All the votes must count!

Cuba Parliament Must Decide on Castro
HAVANA (AP) - Preliminary results are expected this afternoon in Cuba's parliamentary elections. Cubans are being asked to back 614 top Communists, career politicians, musicians and athletes for posts in the legislature, known as the National Assembly.

Only one choice appeared for each post in districts across the country and there was no campaigning. The Communist Party is the only party allowed, but the government says membership is not a prerequisite for the parliament that rubber stamps official party policy.

Fidel Castro, the ailing 81-year-old leader who has not been seen in public for nearly 18 months, was among the candidates.

The U.S. government and opposition leaders have dismissed the election as a sham and say reported turnouts lead to a false sense of unanimity.

There was no doubt that voters in Castro's home district would re-elect him to the National Assembly, where he must hold a seat to be eligible to stay on as chief of the island's governing body, the Council of State. The 614 candidates in Sunday's legislative election ran unopposed.

Still unknown, however, is whether the assembly will choose Castro as council president when it convenes for the first time on Feb. 24, or whether the bearded revolutionary will step down after nearly 50 years at Cuba's helm.

He's a mass-murderer but why let facts get in the way of a good story?

Cuban officials say they support Castro's continued presidency, but Castro himself has hinted at retirement, without making his intentions clear. In December, he wrote that he has no intention of clinging to power or standing in the way of a new generation of leaders. Last week, he said he was not well enough to speak to the voters in his district of Santiago.

"I do what I can: I write," he added in an essay published in official media, seeming frustrated. "Writing is not the same as speaking."

On Sunday, Castro cast his ballot as he convalesced at an undisclosed location. He provisionally ceded power to his younger brother Raul in July 2006 following emergency intestinal surgeries, but remained head of the Council of State.

Election officials picked up Castro's sealed ballot and ceremoniously delivered it to a polling place near the Plaza of the Revolution, the seat of government power in Havana. During previous elections, Castro traveled to Santiago on the other end of the island to cast his ballot, trailed by reporters, photographers and cameramen.

But officials insist his health is good enough for him to continue as Cuba's leader.

"You should have no doubt that he's ready," National Assembly President Ricardo Alarcon told reporters after casting his ballot. "He is in a position to continue that job, and the vast majority of Cuba will be more than happy (about that), myself included."

About 8.4 million voters on Sunday backed 614 candidates who ran for the rubber-stamp parliament. Electoral officials said an estimated 95 percent of registered voters had cast ballots an hour before polling stations closed Sunday evening.

Cuba maintains that its balloting is more democratic than most because those running are chosen by municipal leaders nominated at neighborhood gatherings. But U.S. officials and other critics counter that the elections do not represent a real opportunity for Cubans to decide for themselves how and by whom they will be governed. Only one candidate appears on the ballot for each district post.

[...]

Read it all at MyWay/AP

Election officials in the Florida counties of Broward, Miami-Dade, Palm Beach and Volusia were unavailable for comment.

Massive Miami Blowout Planned for Castro Death

Forget the Super Bowl. The party of the year in Miami could well be down at the Orange Bowl to celebrate Castro's death. Keeping things solemn of course. They don't want to show exuberance in the face of another human being's death. Yeah, right. Sure. Whatever.

All I know is I'd really like to be there.

So would Allahpundit.

Castro in Battle for Life

Take with a huge grain of salt, considering the source.

Ailing Cuban leader Fidel Castro is locked in a "battle for his life," his friend and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has said.

"He's back in (Cuba's) Sierra Maestra and locked in a battle for his life," said Chavez, referring to Castro's legendary guerrilla war that toppled Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959 and ushered in his Cuban Revolution.

"There are those who want Fidel to die," Chavez said alluding to a recent Spanish press report that Castro, 80, was gravely ill following three failed operations.

Well, we do agree on something.

Fading Fidel

R. Emmett Tyrrell gives the Communist thug a richly deserved sendoff. I really do hope he suffers before assuming room temperature.

In these last months of Fidel Castro's moribundity, there is delicious irony in the film clip of him repeatedly shown on cable television. Wearing a clownishly incongruous jogging suit, the fabled maestro of revolution and progress is filmed shuffling metronomically, gray and feeble, blank-faced, and apparently going no place.

Maybe he is on a treadmill that we cannot see. Maybe he is merely picking up his tired feet and putting them back down with no forward motion. Possibly this whole idiotic scene is a fabrication created by our CIA. Well, if so, it is a job well done. There is poetry here.

The cadaverish dictator shuffling in place is a perfect metaphoric rendering of Mr. Castro's Cuba over these many decades. He took his country from prosperity and a place at the head of Latin America in material terms to the bottom. In practically every material measure his country is a slum. In terms of freedom, it is one vast jail.

Had he, when he came to power after the overthrow of Fulgencio Batista's seven-year dictatorship, made good on his promise to return Cuba to its democratic condition of the 1940s, his country today would most likely be the richest and freest country south of our borders, and possibly Fidel would be in the pink and deserving of the accolades now paid him by the American left's rich and fatuous.

Castro Sets Stage for Transition

I'm starting to think he's dead and this is the transition. Maybe I'm wrong. Though I do have a strong feeling it won't be long until we know for sure.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Cuban President Fidel Castro, ailing and out of sight, has been meeting with a trickle of international guests in recent months, a U.S. government official said Tuesday.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive situation with Cuba, declined to say with whom Castro was meeting. But the meetings, generally with visitors from Latin America, suggest he may be setting the stage for a transition of power that he hopes will protect the government he has built over four decades.

In a review of global threats last week, National Intelligence Director John Negroponte said that Castro and his brother Raul, who has taken over as Cuba's temporary leader, are trying to create a "soft landing" during the transfer of control.

"From the point of the United States policy, we don't want to see that happen," Negroponte said. "We want to see the prospects for freedom in that country enhanced as a result of the transition" from Fidel Castro.

Negroponte also said Castro's days "seem to be numbered," a view supported Tuesday by the U.S. government official. That official said U.S. intelligence believes that Castro is likely to die within a month or two, although analysts don't yet know the precise nature of his illness.

Castro in Serious Condition

Sure, we've been down this road before, but don't give up hope. He's got to go one of these days.

Cuban leader Fidel Castro is in serious condition after a series of three failed operations on his large intestine for diverticulitis complicated by infection, the Spanish newspaper El Pais reported on Monday.

Castro, 80, suffered a serious infection that worsened to peritonitis, the newspaper's Tuesday edition said, citing two medical sources at the Madrid hospital where a surgeon who visited Castro in December works. The report was posted on the newspaper's Web site on Monday.

Castro's prognosis is "very serious" and he is being fed intravenously, the paper said.

A first operation to extract part of his large intestine and connect the colon to the rectum was a failure and the link broke, releasing feces into the abdomen that caused another peritonitis, the newspaper reported.

A second operation to clean and drain the infected area and perform a colostomy also failed, the paper said. A third operation implanted a prothesis, it said.

No sign of a soul was found.