Dead men cash no checks

From America's paper of record . . .

Corpse Wheeled to Check-Cashing Store Leads to 2 Arrests

By BRUCE LAMBERT and CHRISTINE HAUSER

Published: January 9, 2008

Even for the once-notorious Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood, it may have been a first: Two men were arrested on Tuesday after pushing a corpse, seated in an office chair, along the sidewalk to a check-cashing store to cash the dead man’s Social Security check, the police said.

When Virgilio Cintron, 66, died at his apartment at 436 West 52nd Street recently, his roommate and a friend saw an opportunity to cash his $355 check, the police said.

They did not go about it the easy way, the police said, choosing a ruse that resembled the plot of “Weekend at Bernie’s,” a film about two young men who prop up their dead employer to pretend that he is alive.

Link to the full story:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/09/nyregion/09dead.html?ex=1357621200&en=60502e56f648d792&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Tell me again why we moved out of Hell's kitchen, mom...

Iran's nukes


It just keeps getting worse . . .

Iran Receives Nuclear Fuel in Blow to U.S.

By HELENE COOPER

Published: December 18, 2007

WASHINGTON — The United States lost a long battle when Russia, as it announced on Monday, delivered nuclear fuel to an Iranian power plant that is at the center of an international dispute over its nuclear program. Iran, for its part, confirmed on Monday plans to build a second such plant.

The article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/18/world/middleeast/18diplo.html?ex=1355720400&en=bd086d949a4bca7e&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Viva Venezuela

Venezuelans Deny Chavez Additional Authority
President Concedes Defeat in 51-49 Vote

By Juan Forero
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, December 3, 2007; A01

CARACAS, Venezuela, Dec. 3 -- Venezuelan voters delivered a stinging defeat to President Hugo Chavez on Sunday, blocking proposed constitutional changes that would have given him political supremacy and accelerated the transformation of this oil-rich country into a socialist state.

Hours after the final ballots were cast, the National Electoral Council announced at 1:15 a.m. local time Monday that voters, by a margin of 51 to 49 percent, had rejected 69 reforms to the 1999 constitution. The modifications would have permitted the president to stand for reelection indefinitely, appoint governors to provinces he would create and control Venezuela's sizable foreign reserves.

But no doubt the struggle will continue . . .


link:www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/02/AR2007120200522*

Dictator for life . . .

Voters in Venezuela will go to the polls Sunday to decide whether to make dictator Hugo Chavez dictator for life - or at least as long as the oil keeps flowing and he can pay his thugs to keep him in power.

Surprisingly, there's a virulent movement against him, which this video is part of. The catch phrase means, roughly, Why don't you shut up?* If Chavez doesn't rig the election too badly, the voters may tell him just that. Then things may really get interesting.




Why should we care? A good hunk of the oil that heats our homes and the gasoline that fuels our cars comes from Venezuela . . .

*Ironically, the phrase originated from a put-down from the king of Spain. Obviously, there's a lot to be said for constitutional monarchs.

State of the business

One of the great things about being published by Tom Doherty books, is that, while the house is still a major publisher, it's small enough that the publisher himself not only knows who you are but even will go out and have a beer or two with you when you're in town.

Admittedly, that cuts both ways, especially in my case. But let's accentuate the positive . . .

One of the things that you end up talking about, inevitably, is the state of the business. We hear a lot about how people don't want to read, how computer games and the web are seducing readers, etc. But Tom pointed out that we almost never hear about the biggest problem with the industry right now - over the last few years, we've lost literally hundreds of book distributors and thousands of book stores. Everyone knows about the demise of independent stores, but the contraction or outright disappearance of book chains has had just as much of an impact, and in terms of sheer numbers, maybe even greater, on the number of books sold, especially at the mid-list level. His point wasn't that people don't want to read any more - they're not getting as much of a chance to buy books as they used, and that's really what's hurting us.

Now Tor/Forge is doing a lot to deal with this - and obviously it's working, since they've had a string of best sellers this past year. But listening to Tom and Bob and some of the other experienced hands talk about how selling at the wholesale level used to be done, you can't help but feel a huge amount has been lost. When those guys (and gals) broke in, they had to forge relationships with literally hundreds of different distributors, jobbers and others responsible for getting books in stores. Those middlemen knew an enormous amount about their individual markets.

Maybe computer information systems can replace that human knowledge. But it'll never replace the camaraderie that came from riding with a guy at four or five o'clock in the morning, with only a cup of coffee to keep you warm as you picked his brain about what people really wanted to read, and just as importantly, how to design book covers and marketing campaigns to get those books in front of the customer.

The internet is fantastic for bringing readers to writers; I "talk" with readers just about everyday through email and learn a tremendous amount every time. But there's no real equivalent for publishers, and I think the entire industry - writers included - have lost a bit because of it.

They have nukes, we have ... what exactly?

Pakistan is a country of great beauty and industrious people, but at the moment it is spinning out of control. The situation there is even more confused and dangerous than what you’re seeing on TV or reading in the newspaper.

The country’s dictator, General Musharraf, is at the center of vortex of forces pulling Pakistan in different directions. One of those forces is democracy, though the recently returned (at our urging) former Prime Minister Benzair Bhutto is far from the ideal leader of a democratic movement. Nor is her party, as large as it is, the only one in the country. To give you an idea of how fractured Pakistani politics are, the CIA counts 21 separate political parties active in the country. And that doesn’t include the most potent force: the army.

We get news stories in the West about radical Islamists and the havoc they’re causing in Pakistan, but the tribal and ethnic conflicts are arguably even more important. The Kite Runner revealed to many Westerners the enmity between different ethnic groups in Afghanistan; Pakistan has essentially the same problem. While much of the conflict occurs in the northern tribal areas of the country – the name indicates who’s really in control there – the conflicts exist throughout Pakistan.

Why is all this turmoil important for the rest of the world?

Pakistan’s nuclear weapons are being guarded by an army that has had its ass kicked in the northern provinces over the past year in what amounts to an undeclared civil war. And yes, the Taliban is part of that war. And no, they still don’t like us.

So let me ask . . . am I just nuts, or does Bhutto’s return seem a little like Khomeini’s to Iran during the 1970s?

One thing that's clear - Condi's as clueless as anyone in the Carter administration ever was.