3 August—It looks like Red China, the mainland dictatorship sometimes known as the People’s Republic of China, isn’t too happy that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and an enthusiastic cohort of Democrats actually went through with the much publicized junket to Taiwan, officially known as the plain old Republic of China. As Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy is arguably the third (given Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, more likely the second or first) most powerful person in the country and the first high-ranking pol to visit Taiwan in a quarter-century. Some Republicans were invited but found excuses not to go along on the free trip; back home she’s had quite a bit of GOP support on the island visit, though. The Chinese Red Menace had warned us good guys in no uncertain terms to keep away from what they like to say is their sovereign territory—or face dire consequences.

In this instance Nancy is indeed a good guy (something I don’t normally even think), not only because she effectively told the Red Menace what to do with itself, but also because she ignored the earnest entreaties of the pusillanimous Biden administration. But did she really defy Biden’s birdbrains? It occurs to me that in publicly asking Nancy to shun Taiwan, the administration was merely positioning itself to give the appearance of plausible deniability—that Biden, Blinken, and Nod didn’t approve of her foray—and thus shield itself from the slings and arrows of hostile international anti-American political scumbags who call themselves diplomats. But what do I know?

So just before the Americans got to Taipei, several websites run by the Taiwan government were disrupted by so-called overseas DDoS (distributed denial of service) attacks. Any guesses who’s responsible for those hacks? And the Chinese Red Army, calling itself the People’s Liberation Army (the one from the mainland) is posturing and being a thorough pain in the ass to Taiwan—and by extension to the United States—by doing what it shouldn’t where it shouldn’t.

So what else is new? I shouldn’t be at all surprised if the People’s Liberation Army Navy (yes, that’s what it’s called—it could play the Army-Navy game with itself) were sailing around Taiwan and its outlying islands as I type this disquisition, dumping barrels and barrels of COVID-infected urine or just having the crews pee over the gunwales in order to make life unpleasant for their Taiwanese neighbors . . .