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.

President Trump has defended his shameful abandonment of our Kurdish allies in Syria, declaring that "I was elected on getting out of these ridiculous endless wars" that have left America "bogged down, watching over a quagmire."

Listening to the president, Americans might think that we still have large numbers of U.S. troops fighting on fronts across the Middle East. We do not.  In fact, we now have three times more troops deployed in Spain (3,200) than we do in Syria (1,000).

Trump likes to say he "defeated" the Islamic State. Actually, the bulk of the fighting was done by our Kurdish allies, trained and supported by U.S. Special Operations forces.

We are depending on the Kurds to keep the Islamic State down. But if we allow Turkey to wipe out our Kurdish allies, who will be left on the ground in Syria to fight the Islamic State?  Answer: No one.

Strangest among all the many melodramas of the last two weeks were the blaring headlines that President Trump had dared to talk with the Australian Prime Minister—and referenced the role of foreign governments and in particular Australia in U.S. electoral politics in 2016.

Given the hue and cry of Democrats in the last three years, they should have been delighted that the president was peremptorily warning foreign nations to cease to currying favor with presidential candidates and asking them to hand over what information, if any, they had of past “collusion.”

In fact, they were outraged and once again returned to “collusion” charges, as if Trump were subverting the 2020 election.

I Accuse You of Doing What I Did! Unfortunately, projection is now an encompassing explanation for almost everything the Left alleges.

The important news of the day--far beyond the inevitable tedious impeachment jousting--is that John Durham's investigation of the provenance of the FBI's counterintelligence investigation of possible Trump-Russia collusion has expanded, according to several administration officials.

Fox News previously reported that Durham would be reviewing the days leading up to the 2016 election and through the inauguration.

However, based on what he has been finding, Durham has expanded his investigation adding agents and resources, the senior administration officials said. The timeline has grown from the beginning of the probe through the election and now has included a post-election timeline through the spring of 2017, up to when Robert Mueller was named special counsel.

[Note by JW: Word is that Rosenstein, Mueller, Brennan, Clapper, and former President Obama are all in Durham’s gunsights – and that he would not have requested additional staff and resources unless he had found wrongdoing and criminal activity.]

A blueprint for the deindustrialization of the U.S. is being revealed even now in (you guessed it) California.

Beginning early yesterday morning (10/09), a series of total power shutoffs by Pacific Gas & Electric began in every county of the Bay Area, along with a number of others to the north (the number of counties involved total 34).  The sole exception — as you might have guessed — is San Francisco.

The power cutoffs are complete, with no exceptions for hospitals, emergency services, phone networks, etc., the purpose being to eliminate all power flowing through overhead power lines in the affected areas in a clumsy, ill considered effort to prevent wildfires.

Vast areas of central California will be returned by fiat to the conditions of the 19th century.  Here’s why.

The classic Western film High Noon, released in 1952, offers a compelling analogy to the Trump presidency.

Set in New Mexico territory sometime in the late 1800s, it starred Gary Cooper as Marshal Will Kane and Grace Kelly as Amy.  Her character is a Quaker.  She had seen her brothers and father die by gunfire, so she is a pacifist.  The two of them marry in the first moments of the film but then learn that a man the marshal had sentenced to hang, but was released by an early version of an Obama-appointed judge, is coming to their town with three henchmen to kill Kane.

But not one of the townsmen will agree to help.  They are all cowards (Republicans) in fear of their lives, or they are friends and admirers of the outlaw Frank Miller and want to welcome him back to the town (Democrats).  Bottom line?

Buried somewhere in recent impeachment reporting was the real news that federal prosecutors are conducting an international dragnet to find the perpetrators of the Russia hoax. Last week, the Justice Department issued a statement:

A team led by U.S. Attorney John Durham is separately exploring the extent to which a number of countries, including Ukraine, played a role in the counterintelligence investigation directed at the Trump campaign during the 2016 election.

It was later learned that Attorney General Barr was absent from Washington and could not answer questions because he was in Italy, where Josef Mifsud—the Western asset who plays a Russian collaborator in the Mueller Report—lives. Officials in the UK and Australia also have been contacted.

Obviously, the CIA is trying to get out ahead of its impending embarrassment by fabricating a scandal packaged as a whistleblower complaint suggesting, incredibly, that the president of the United States is not permitted to solicit foreign assistance in a criminal investigation.