Things We Learned on the BBC Today- Fidel Says It's Good to Be Alive

According to the BBC, Cuban leader Fidel Castro, who is reportedly sharing a Cuban cigar with Glenn Beck in Provo, Utah, as we speak, says that he was at the grim reaper's door during his long illness.

Castro actually made those comments in an interview with the Mexican newspaper "La Jornada" in which he also said that it was difficult for him to aspire to live much longer.

The long-time Cuban president, who many have deemed to be a dictator for his long-standing human rights abuses, first got sick in 2006 when he suffered from intestinal illness.

But, Castro says that he's made a full recovery and that he can now walk without a cane.

One can always hope that he may venture from Havannah to Frederick, Md., (an hour from Washington, DC) to see a minor league Frederick Keys game with right-wing pundit George F. Will, who will probably still believe global warming doesn't exist when it's 98 degrees in Bethesda in late January. The Keys are actually having community food drive from now until Sept. 3. Last night, the team lost a home game to the Kinston Indians by a 9-2 score. The two teams plays each other again tonight.

As for Castro, there are always a number of interesting musings about him on Cuban-American blogs which generally lean to the right politically. There was this quite radical one we used to glance at now and then that pretty much compared President Barack Obama to Gargamel (the villain in "The Smurfs").

We lost track of that particular blog, but we did find one today called BabaluBlog (http://www.babalublog.com) which is also understandably quite critical of Castro, but we have no idea if they have compared Obama to Gargamel, Iago or Ming the Merciless. But, if they do, we will kindly remind them that George W. Bush was as bad as Gargamel, Iago and Ming the Merciless!