Couples More Likely To Be Diverse

A new report from the Williams Institute analyzes the 2010 United States Census data and discovers the interesting result that same-sex couples are more likely to be interracial or inter-ethnic than either different-sex married couples or different-sex unmarried couples. The report, entitled Same-sex couples in Census 2010: Race and Ethnicity, and written by Gary Gates (the premiere LGBT demographer in the United States) estimates that 20.6% of same-sex couples are interracial/inter-ethnic while only 9.5% of different-sex married couples are and 18.3% of different-sex unmarried couples are. (Actually another interesting result here is the wide difference in diversity between married and unmarried different-sex couples, 45 years after Loving v. Virginia legalized interracial marriage nationwide. Is it a possible residual effect of social stigma against "miscegenation"?)

The report also looks at the variation in same-sex couple racial and ethnic diversity by state:

More than half of same-sex couples in Hawaii (53%) are interracial or interethnic (see Figure 6).  About a third fit that category in California (33%), New Mexico (31%), and Nevada (30%).  Other states where same-sex couples are likely to be interracial or interethnic include Alaska (28%), District of Columbia (28%), Oklahoma (26%), Arizona (26%),  Texas (25%), and Colorado (24%).  Less than 10% of same-sex couples are interracial or interethnic in Maine, Mississippi, Vermont, West Virginia, and New Hampshire, and Alabama.

Gives a new meaning to "We Are Everywhere"!

Hat/tip to Wonder Man.