If you knew that baseball teams with winning records tended to be more profitable for their owners than those with losing records - and if you learned that the Baltimore Orioles had just been purchased by the World Umpires Association (MLB's umpire's union), would you expect the Orioles to win more or fewer games?

Almost everyone implicitly understands why the umpires should not be allowed to own teams they referee.

In a free-market economic system, the government is supposed to be the umpire and not a player. Its job is to set and enforce the rules, but if it is allowed to also become a player, by owning and managing business enterprises, it is unlikely to treat the competing companies fairly, and there will be little check on its own misbehavior.

The record of government ownership and/or control of companies in the United States and elsewhere has been one long disaster. This promises to continue, and far more disatrously.

There's a new cyber-weapon on the block. And it's a doozy. Stuxnet, a malicious software, or malware, program was apparently first discovered in June.

Although it has appeared in India, Pakistan and Indonesia, Iran's industrial complexes - including its nuclear installations - are its main victims.

No other malware program has ever managed to move from cyberspace to the real world. And this is what makes Stuxnet so revolutionary. It is not a tool of industrial espionage. It is a weapon of war.

OK, folks, time to get serious - The Remember the Alamo Rendezvous in San Antonio is three weeks away.  You really really do not want to be square and not be there. 

This is your opportunity to help launch the Defund & Disobey Revolution of 2010.  Your opportunity to revel in fellowship with other members of the TTP family.  You owe it to yourself, you owe it to America.  I'm counting on seeing you there.

***
They sure know how to party in Louisiana, don't they?  The party of the year is shaping up there - a Recall Party!  Turns out Louisiana law allows for a recall election to throw an elected official - including a federal one (except for judges) - out of office.  This most specifically means Democrat Senator Mary Landrieu.

The effort is being organized by moveonmary.org.  They need volunteers, they need money.  Mary Landrieu stole the election from Woody Jenkins back in 1996 and was bribed with "the Louisiana Purchase" to vote for ZeroCare.  She was re-elected in 2008, which means Louisiana (and America) is stuck with her until 2014 - but now there's a chance to throw her out on her tush this year.  We should all pitch in.  Let's party!

If you were in debt, would you be more or less likely to increase your liabilities if you knew someone else would pay them off?

Many children can quickly figure out the answer to this question, but it seems to be a real stumper for members of the House Financial Services Committee, chaired Rep. Barney Frank, Massachusetts Democrat. They are considering having the federal government reinsure municipal bonds.

Such fiscal madness likely would make even citizens of banana republics blush.

The Feds are engaged in exactly the same behavior that got American International Group Inc. in trouble: insuring financial assets without having adequate resources to pay off all of the potential insurance claims. Such behavior can be viewed as criminally irresponsible.

Beginning around 2006, the Left began threatening that if Israel does not remove itself from Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem, the US will abandon us. On Sunday night, former prime minister Ehud Olmert presented this argument in his keynote speech before the Geneva Initiative's annual conference.

If Israel does not withdraw from the territoires occupied after the 1967 war, its cities will remain secure and its population will not be in crisis. But Israel will have to contend with a hostile US government threatening to take unknown steps to force it to contract to within indefensible borders.

What will those US threats involve? Washington is already arming and training a Palestinian army. It is already selling the Arabs the most advanced weapons in the US arsenal. It is already providing military assistance to the Hizbullah-controlled Lebanese army. It is already permitting Iran to develop nuclear weapons.

Would Olmert and his leftist colleagues have us believe that the US military will invade Israel to force us to exit Judea and Samaria and Jerusalem?

If that is what the Left is hinting, let us assume it is right. But if the Left is right, is Israel better off preemptively dooming itself to chronic wars and strategic vulnerability by accepting indefensible borders than by refusing to do so? At least if we refuse to stick our neck in the noose, the US government will be forced to make the case for destroying Israel to the American people.

Happy New Year!  Doesn't it feel great to be rid of 2009?  To be rid of the entire furshlugginer decade of the Aughts?  And what is to be our battle cry as we enter 2010?

Fired up and ready to go!

The battle cry is ours now.  It no longer belongs to that failed schmuck who used it in the long past days of yesteryear to con his way into the White House.  Besides, his supporters are so dejected and demoralized that if he tried to fire them up he would be pushing on a string.

So - what can we expect to accomplish, what can we expect the world to accomplish, in 2010?

First, we can expect it to be chaotic - and the definition of a chaotic system is that small differences in the initial conditions result in really big differences in the outcomes, making the outcomes unpredictable at the start.  In other words, expect the out-of-the-blue unexpected.

Second, realize that America is not the center of the Universe.  Not any longer.  More and more countries will behave as if America and its president are irrelevant - like tiny Honduras not reinstating Zelaya or giant China snubbing Zero in Copenhagen.  Events in other countries will be more world-changing than events in America.

The best current example is Iran.

A sign of immaturity - most often found in children and certain politicians - is being in denial or even unaware of the consequences of one's actions.

The global political class has always suffered from an excess of immaturity, but every generation or so, political immaturity explodes like a star in its death throes and vaporizes everything in its vicinity.

Current examples are all too numerous.  We'll discuss three of the most explosively damaging.

You have to hand it to Turkey's Islamist leaders. They sure know how to get their way. In the seven years since they first took power, the Islamist AKP party has successfully transformed Turkey from a staunch ally of the US and Israel and a member of NATO into a staunch ally of Iran and a member of NATO.

And that's not all. Turkey's Islamist leaders have used the Western language of democracy and freedom not only to abandon the West. They have used that language to destroy the foundations of Turkey's Western-style secular democracy and transform the governing system of NATO's sole Muslim member into a hybrid of Putinist autocracy and Iranian theocracy.

London, England. Imagine reading a news report that "U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi resigned this morning, and it is expected that more than half of the members of Congress will either resign, choose not to run again or be defeated in next year's election."

This statement might seem to be a dream come true, but it is equivalent to the headlines the British public was treated to this past week. Effective June 21, Michael Martin will become the first speaker of the British House of Commons to resign since 1695 (a mere 314 years ago).

The Times of London reports the expected "departure of 325 [out of 646] members of Parliament as a result of forced resignations, retirement, and defeat at the polls would represent the biggest clear-out of Parliament since 1945." 

Will this wholesale slaughter of British politicians be duplicated in the United States?

The current flurry of diplomatic activity is deeply disturbing. It isn't simply that the Obama administration has strong-armed Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu into participating in diplomatic theater with the PLO whose successful completion will leave Israel weaker and less defensible. It isn't merely that the newest "peace process" diverts our leadership's attention away from Iran and its nuclear weapons program.

The most disturbing aspect of the latest round of the diplomatic kabuki is that Israel's leaders and Israel's staunch friends in the US are enthusiastically participating in this dangerous project.