U.S.A. – -(Ammoland.com)- “The Chinese government invited then-astronaut Mark Kelly, now an Arizona Democratic Senate candidate, to an all-expenses-paid retreat at a countryside resort in 2003,” The Washington Free Beacon reported Monday. “He left China five days later not only with a future spouse, former Rep. Gabby Giffords (D., Ariz.), but also with lucrative regime business contacts.”
Kelly mingled at that conference with all kinds of Chinese mucky-mucks in foreign service, the economy, and propaganda. NASA, for its part, is playing coy and not addressing whether or not Kelly has exploited the contacts he made while bound by its ethics policies concerning personal enrichment resulting from agency duties.
Funny. I remember when I worked in defense contracting for a satellite navigation and communications company years back, and they got antsy on accepting logo coffee mugs from vendors.
Such “reluctance” on the part of the space agency is not wholly unexpected though, since decades of embedded “progressives” have introduced Democrat priorities to compete with the core mission. In addition to vehicle development and exploration that had resulted in nation-inspiring and history-changing missions like Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo, tax resources must also be expended on things like politicized “global warming” alarmism of Thunbergian proportions — that and flying Star Trek’s George Takei out to lecture everyone about virtue-signaling “diversity.”
And we wonder why we don’t have Kubrick’s Space Station V and Clavius Base by now.
It’s a Democrat government thing. It’s like giving them money for the Wuhan flu so they can divert it to “free” college and “to each according to his needs” income redistribution. The curious thing is, Kelly’s “most favored” business associates pay equivocal lip service to achieving climate goals decades from now (when, ostensibly, New York City will be under seven feet of water). And forget it on tolerance for Takei.
But back to Kelly and his economic benefactors, who don’t have to worry about domestic cultural revolution struggle sessions when it’s they who are violating expectations. You’ll notice we still haven’t gotten much more than equivocation and weasel-wording “on the financial ‘windfall’ his company gained from the Chinese tech giant, Tencent.”
With all the interest in foreign influence in U.S. elections, it’s not out of line to ask how a retired captain with Chinese connections finds himself with “assets worth up to $27 million.” Not that we can expect the propaganda-preferring DSM (Duranty/Streicher Media) to ask very loudly, it at all…
The relationship and the incentives are important to understand for all Americans and for Arizonans in particular, considering trade deals for weapons systems with Taiwan, including Raytheon missile systems made in Tucson and Boeing AH-64 Apache helicopters made in Mesa. If there is one thing that will anger his mainland trading partners more than Dalai Lama posters, it is closer U.S./Taiwan ties. How Kelly intends to balance his personal economic interests with his duties as a senator with the interests of Beijing is something no one seems to be pressing him on – well, almost no one.
There’s one other important point Kelly needs to be pressed on, another area of carrying out policies favored by the Chinese communist government:
China condemns U.S. gun ownership as a human rights violation.
It’s a monopoly of violence thing.
Between Kelly’s citizen disarmament agenda with Gabby, his own campaign goals, and his support of the Biden/Democrat agenda, he’s doing his utmost to please his communist Chinese associates and place their interests above those of freedom-loving American gun owners.
About David Codrea:
David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating/defending the RKBA and a long-time gun owner rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament. He blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” is a regularly featured contributor to Firearms News, and posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.