- Democracy in Cuba? Is it happening and is it real? Sort
of, not really and no. Still, the Communist island nation is going through the
motions once more, staging its sham electorcal process with virtually none of
the trimmings – bitchy TV and radio ads, yard signs, robo-calls and direct mail
pieces – of American democracy. Authorities claim the elections give people a voice in government and refute
charges that the country is undemocratic, while critics continue to point out
that the voting is a total sham because voters can't throw out the Communist
Party long led by Fidel and Raul Castro. Criticism and praise aside, the
country’s complicated and truly unique electoral process is underway and more
than 8 million Cubans are heading to the polls this weekend for municipal
elections. The process will drag on until February and will culminate with national
assembly legislators voting on who will occupy the “presidency,” a post held by
Raul Castro since 2008. This weekend’s voting comes on the heels of Cubans across
the island meeting throughout the month of September in common spaces, parks
and buildings for neighborhood assemblies to choose the candidates in municipal
elections. More than 32,000 candidates were nominated and each electoral
district must have between two and eight names on the ballot. In a rudimentary
process, brief biographies and photos of the candidates were then taped up to
strategically placed walls and windows in each neighborhood for residents to
read. No other campaigning is allowed and on Sunday, Cubans will cast ballots
to choose among these candidates for municipal assemblies that administer local
governments and relay complaints on local issues. Next, commissions elected by
workers, farmers, youth, student and women's groups will choose candidates for
the national legislature, which eventually elects Cuba's next president.
Despite the process being completely rigged, a high turnout is expected,
perhaps higher than the 96.8 percent rate in 2007-08. The government argues the
high turnout is a sign of support for the system, while critics say people vote
so they don’t end up in deep sh*t with The Man. Still, with only the Communist
Party legal in Cuba, many still ask what the point is……..
- Waaaaait a minute……pipe dreams that individuals post on crowd-sourced funding site Kickstarter don’t always work out, even when
enough money comes in ? Shocking. The sad story of a video game funded by
donors on the site is dead and given the game’s title, its ending is fitting. Haunts: The Manse
Macabre ran a funding campaign via Kickstarter in June and more than 1,200
people backed the campaign. Its creators promised to produce a horror game, but
the only product they churned out was failure and now the entire project has
been shut down after running out of both funding and staff. Those behind the
idea sought $25,000 via Kickstarter, but the project caught on and they
ultimately received more than $28,000 to fund completion of the game. Haunts
creator Mob Rules Games had already spent about $42,500 prior to the
Kickstarter campaign and the end result was supposed to be a haunted house
horror game in which players could take on the role of the house's inhabitants
or intruders investigating what lived within it. Mob Rules Games boss Rick
Dakan broke the news that the game's development has been halted and didn’t
attempt to sugarcoat the reason why. "The principal cause for our dire
condition is that there are no longer any programmers working on the
game," wrote in a company blog post. One of the lead programmers for the
game was only contracted to work for Mob Rules for a year and his since
returned to his regular job at Google. A second programmer quit outright and no
longer wants to work on Haunts. Even though the game was nearly finished when
the two programmers left, it would still need extensive bug testing and
refinement before it could be released. Finding someone else to take up the
task will be difficult because the game is written in the Go programming
language, which is not widely used. Dakan promised to refund the money of any
investor who wants a refund and to do so out of his own pocket………
- Is there ANYONE in Henrico County, Va., willing to beat
the living sh*t out of a 56-year-old grandmother? That 56-year-old grandmother is hoping so. Sandston
resident Khandace Cossitt is looking not just for a fight, but for a cage match
with any man willing to take her on. She came up with the idea after a boy in
her neighborhood invited her to attend a cage match and she showed up and found
herself unimpressed by what she saw. “That’s a fight?” she asked. “You call
that a fight?” Factor in the ginormous chip on her shoulder from working as a
bouncer and being told throughout her life that she looks like a man and
clearly, Cossitt is not joking. She stands 6-foot-5 and says she has brawled
with plenty of men when situations have called for it. “I’ve been a bouncer,
I’ve been a security guard, I’ve been a stripper, I’ve done burlesque, I’ve
been a horse trainer,” she explained, seemingly without any shame or regret. “They
(men) pick at me and pick at me and I’m like okay, I let it slide, and then…they
will be decked.” Fighting has seemingly been a way of life for Cossitt, who
weighed 200 pounds and stood more than six feet tall before reaching high
school. Being large led to her being ostracized by her peers, further bulking
up that chip on her shoulder. “Nobody would play with me in school. They called
me the jolly green giant. They avoided me like the plague,” she said, adding
that she was not invited to prom either. Her sheer rage is both awesome and
terrifying because to hear her speak, one would think a fight is inevitable
every day of her life. “If I stay home, I’m safe,” she said. “By the time I get
to the end of my driveway, I’m PO’d about something, and somebody is going to
get it before the day’s out.” At one point, she ballooned to 354 pounds, but
has since shed 129 pounds through swimming and working out. With her improved
conditioning, she has contracted cage-match promoters, asking for a fight
against a man because she doesn’t believe in fighting women. If she can’t find
an opponent, she plans on grabbing the microphone at a local cage match venue
and challenging the crowd until someone steps up……….
