WT "White House Declares Total Victory Over GOP in Budget Battle."

RUSH: The country was just sold down the river again by your very Republican Party. 

I have a headline here from the Washington Times:  "White House Declares Total Victory Over GOP in Budget Battle." That headline's a misnomer.  There was never a battle.  None of this was opposed.  The Republican Party didn't stand up to any of it, and the die has been cast for a long time on this.  I know many of you are dispirited, depressed, angry, combination of all of that. But, folks, there was no other way this could go. Because two years ago when the Republican Party declared they would never do anything that would shut down the government and they would not impeach Obama, there were no obstacles in Obama's way and there were no obstacles in the way of the Democrat Party. 

When you surrender the power of the purse -- and that's the primary power the House of Representatives has.  Not a penny of money can be spent in this country by this government without the House of Representatives authorizing it.  Obama can spend all he wants, but if the House doesn't give him the mechanism, he can't spend any of it.  But the Republicans squandered that.  They gave up the power of the purse.  The reason they did that is because for some inexplicable reason, they are literally paranoid and scared to death of even being accused of doing something that would shut down the government. 

So to avoid even the accusation that they were going to or would ever even think of shutting down the government, they signaled that whatever Obama wanted to spend, he would get, because they figured that had less damage to them politically than the allegation that they were shutting down the government.  So, very simply, ever since the Republican Party became the party of keeping the government open at all costs, we get bills like this.  There's simply no stopping the Democrats.  There's no mechanism.  Every constitutional mechanism found in the power of the purse, Separation of Powers, the Republican Party years ago gave it away, in total fear of the media. 

Now, there's also a factor that needs to be mentioned, too, and that is that many Republican donors want every bit of this money spent, and they have donated voluminously to key Republicans in order to get the money spent. So it's not all Republican fears. It's not all Republican caving.  A lot of it is Republican fealty and loyalty to some of their donors.  Some people today looking at this, and this is 2,009 pages.  It's said to be a spending bill.  Among the things that it does, it fully funds Obamacare. 

It fully funds Planned Parenthood.  That, to me, is unforgivable, with everything now known about what goes on behind closed doors at Planned Parenthood, and that the federal government, led by a Republican Party, sees fit to pay for it.  It is beyond comprehension, and it is a total squandering of moral authority to fully fund the butchery at Planned Parenthood.  This spending bill fully pays for Obama's refugee plans, fully.  This spending bill, this budget bill quadruples the number of visas Obama wants for foreign workers.  This is even a slap at American union workers.  Not the leaders.  The union leaders seem to be in favor of it, but blue-collar people, known as working people, have been sold down the river along with everybody else here. 

This spending bill even fully pays for every dime asked for by Obama on all of this idiocy that's tied up into climate change.  Everything Obama wanted, everything he asked for, he got.  You go down the list of things, it's there. 

And this is causing some people to wonder if they just dreamed all that stuff about Boehner resigning.  And then other people are wondering if they even dreamed all that stuff about the Republicans winning the largest number of seats they've had in Congress since the Civil War.  We had two midterm elections in 2010 and 2014, which were landslide victories for the Republican Party.  The Democrat Party lost over a thousand seats nationwide in just those two elections.  People went to the polls in droves wanting exactly what was rubber-stamped last night (or what will be) stopped. 

And instead they showed up in record numbers and they it turned out and they just defeated Democrats down the ballot. In the process, they elected Republicans to stop this.  And now the Republicans have the largest number of seats in the House they've had in Congress since the Civil War.  And it hasn't made any difference at all.  It is as though Nancy Pelosi is still running the House and Harry Reid is still running the Senate.  "Betrayed" is not even the word here.  What has happened here is worse than betrayal. Betrayal is pretty bad, but it's worse than that. 

This was out-and-out, in-our-face lying, from the campaigns to individual statements made about the philosophical approach Republicans had to all this spending.  There is no Republican Party!  You know, we don't even need a Republican Party if they're gonna do this.  You know, just elect Democrats, disband the Republican Party, and let the Democrats run it, because that's what's happening anyway.  And these same Republican leaders doing this can't, for the life of them, figure out why Donald Trump has all the support that he has?  They really can't figure this out?

