The phone numbers dialed by ABC News reporters are reportedly being monitored.

That’s the country we live in now.

The Yes Men strike again: the Halliburton SurvivaBall.

Jon has created a helpful flowchart
to explain why rational critics of insane administrations often sound
much like enemy lunatics.  He also posts other good things to read here and here.

Dean
Baker, brilliant economist, has posted a new book on how the U.S.
government is increasingly turning into a cash machine for the rich. 
It’s called The Conservative Nanny State, and it’s free to download as a .pdf file. 

At the New York Times, Frank Rich
has just called out the security-wounding leakfest that is Team Chimpy
for betraying everything America is supposed to stand for.

And of course, if you haven’t seen it, the SNL video by the man who won the majority of votes in 2000:

While playing catch-up here, I have the West Indies/Zimbabwe cricket match purring away quietly on the TV.  

One of the announcers sounds a great deal like Stewie Griffin from Family Guy, but with a South African accent.  I wish you could hear this.  He sounds like he could go sinister any second.

They’re
playing in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, which I didn’t get to while visiting T&T,
back in the ancient past of a few weeks ago.  But it reminded me that
there are still a few Tobago pics you might want to see.  (I do,
anyway.  After the last few weeks, this seems like it was years ago.)

This is the edge of some sort of fish highway.  The traffic flow is amazingly constant.

A
blue-crested motmot, munching on a piece of gouda he has just taken from my
hand.  The picture is a bit blurry because I am glad to still have the
hand.

This
is a small kid either (a) running toward the water with an inflatable toy
or (b) being eaten whole by a giant insect.  I believe it is the former.  Also, I challenge you to look at
this and not feel a pleasant breeze. 

Mmm. 
Fresh fish with coocoo (cornbread, basically), pigeon peas, and
noodles.  (If you like starch, Tobago is heaven.  Order the potato
roti, and what you get is essentially potato wrapped in bread threaded
with cornmeal.  And all feels right with the world.)

I’m not sure what sort of product this is, but I suspect — call this a mad theory — it may be cow-related.  

There
are more pictures than minutes today, unfortunately, so I’ll leave off
with the four below, hoping you get to end your days feeling this way
as often as possible.

Working on final touches to the book and editing video today,keeping myself company with Gol TV’s broadcast of Arsenal’s weekend match against Wigan.  The last match that will ever be played at that lovely 93-year-old ground.

If you don’t follow British football, this is more than a little like tearing down Tiger Stadium. 

I’ve
only been a fan for the last three years or so, catching the bug from
watching the games with a British friend here in Los Angeles.  And I
only saw a single game in person, an otherwise rather ordinary affair
against Southampton that ended in a 2-2 tie.  But it was still a fantastic day, and I cheered my lungs out with the people nearby.  The place was packed,
and if you can imagine the tradition and atmosphere of
Wrigley Field — complete with nearby train stop and residential North
London neighborhood butting right against the stands — combined with
the all-day tailgating vibe of November football in the American midwest,
that’s what it felt like, albeit with fish & chips from a
stand on the corner instead of hot dogs.

Starting next year,
they’ll be playing a short walk away in a fancy new stadium which will
be bigger and rounder and bring in more cash.  But from the looks of things it might just feel like the
new Comiskey instead of the old.  

I’ll still cheer for Henry
and Reyes and Pires and Cole and the rest, of course, especially a week from
Wednesday, when they play Barcelona in Paris for the European title.  (Do not expect me to blog much next Wednesday.)  But I can only imagine how many more long-term fans might be thinking that it
may never be the same.

Then again, it never has been, of course.  Time does what it does…

(For previous examples in a collection I’ve recently decided to start, see here, here, here, here, and here.)

This week’s contestant? Kazakhstan, in the NYT’s words:

The Kazakh president, Nursultan A. Nazarbayev, won a third six-year term in December 2005, with 91 percent of the vote in an election that international observers said was flawed. Two opposition politicians have been murdered in six months, raising the specter of instability.

And here’s what Shotgun Dick had to say over the weekend, from the same report:

Asked afterward his opinion of democracy in Kazakhstan, the vice president endorsed the Nazarbayev government without qualification. “I have previously expressed my admiration for what has transpired here in Kazakhstan over the past 15 years,” he said, “both in terms of economic development as well as political development.”

Just because elections get fixed and opposition leaders get murdered doesn’t mean that a place isn’t a democracy, after all.  Especially if they’ve got oil.