What Must It Feel Like To Be Stuck In Space -- And Know Your Own Government Is NOT Paying Your Families, For Your Service -- At The Moment?

There are at least several million deplorable aspects to the Trump shutdown -- as he has now presided over the two longest shutdowns in US history. And certainly his lawless attempt to stop SNAP payments is the most burdensome -- nationwide, as one in five American children struggle with hunger every day. SNAP comes from a special emergency fund set aside by Congressional act -- to be inviolate. But Trump has tried twice, and failed twice, to stop those payments. Federal courts have now twice ruled his impotent move was patently unlawful.

So, although the below only impacts three families -- it is among the most unfair of them all. Trump is preventing our ISS astronauts (who clearly cannot just "stay home", or take a sick out!) from being paid whilst aboard the orbiting space station. Damn -- here is that story, and a bit of it:

. . .Like all federal agencies, NASA has had to severely cut back on its day-to-day activities, as more than 15,000 NASA civil servants have been furloughed since Oct. 1. Only essential personnel deemed "necessary to protect life and property" are granted "excepted" status, according to NASA's shutdown guidance. This includes astronauts in space and the technicians in mission control on the ground who support them. . . . NASA's Jonny Kim, Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke [while in orbit above, on the ISS -- are not seeing any federal government direct deposits, to their bank accounts here on Earth, during this shutdown -- and that. . . is criminal.] Like their international counterparts, they've continued pulling their fair share of the chores in space [despite it all]. . . .

For the most part, life aboard the ISS has continued as usual. The Expedition 73 crew currently occupying the space station have spent the past month conducting microgravity research and other experiments on their rotation and performing scheduled maintenance.

Of the seven astronauts currently living on the ISS, three are from the Russian space agency Roscosmos — Sergey Ryzhikov, Alexey Zubritsky and Oleg Platonov — and another is Japan's Kimiya Yui, from Japan. . . .

Now you know. Kim, Cardman and Fincke are true patriots, and Trump is an A$$ -- for witholding their pay. Damn.

नमस्ते