Repeated stabs in the back like this -- which have been going on for years -- combined with Obama's policy destruction of this country, is what has given rise to Donald Trump.  If Donald Trump didn't exist and if the Republican Party actually does want to win someday, they'd have to invent him.  It's just mind-boggling when you figure out everything that has been granted Obama. All the money, the tax increases, the Cadillac plans in Obamacare. All kinds of punitive things in Obamacare, delayed yet again so that people will not be made aware of the pain and suffering Obamacare's gonna cause. 

This budget even gives Obamacare cover by delaying some of the most harsh aspects of it.  And the reason for that is, delay the harsh aspects and you prevent people from learning what they are, at the same time you get more years for the tentacles of Obamacare to deeply weave themselves into the fabric of society, making repeal of the thing more politically difficult.  So you could also say that the Republican budget bill actually improves the odds of Obamacare surviving and growing.  You have to look long and hard for this whole thing to find any opposition to anything the Democrat Party wants. 

Jeff Sessions, senator from Alabama, is calling this a betrayal, fully funding the Obama immigration agenda, the climate change agenda, increasing foreign workers.  He said, "This is why Trump is now triumphing here and probably will win.  The voters have come to believe that their own party's elites are not only uninterested in defending their interests, but -- as with this legislation and fast tracking the president's international trade deal -- Republican voters would not be wrong to conclude that their own Republican leaders are hostile to them, just as Democrat leaders are hostile to Republican voters." 

And as Sessions points out, "This legislation represents a further disenfranchisement of the American voter." Clearly! In the last two midterm elections, the American electorate has stood up and loudly stated, 'No. We don't want this. Stop this."  It didn't matter.  It's so bad that over at Slate.com they're making excuses for Paul Ryan.  I think in some places in the left-wing media, they can't believe the scope of the betrayal.  They're feeling a little guilty at how easy this has been.  They're feeling a little guilty here.  I'm joking, of course.  But one of the Salon.com columnists said, "Hey, you know, you guys need to cut Ryan some slack.  He was left with a huge mess and not much time to fix it." 

Isn't that what they always said with Boehner? "He was left with a huge mess"? Isn't that what they always say about Obama?  "He was left with a huge mess. Man, it was much worse than he even knew.  Nobody told him the truth."  It seems to be a constant refrain and excuse.  "According to Sessions, the American people elected Republicans to the majority in Congress in 2014 as a rejection of the Obama administration's immigration policies," and any number of other things. "'That loyalty has been repaid with betrayal,' he said. ... Sessions added, 'As feared, the effect is to fund the president’s entire immigration agenda.'"

"Planned Parenthood Unscathed in Spending Bill," from a very happy and cheering TheHill.com.  "Planned Parenthood is praising Democrats in Congress after the spending bill released early Wednesday morning spared the organization from cuts.  As expected, the spending bill does not defund Planned Parenthood, a clear deal-breaker for Democrats, but the absence of spending cuts is still noteworthy given the intensity of the push to defund the group..." There was never any intensity to... It's what we now know. 

There wasn't any intensity to defund.  All there was is just a bunch of words, just a bunch of people standing up saying they were going to.  This wouldn't stand.  They were gonna lead an effort to defund it. But nobody ever meant it.  "Planned Parenthood Vice President Dana Singiser praised congressional Democrats on Wednesday for 'holding the line against these harmful policy riders and cuts to key women's health programs.'"  Also from TheHill.com, another reporter cheering as well. "Funds for Obama Climate Deal Survive."

They were never threatened, never in peril.  There wasn't a battle.  "Secret Deal Quadruples Foreign Workers -- Chamber of Commerce Backs Guest Worker Program."  Translation:  More cheap labor will eagerly be brought into the country under a visa program or they will be employed.  "Hey, why not, Rush?  The unemployment's rate's 5%.  We got plenty of room for foreign workers."  Right.  That, to me... All this Republican campaign stuff going on obfuscating or clouding this a little bit, but that really is the news of the last 12 to 18 hours.  

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH :Sanctuary cities, fully funded.  All Mideast immigration programs, fully funded.  All these things that have been exploited by terrorists.  

Sanctuary cities, fully funded.  All refugees, fully funded.  The release of criminal aliens, fully funded. 

Everything!

The Democrat leftist wet dream has just been paid for.

Reid spikes the football:

'Successful year for Democrats'

www.washingtonexaminer.com

Senate Democrats on Friday boasted that they successfully managed to get just about everything they wanted in a massive spending and tax cut bill, despite being the minority party in both the House and Senate.

"Months ago, Democrats called on Republicans to work with us to craft a budget agreement. We wanted to get rid of sequestration, we were able to do that," said Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. "We wanted to make sure there is parity between defense and the middle class, we wanted to make sure that we kept these poison pills off the legislation."

