Fidel Castro has resigned, finally proving that trade sanctions work. Granted, it took forty-nine years and eleven US presidents to get Castro to step down, but it is better late than never. I hope that it won't be long before I will not have to drive to Canada to buy a Cuban cigar, especially since it is easier to get into Cuba these days than it is to cross the Canadian border. Niagara Falls is nice but with the lousy exchange rate and the hassle at the border, I will stay on the American side even if it does have fewer wax museums and strip joints. 
A lot of people hate Fidel, I guess it's that ruthless dictator thing. I don't have any Fidel posters on my wall nor do I own any of his audio recordings, but I am still going to miss the guy on some levels. Fidel offered a degree of stability after the collapse of the Soviet Union. I know that it is fun to hate Arab terrorists but hating commies was a lot more fun.
 When he was in power, Castro was the ultimate underdog. He defeated the United States in the Bay of Pigs and thumbed his nose at us during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Castro defied his stylist's advice, grew an unkempt beard, and wore the same outfit everyday, and he defied the Surgeon General's warning by smoking cigars twenty-four hours a day.
 Castro was ahead of his time, he was a proclaimed Lennonist before the Beatles. He also had a Che Guevera t-shirt in the 1950s, many years before they showed up at Hot Topic in the mall.  Castro hated George W. Bush and was against the Iraq invasion well before the rest of the United States figured out what a lousy President that he was.
 The CIA tried to kill Castro after he had John F. Kennedy killed but they were unable to find the Cuban equivalent of Lee Harvey Oswald. They tried to poison him, loaded a cigar with explosives, and they even tried to hire O.J Simpson-an experienced killer that is hard to convict- to assassinate him. Castro survived all of the attempts but nearly died after a night on the town with Britney Spears. The night with Britney forced him to relinquish power to his brother for a few months while he recovered.
 The Pittsburgh Pirates are the real reason Castro stayed in power as long as he did. They failed to sign Castro to the team when they scouted him in the 1950s. If the Pirates had signed Castro to a major league contract then he would have loaded up on steroids and never lived to the ripe old age of 82.
 The next Cuban leader will have big fatigues to fill but with Castro out of the way, Americans can devote more time to hating Hugo Chavez for the next fifty years. We will just have to hope that Chavez does not aggravate us as much as Castro did because an embargo on Cuban cigars is aggravating but an embargo on Venezuelan oil would be expensive.