- NFL commissioner Roger Goodell is not having a good few
days. First, Cleveland Browns linebacker Scott Fujita laid him out for being a
hypocritical d-bag in the way he deals with player safety and his persecuted
current and former New Orleans Saints, Fujita included, for their roles in the
Saints’ alleged bounty scandal. Current Saints linebacker Jonathan Vilma was
suspended for the season for his involvement, but he was on the team’s PUP
(physically unable to perform) list for the first six weeks of the season while
he fought the suspension legally and through the NFL’s appeals process. Now
that he’s healthy and able to return to the field, Vilma plans to do so because
he is currently appealing his re-issued suspension and that means he can
legally suit up. On top of all of that, Vilma, Fujita, Saints defensive end
Will Smith and former Saints defensive tackle Anthony Hargrove have asked
Goodell to recuse himself from hearing their appeals on the grounds that he
cannot be fair or impartial. Goodell finally received the message from the
quarter and as the players' union on Friday and announced that he is initiating
the always-discomfiting process of calling the man who preceded him in his job
for help with a problem. The league announced Friday that Goodell has appointed
his predecessor, Paul Tagliabue, to be the hearing officer to "decide the
appeals and bring the matter to a prompt and fair conclusion." Tagliabue,
the league's commissioner from 1989-2006, will conduct the hearing on Oct. 30
at a time and location of his choosing. The decision doesn’t mean any of the
suspended players will have their penalties overturned or reduced, but their
odds are at least better now than they have been at any point in the process………
- What the f*ck? The g*dd*mn f*cking a**holes at the Parents
Television Council are angry again? These are the kooks who crusade against
everything on television that reflects values that weren't warmly embraced when
“Leave It to Beaver” was on the air and refuse to admit that we all don’t live
in 1950. What are the PTCK (Parents Television Council Kooks) angry about this
time? The f-bomb that Tom Hanks casually dropped on “Good Morning America” on Friday morning
while attempting promoting his new movie “Cloud Atlas.” While conducting an
interview with host Elizabeth Vargas, she challenged him to talk in character.
Hanks did, but his character isn’t exactly a wholesome, squeaky-clean icon of
the silver screen and he ended up greeting the show’s viewers with a friendly
f-bomb. Both Hanks and the show apologized for the slip-up and he even joked
that they would use a seven-second delay for his next appearance on the show. ABC
released their official statement, saying, “This morning Tom Hanks used an
expletive during a live interview on GMA with Elizabeth Vargas. They both
immediately apologized on air, and the show was corrected for all the
subsequent feeds.” Within five seconds, the PTCK floated their opinion and
issued a typically provincial, deluded and arrogant statement proclaiming, “Once
again, a morning news show has allowed the harshest profanity to be broadcast
into every living room and breakfast table in the country. This is just another
in a long, sad string of similar instances where all of the major network
morning shows have permitted this inappropriate and offensive content. These
cannot and must not be dismissed as mistakes.” Every living room and breakfast
table in the country? Does this band of rejects even know what the ratings
numbers look like? Most Americans aren’t watching “Good Morning America” and
odds are there were literally four children actually exposed to the profanity.
Way to keep a reasonable perspective, PTCK………
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