Free Two Peasants and a President by Frederick Aldrich

likes of which we have not seen since the 1930’s.  It is not coming from a Nazi Germany.  It is not coming from a Communist Soviet Union.  It is coming from within this body and we must stop it now!” 
    “Does anyone in this room actually believe that China continues to buy our debt because they believe we are sound fiscally?  Does anyone actually believe that our treasury secretary has been going to China to lecture them on floating their currency in order to make our products more competitive?”
    “I’ll tell you what I believe he’s been doing.  He hasn’t been telling the Chinese a damn thing.  They’ve been telling him, telling him what they e x pect us to do if we want them to continue to fund this administration’s u n precedented expansion of the federal government.” 
    “They expect us to cede to them the entire South China Sea!  All one million, four hundred thousand square miles of it - one of the most oil and gas rich areas on the planet.  They expect us to allow them to control waters that are twelve hundred miles from their coast and adjacent to the coastlines of at least six other nations.” 
    “Several days ago, in the middle of the night, a modern Chinese Navy frigate challenged a Philippine naval craft tha t was older than many of you.  At the same time, a lurking Chinese submarine sank the Philip pine ship with all hands aboard, this only seventy miles off the shore s of the Philippines and more than seven hundred miles from China.” 
    “China would like the world to believe that their frigate only fired warning shots across the Filipino’s bow, which is true.  They did not expect the world to learn that their submarine sank the Filipino ship.  This admin i stration was not planning on telling you that.  I just did.”
    “Ladies and gentlemen, it is time we pick ourselves up and learn to live within our means.  It is time to tell this administration that we want a go v ernment that we control, not a government that controls us.  And it’s time we tell the Chinese that we don’t want anymore of their damn money!”
     
    *******
     
    By the time Senator Baines had finished his speech, the veins in the Senate Majority Leader’s neck were swelling.  His face had gone from its normal pallid pink to half-shades shy of purple.  He knew that every reporter in the capitol was at this moment rushing to file a story that would lead the nightly news broadcasts from Shreveport to Singapore.
    There would be no sweeping this one under the rug.  The wily old Senate Majority Leader had weathered his share of storms, but this typhoon would spawn tsunamis worldwide.  In recent months Senator Baines had on several occasions shone a light on China, exposing back door deals and sell outs which had severely disadvantaged the United States, thereby upping the level of anti-China sentiment dramatically.  Now the questions that would inevitably be raised by events in the South China Sea could threaten the presidency itself.
    Rausch’s cell phone was buzzing angrily before he was even out of the chamber.  Fishing it out of his pocket he flipped it open.  The display flashed what he already suspected:  The White House. 

15
     
     
     
    CBC Evening News
     
    “We have breaking news to share at this hour,” the familiar voice of Gayle Mansfield announced.  Normally, her network had no problem i g noring a story that reflected poorly on the president or the administration.  In fact, there were many who had simply stopped looking to CBC for ‘news.’  But the vestiges of stature once shared by the big three broadcast networks still attracted t he sublimely naive and gullible to whom critical thinking is a foreign concept.  Ignoring another important story had left considerable egg on the network’s face when they were belatedly forced to report on events that had been widely discussed elsewhere.  So this time, they decided not to further trash their own