"All three goals we had, we accomplished," he said. Reid said Democrats were able to beat back GOP efforts to defund Planned Parenthood, and stop plans to tighten rules for accepting refugees.

Even the lone GOP victory, ending the ban on U.S. oil exports, was matched by the extension of green energy tax credits.

"The legislation caps off a successful year for Senate Democrats," Reid said.

The Senate passed the $1.1 trillion spending and tax cut bill 65-33 Friday morning, sending it to President Obama for his signature into law.

Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said the positive results for Democrats came after his party blocked passage of key defense bills that would have boosted defense spending, without any promise to boost domestic spending. Blocking those bills eventually forced Republicans to agree to the Democratic demands.

The final spending bill increases spending by $80 billion over the next two years, ending a large part of the sequester.

Durbin also boasted that Democrats were able to push to renew the Export-Import Bank, after it was prevented from taking on any new business since the summer. The bank was renewed as part of a long-term highway bill.

"Do you remember when there was a time that the Export-Import Bank was beyond reach, no one could touch it?" Durbin asked.

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Mark my words, you will rue this day, lament it in tears. You will come to me on your knees sobbing, begging for forgiveness. But I will tell you now and I will tell you then, you are on your own!!

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TRUMP MAKES STATEMENT ON BUDGET DEAL

- DECEMBER 17, 2015 -

​DONALD J. TRUMP STATEMENT ON BUDGET DEAL

(New York, NY) December 17, 2015 – "If anyone needed more evidence of why the American people are suffering at the hands of their own government, look no further than the budget deal announced by Speaker Ryan. In order to avoid a government shutdown, a cowardly threat from an incompetent President, the elected Republicans in Congress threw in the towel and showed absolutely no budget disc

The American people will have to absorb higher deficits, greater debt, less economic liberty and more corporate welfare. Congress cannot seem to help itself in bending to every whim of special interests. How can they face their constituents when they continue to burden our children and grandchildren with debts they will never be able to repay? Our government is failing us, so we must do something about it. Who knows how bad things will be when the next administration comes in and has to pick up the pieces?

The only special interest not being served by our government is the American people. It is time we imposed budget discipline by holding the line on spending, getting rid of waste, fraud and abuse, and by taking on our debt. To do these things, we need a President who can lead the fight to hold Congress and the rest of government accountable. Together, we can Make America Great Again." – Donald J. Trump

Next Release: Statement on Donald J. Trump Record of Health

Congress Votes To Fund 300,000 Visas for Muslim Migrants in One Year

AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

by JULIA HAHN18 Dec 2015Washington D.C.3,534

The House passed 

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI)

58%

’s $1.1 trillion omnibus spending bill, negotiated with 

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)

9%

. A majority of House Republicans voted for the measure, which fully funds Obama’s refugee resettlement operation, all Mideast immigration programs, Sanctuary Cities, Obama’s continued executive amnesty for DREAMers, and the resettlement of illegal aliens within the U.S. interior.

In perhaps a display of loyalty to Ryan, three-fifths of the Republican conference supported his legislation, and even gave him a standing ovation following the bill’s passage.

In passing this legislation, the House has approved funding for the issuance of nearly three hundred thousand visas to migrants from Muslim countries in the next year alone.

Ryan’s bill accomplishes this migrant surge by fully funding every U.S. immigration program currently in existence, as well as funding the President’s expansion of the refugee program through Syrian migrant resettlement.

The most recent available data published by the Department of Homeland Security shows that in 2013, around 118,000 migrants from Muslim-majority countries were permanently resettled within the United States on green cards, as well as approximately 40,000 refugees and asylees from Muslim countries. Additionally, according to data from the State Department, in 2013 the U.S. voluntarily admitted approximately 123,000 temporary migrants from Muslim countries as foreign students and foreign workers.

On top of those autopilot admissions, which will be funded throughout all of 2016, the House is also funding the President’s plan to add another 10,000 refugees from the Muslim country of Syria. As a result, Ryan’s House-passed omnibus will bring in nearly 300,000 Muslim migrants in the next 12 months alone, including roughly 170,000 who will be permanently resettled within the country. In a December 3rd letter to administration officials, Sens. 

