Message from Jack Wheeler:  Before you read Angelo’s excellent analysis, here is a report I just received hours ago from my son Brandon who is with Dave Eubank’s Free Burma Rangers.

Tuesday, October 22, 2019 3:11 PM, Rojava (Syrian Kurdistan):

There is no ceasefire here - yes we were able to go and get people out 19, 20th Oct from Ras Al Ein and we thank God and you all for that but every day the Turk-supported FSA (Jihadist-ISIS mercenaries) attack SDF (Syrian Democratic Forces) positions - with the FSA / Turkish proxy force attacking SDF now 4 kilometers south of Ras Al Ein / Sari Kani - we are taking heavy machine gun fire from FSA Gun jeeps (And also They have two captured Humvee )and now there are dismounted fighters on the assault shooting at our medical team) - as we move forward to find the SDF wounded , we can’t find them yet and pray we can - we have FSA troops on three sides of us now but were able to get out and will keep trying - earlier today there were three other attacks by the FSA- there is no ceasefire here.

We were pinned down by FSA attack but got out and then carefully we infiltrated back in and around the FSA and found the wounded missing man who was crawling away- we were able to get him out and treated his wound - he survived - this is just one example -- so not a ceasefire. 22 Oct 2019 Dave Eubank and Free Burma Rangers

Thank you and God bless you , Dave

 I am asking TTPers to pray for the safety of Brandon and those with him -- JW

The term “derangement syndrome” has made it into everyday speech, thanks to the now-ubiquitous use of the term “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” a term coined by Esther Goldberg back in 2015. But TDS is only one of the many derangement syndromes of our time.

The British conservative author and journalist Douglas Murray made derangement a central theme of his recent book, The Madness of Crowds. Writing in the Daily Mail, Murray contends, “We are going through a great mass derangement. In public and in private, people are behaving in ways that are increasingly irrational, feverish, herd-like and unpleasant.”

In his book, Murray claims that in postmodern society’s retreat from the great narratives offered by religion, patriotism, and traditions of family and community, people have found new ideologies to absorb their passions: social justice, identity politics, and intersectionality – derangements all.

In a difficult period for our country, everyone is let down by commentary that relies on stale talking points.

Channeling Hillary Clinton’s latest podcast eruption, some pundits have lately returned to trying to keep Trump-Russia collusion alive, so let’s go through it again.

To give the complete Trump quote, he said during the 2016 campaign. “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 [Hillary Clinton] emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”

In other words, a wisecrack any of us might have made playing off the insecurity of Mrs. Clinton’s email practices as well as the press’s hypocritical eagerness to traffic in Russian leaks.  Hear’s what’s really going on….

There is no logical Democrat explanation for impeaching Donald Trump. The various factions within the Democrat Party calling for impeachment are united only by their loathing of Donald Trump, the person, and his systematic repeal of the Obama progressive project.

After failing with the voting machine gambit, the Logan Act, the 25th Amendment, the emoluments clause, the McCabe-Rosenstein faux-coup, the Comey memos farce, the “resistance” efforts outlined by the New York Times anonymous op-ed writer, the campaign finance violations accusations, Stormy, tax returns, whistleblowers, leakers, the Mueller 22 months charade, and now impeachment 2.0, what exactly is the point of impeaching Trump just 13 months before the election?

Here are the various rationales behind Trump’s Democrat and leftwing opponents’ latest “whistleblower” hoax. None of these scenarios are mutually exclusive.

Last week The Washington Post revealed the alarming news that House Democrats were considering having their anonymous “whistleblower” testify from a remote location, and in disguise.

Just as shocking as the details of this plan was the justification the Post ladled on this Democrat effort to hide impeachment information from the public.

It explained, high up in the story, that the cloak-and-dagger approach was merely Democrats expressing “distrust of their GOP colleagues, whom they see as fully invested in defending a president who has attacked the whistleblower’s credibility and demanded absolute loyalty from Republicans.”

This, from a newspaper with a tagline of “Democracy Dies in Darkness.”

Maybe the better journalistic epitaph is: “Democracy Dies in Bias.” How did journalism get here?

If there is one thing that Tuesday night's Democrat debate showed us—as if we didn't know it in the first place—it's just to what degree the media is in the tank for the Democrats.

They're not only in the tank—they built it, filled it with water up to the brim, and would turn up the temperature to boil Donald Trump alive if they could. And maybe they can.

You knew this from the outset when CNN's lead moderator Anderson Cooper, along with his compatriots, one from the New York Times, opened the festivities with a round of leading impeachment questions, giving each candidate in turn a chance to outdo each other in bashing Trump. Only Tulsi Gabbard equivocated slightly.

It went downhill from there.

For conservatives who watched the Democrat debate, it was like visiting Earth-2, as Drunkblogger Stephen Green so cleverly put it.  Conservatives probably could not endure these debates without Stephen Green's infusion of both facts and humor.

Each of those candidates on the stage seemed oblivious to the reality of the last three years — the fabulous economy, lowest unemployment in decades, international trade renegotiated to our benefit, millions no longer on food stamps.

Our military, eviscerated by Obama, is being repaired.  Manufacturing has been revitalized, and the border, despite the intransigence of the Democrats, is slowly being better controlled.  The wall is being built.

The Democrats are losing.  Trump and his supporters are winning.  As others have observed, the Left plays checkers while Trump plays 4-D chess.  He is way ahead of his opponents on every level, every issue.   And boy, was that apparent at that Dem debate last night.

Over the past several days, Americans have seen exactly how China uses access to its vast domestic market as leverage to coerce American companies thanks to a now-deleted tweet by Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey in support of Hong Kong.

“Fight for freedom. Stand with Hong Kong.” Morey tweeted.

CCTV, China’s state television broadcaster, could not have been more explicit: “We believe that any remarks that challenge national sovereignty and social stability are not within the scope of freedom of speech.”

NBA star LeBron James agreed, saying “We do have freedom of speech, but there can be a lot of negatives that come with that too.” He assailed Morey’s pro-Hong Kong tweet as “misinformed and not educated.”

Not all athletes agree, but far too many in business with China have made their loyalties crystal clear; and that is par for the course when it comes to dealing with Beijing’s authoritarian regime. It also does not even begin to describe the scope of the threat posed by the Chinese government and Communist Party.

Last Friday (10/11), U.S. President Trump and China’s Vice Premier Liu He announced a trade agreement that saw Washington suspend tariff increases while China agreed to purchase some $40-$50 billion of agricultural products, including pork.

Behind this development, the financial markets rallied; the Dow Jones rose some 320 points or 1.21 percent. Trump billed the agreement as “phase one” of a broader trade agreement, but behind the soaring rhetoric belies a key motivation for the deal:

The Chinese need pig imports.  Big time. Here’s why – and why Trump’s timing for making a deal is impeccable.