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Evening Shade--Resistance Rising-- Sunday [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2025-03-23

YOU CAN REPOST IT AS COMMENT in the DIARY

WHEN YOU FIND SOMETHING in the DIARY that you LIKE

THE PERSON who MAKES the FIRST COMMENT WILL GET TWO CRITTERS

(Or NOT As the CASE MAY BE)

YOU WILL FIND in the DIARIES a LOT of POLITICS

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What’s in it for Musk? Fame? Tax breaks? Soaking the government for funds to go to Mars? (NYT free link)

In the Commerce Department, SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service will now be fully eligible for the federal government’s $42 billion rural broadband push, after being largely shut out during the Biden era. At NASA, after repeated nudges by Mr. Musk, the agency is being squeezed to turn its focus to Mars, allowing SpaceX to pursue federal contracts to deliver the first humans to the distant planet. And at the Federal Aviation Administration and the White House itself, Starlink satellite dishes have recently been installed, to expand federal government internet access. Already, some SpaceX employees, temporarily working at the F.A.A., were given official permission to take actions that might steer new work to Mr. Musk’s company.

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What’s in it for Trump? Money? Get out of jail free card? Adulation, at least. If he doesn’t get it, he makes it up. He refers to himself in the third person, sticks a dollar sign in front of his name, gushes praise for himself, ends with a girlish forest of exclamation points. If this nut wasn’t president they wouldn’t dare let him near the White House.

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Break for a moment of presidential sanity.

x "The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little." —FDR, 1937 — Robert Reich (@rbreich.bsky.social) March 22, 2025 at 1:01 PM

By the numbers.

x Casar: You can quickly explain Doge with just two numbers. First: $8 million a day. That’s how much Elon Musk collects in federal government contracts. Second: $65 a day. That’s how much the average senior—someone who has worked their entire life—gets from Social Security.…



[image or embed] — Acyn (@acyn.bsky.social) March 21, 2025 at 8:37 PM

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Food banks are one of the latest cuts.

x Americans are going hungry under Trump. Food banks across the country — already strained by deep cuts to locally grown food programs — the U.S. Department of Agriculture is canceling $500 million in expected food deliveries, further disrupting aid as demand continues to grow. — Alt National Park Service (@altnps.bsky.social) March 22, 2025 at 12:16 PM

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Chucking out immigrants not only harms families, communities, and the workforce. It costs revenue.

x Undocumented immigrants pay nearly $100B in taxes and receive no benefits or representation. Trump is about to explode the deficit by using the SSA to find and deport them. www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/20...



[image or embed] — Mueller, She Wrote (@muellershewrote.bsky.social) March 22, 2025 at 3:59 PM

But the IRS is cooperating. DOGE has access to personal IRS records and they’re using it to target immigrants.

x Urgent: Illegal Activity Underway Many undocumented immigrants file tax returns with the IRS, providing details about their residences, families, employers, and earnings. The IRS has historically encouraged tax compliance by issuing ITINs to those without Social Security numbers. — Alt National Park Service (@altnps.bsky.social) March 22, 2025 at 5:58 PM

x Federal law strictly protects this information. Under 26 U.S. Code § 6103, tax return data is confidential and cannot be shared with other federal agencies, including immigration enforcement. — Alt National Park Service (@altnps.bsky.social) March 22, 2025 at 5:58 PM

While Trump and his lackeys insist that they’re “horrendous criminals,” the people deported to El Salvador haven’t been tried so there’s no proof of it. Journalists, families and deportees insist that many are innocent.

x “One young man sobbed when a guard pushed him to the floor. He said, ‘I’m not a gang member. I’m gay. I’m a barber.’ I believed him. *** He “began to whimper,” as his head was roughly shaved, “folding his hands in prayer as his hair fell.” He “asked for his mother & cried as he was slapped again.”