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL)

80%

 and 

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)

97%

 explained that the permeant resettlement of 170,000 Muslim migrants will be on top of the already huge inflow of temporary Muslim migrants:

Congress is days away from consideration of an omnibus year-end funding bill that would set the U.S. on an autopilot path to approve green cards, asylee, and refugee status to approximately 170,000 migrants from Muslim countries during the next fiscal year. In addition to that would tens of thousands of temporary visas for entry and employment, and the entire sum is added to the rest of the annual autopilot green card, asylee, refugee, and foreign worker flow.

This means that next year, the U.S. will admit more than two Muslim migrants for every one Iowa Republican primary voter.

Reports have documented how the admission of large flows of Sharia-sympathetic Muslim migrants has posed several assimilation challenges for the nation. For instance, Equality Now issued a report detailing how Muslim migration has put half a million U.S. girls at risk of suffering Female Genital Mutilation.

Similarly, Aayan Hirsi Ali has documented how honor violence and honor killings have become prevalent throughout the nation. Hirsi Ali has explained how the number of honor violence victims is only “likely to rise in the years to come” since “immigration trends over the last ten years, show a significant increase in the number of people moving to the United States from countries with high-honor violence rates—notably Somalia… as well as Iraq.” Moreover, a September 2015 Congressional report found that Minnesota, which has the largest Somali population in the country, also has the largest number of radicalized individuals who have attempted to take up arms and join ISIS in the fight against the West.

Yet many members of Congress do not seem aware of these reports. For instance, in an October interview with Congressman 

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH)

94%

, Breitbart News asked Jordan if he thought visa issuances to Muslim countries should be reduced, citing the fact that in his home state of Ohio, which has a large Somali population, more than 20,000 girls are at risk of having their sexual organs cut from their bodies.

Jordan’s response was, “In Ohio? Wow.” Jordan could not say whether he would support curbs to Muslim immigration declaring, ” I’d have to look at that closer. I have not looked at that particular.”

Yet in addition to funding visas for nearly 300,000 Muslim migrants, Ryan’s omnibus bill also funds the expansion of the H-2B guest-worker visa, which according to immigration attorney Ian Smith will disproportionately “hurt America’s most vulnerable workers” such as black workers, single women, the elderly, and first-generation immigrants. This provision– tucked 700 pages into the bill– resuscitates and expands a controversial provision of 

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL)

79%

’s Gang of Eight immigration plan to increase guest-workers.

The expansion of the H-2B program seems to confirm previous Breitbart Newsreporting, which observed that a Ryan Speakership would mean the desires of 9 in 10 Republican voters to reduce future immigration growth would be trumped by donor class’ desire to increase immigration.

As Breitbart News wrote prior to Ryan’s election as House Speaker:

House conservatives would have as much, if not more, to fear from Ryan as Pelosi in terms of striking a deal to advance amnesty and immigration-expansions on the House floor… Conservative lawmakers will be blocked from any attempt to advance legislative campaigns to curb immigration or to coordinate any public messaging designed to give voice to the concerns of working class Americans whose schoolhouses, jobsites and emergency rooms have been transformed by massive immigration.

However, on Thursday morning 

Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA)

70%

, a member of Ryan’s leadership team, sent out a WHIP alert to Congressional legislative staff, touting Bob Goodlatte’s visa expansion program.

Goodlatte, who serves as Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, has been a long time supporter of importing more foreign workers into Virginia.

Scalise– in praising Goodlatte’s proposal which Mark Levin has said will hurt black Americans filling blue-collar jobs– said that quadrupling H-2B visas will help employers suffering from so-called “worker shortage”.

However, the data contradicts Scalise’s claim.

As Sen. Sessions has highlighted, the Economic Policy Institute has documented how, “wages were stagnant or declining for workers in all of the top 15 H-2B occupations between 2004 and 2014,” and “unemployment rates increased in all but one of the top 15 H-2B occupations between 2004 and 2014, and all 15 occupations averaged very high unemployment rates… Flat and declining wages coupled with such high unemployment rates over such a long period of time suggest a loose labor market—an over-supply of workers rather than an under-supply.”

In his sales pitch to the Republican Conference, Scalise failed to mention that the U.S. has admitted an unprecedented 59 million immigrants since 1965, which has transformed the nation demographically, socially and economically.

This influx was the result of a Ted Kennedy-backed bill, which lifted Calvin Collidge’s immigration caps and opened up American immigration visas to the entire world. In the four decades following the enactment Coolidge’s immigration caps, there was no immigration growth at all in the United States, indeed U.S. foreign-born population underwent four decades of decline.

