Fidel Castro's doctor has cleared him to live until age 140.

And you thought that communism wasn't good for anything!

Seriously, though - could this statement be laying the foundation for a "continuance government" in the event of Castro's death? Picture this: Castro dies, and his aids don't tell anyone. Instead they carry on with the government like nothing happened. People may start to get curious when he doesn't appear in public, so the aids will probably release a concocted audio tape of a Castro statement every so often to quell the masses. (sound familiar, btw?)

Fidel Castro is singlehandedly holding the Cuban government together, thus preventing Cuba from slipping into Haiti-like anarchy. His death would certainly spark a revolution in not only Cuba but in Miami as well, to some extent. There are hundreds of thousands of Miami residents that vow to return to Cuba upon Castro's death, and many of them have delusions of taking the reigns, sheparding Cuba into the 21st century.

In light of the political realities, is a possible Castro continuance plan necessarily a bad thing? Granted, appeasement is decidedly un-American, but on the other hand, it's also un-American to sit back and allow a country of 11 million to decend into chaos and anarchy.

Communist China has become an economic behemoth owe largely to their slow and deliberate approach to adopting a free market system, first in Taiwan and now gradually upon the mainland. It's doubtful that the same result would have been reached if they took to "sudden revolution" approach.