[image or embed] — Jenny Cohn (@jennycohn.bsky.social) March 22, 2025 at 2:52 PM

Want to know more? The Time article linked to that Bluesky post is worth a read.

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Resistance rising! Bernie and AOC are getting crowd sizes that suggest that it’s not just Democrats coming to listen. Pritzker and Walz have joined in. Check out Ossoff and Warnock at this rally in Georgia.

x Ossoff: This is why things don’t work for ordinary people. It’s not because of trans kids or woke college students. It’s not because of our new arch-enemy… Canada.



[image or embed] — Acyn (@acyn.bsky.social) March 22, 2025 at 1:51 PM

x Warnock: They are busy attacking ordinary people. They don’t understand what it’s like to ration your prescription drugs or what it’s like to try to figure out how to afford groceries. In the words of that prophet who just spoke at The Super Bowl: They not like us



[image or embed] — Acyn (@acyn.bsky.social) March 22, 2025 at 1:06 PM

Look how many people show up to a town hall to look at the empty chairs of Republicans who don’t show up!

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Sunday Science

Scientists are being canceled. The Hawaiian Volcano Observatory loses its lease to DOGE cost cutting.

For more than 100 years, the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory has kept a close eye on Kīlauea and other geologic hot spots to warn Big Island residents before eruptions, while training hundreds of volcano researchers from around the globe. Now, the observatory’s staff faces eviction from their current headquarters at the Ironworks Building in Hilo — where they have been housed during construction of their new, permanent observatory — as part of the Elon Musk-led effort to end hundreds of federal leases early. (CivilBeat)

And weather balloon launches are being cut back as a result of staffing cuts.

Last week, the U.S. experienced a deadly storm outbreak with over 100 tornadoes and 1000 hail reports, but the National Weather Service provided outstanding warning information ahead of them. Weather balloons were a big tool in their box. This week NWS issued a public information statement announcing that is is temporarily suspending the frequency of weather balloon launches at some of Weather Forecast Offices. Experts say that it could degrade weather forecasts. (Forbes)

But there are signs of hope: volunteers are saving federal science data that was otherwise headed for invisibility if not destruction.

In the past two months, hundreds of terabytes of digital resources analyzing data have been taken off government websites, and more are feared to be at risk of deletion. While in many cases the underlying data still exists, the tools that make it possible for the public and researchers to use that data have been removed. But now, hundreds of volunteers are working to collect and download as much government data as possible and to recreate the digital tools that allow the public to access that information. So far, volunteers working on a project called Public Environmental Data Partners have retrieved more than 100 data sets that were removed from government sites, and they have a growing list of 300 more they hope to preserve. (NYT — paywall)

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Firefly Aerospace’s lunar probe, Blue Ghost, spent one lunar day — two Earth weeks — carrying out ten experiments on the moon’s surface. It experimented with a new way to gather rock samples, tried a new method to measure the moon’s magnetism 700 miles beneath the surface, and observed the temperature drop in an eclipse. But the sun has set on its solar panels and it’s not expected to survive the lunar night. This is its last transmission:

Mission mode change detected, now in Monument Mode Goodnight friends. After exchanging our final bits of data, I will hold vigil on this spot in Mare Crisium to watch humanity's continued journey to the stars. Here, I will outlast your mightiest rivers, your tallest mountains, and perhaps even your species as we know it. But it is remarkable that a species might be outlasted by its own ingenuity. Here lies Blue Ghost, a testament to the team who, with the loving support of their families and friends, built and operated this machine and its payloads, to push the capabilities and knowledge of humanity one small step further. Per aspera ad astra! Love, Blue Ghost

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It’s a big day! It’s National Tamale Day.

x YouTube Video

National Melba Toast Day!

x YouTube Video

National Chip and Dip Day! (Stand your ground on the cheese dip!)

x YouTube Video

And National Near Miss Day, which commemorates the day the Earth faced a near miss when a massive asteroid nearly hit us in 1989.

[END]
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