AND THEN THERE'S CHINA – AT 1:48 P.M. ET:  While we're busy breaking the Treasury and trying to remove a president who isn't president anymore, the Chinese are hyper-active, constantly moving against us, and trying to deny us even our rights to the sea lanes.  Not a pretty picture, and we wonder if President Biden is taking it seriously enough.  From Fox: 

One day after sailing through the Taiwan Strait, the guided-missile destroyer USS John S. McCain conducted a freedom of navigation operation near the disputed Paracel Islands while shadowed by Chinese warships.

All interactions were safe and professional, officials told Fox News. U.S. forces operate in the South China Sea on a daily basis, as they have for more than a century.

This is the first freedom of navigation operation in the South China Sea since President Biden took office.

"Unlawful and sweeping maritime claims in the South China Sea pose a serious threat to the freedom of the sea, including freedoms of navigation and overflight, free trade and unimpeded commerce and freedom of economic opportunity for South China sea littoral nations," 7th Fleet spokesperson Lt. Joe Keiley said in a statement. "The United States upholds freedom of navigation as a principle."

"As long as some countries continue to assert maritime claims that are inconsistent with international law as reflected in the 1982 Law of the Sea Convention and that purports to restrict unlawfully the rights and freedoms guaranteed to all States, the United States will continue to defend those rights and freedoms," Keiley added.

COMMENTS:  The Chinese international program is vast.  We learn that China has building projects in a number of countries, trying to influence the economies and policies of those countries.  They are even trying to lure Israel away from the United States. 

The problem is that there are powerful forces in this country who have no problem with China, and who benefit from China's economic strength – very much as some American companies benefited from their trade with Nazi Germany before World War II.  We see the impact of Chinese influence here in the constant underplaying of China's role in the worldwide pandemic,.

President Trump understood China and its ambitions.  He even referred to the Covid 19 virus as the "China virus," Of course, the fashion plates of the left lambasted him for that. 

Previous American generations were taught that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.  I wonder how much vigilance the current administration actually has.

February 5, 2021