However, just three days before Steve Scalise was born, the Kennedy-backed bill was signed into law, resulting in an explosion of America’s foreign-born population from 9.6 million in 1965 to 42.4 million today. Census data shows that every three years, as a result of Kennedy’s immigration rewrite, the U.S. adds another immigrant population the size of Los Angeles.

When Scalise was born fewer than 1 in 20, U.S. residents were foreign-born. Today, that figure is rapidly nearing 1 in 7, and will rise to never before seen highs in coming decades if a pause or reduction to visa issuances is not enacted. Yet Scalise apparently believes that the unprecedented pace of foreign worker arrivals is not high enough.

Perhaps the greatest political irony surrounding the House’s passage of the Omnibus may be that Paul Ryan was able to get away with what 

Rep. John Boehner (R-OH)

28%

 never could– namely, the decision of the House Freedom Caucus to support Paul Ryan has enabled the donor class to lock in President Obama’s immigration policies for his final year in office in a way that would otherwise never have been possible.

As Talking Points Memo reports:

The rabble-rousing conservatives who were such a problem for former Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) are giving new House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) the benefit of the doubt on the year-end funding package…Some of the House’s most conservative members credit Ryan’s honeymoon period or their desire to skip town for the holidays for smoothing the path for them not to stand in the way of a deal…  Under Boehner, 11th hour budget negotiations all but guaranteed intra-party fireworks in the GOP conference… But this time, members are giving Ryan a break, at least in part in hopes of making a dash for the holiday exit.

Talking Points notes that many of the most vocal critics of John Boehner seemed eager to Ryan. For instance, 

Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC)

92%

 told Talking Points that Ryan “passed the test in terms of process and openness. He passed with flying colors.”

The nine founding members of the House Freedom Caucus include Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), 

Rep. Scott Garrett (R-NJ)

92%

, 

Rep. John Fleming (R-LA)

86%

, 

Rep. Matt Salmon (R-AZ)

88%

, 

Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI)

95%

,Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC), 

Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-SC)

93%

, 

Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-FL)

88%

, and 

Rep. Raul Labrador (R-ID)

95%

.

The nine founding members of the House Freedom Caucus include Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), 

Rep. Scott Garrett (R-NJ)

92%

, 

Rep. John Fleming (R-LA)

86%

, 

Rep. Matt Salmon (R-AZ)

88%

, 

Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI)

95%

,Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC), 

Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-SC)

93%

, 

Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-FL)

88%

, and 

Rep. Raul Labrador (R-ID)

95%

.

All nine of them voted for Paul Ryan as House Speaker

GOP OFFICALLY SELLS AMERICA TO OBAMA

House Approves $1.1 Trillion Spending Bill with Majority Dem Votes 166 to 150 Republicans. Easily Passes!

Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images

by CAROLINE MAY18 Dec 20150

The House approved a $1.1 trillion spending bill Friday morning with a majority of Democratic votes.

The bill passed on a vote of 316 to 113, with 166 Democrats and 150 Republicans voting in favor of the bill. Another 95 Republicans and 18 Democrats voted against the spending bill.

The omnibus frustrated conservatives who argued that the bill failed to address many of the Obama’s controversial initiatives and cedes to Democratic demands. In particular they voiced concern that the spending measure failed to impose restrictions on the resettlement of Syrian refugees in the U.S.

“Terrorists only have to be right once,” 

Rep. Lou Barletta (R-PA)

37%

 said following the vote. “While we still have fundamental problems in the screening process, I believe we should call a timeout in the refugee program until we get it fixed.  For these reasons, I voted emphatically against the bill.”

While conservatives had concerns, House Leadership praised the deal and the bipartisan passage of the bill and its content.

“This bipartisan compromise secures meaningful wins for Republicans and the American people, such as the repeal of the outdated, anti-growth ban on oil exports. The legislation strengthens our military and protects Americans from terrorist threats, while limiting the overreach of intrusive government bureaucracies like the IRS and the EPA,” House Speaker 

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI)

58%

 said in a statement following the vote.

Ryan added that in 2016 Congress will plan to “return to regular order.”

On the floor following the vote, Ryan praised and thanked committee staff and the people “behind the scenes who make this work.”

The Senate is expected to pass the spending bill later Friday.

Read More Stories About:

Big Government, Paul Ryan, Syrian refugees, omnibus, Spending bill

Be Afraid be very afraid.....

Obama Reassures Americans There Is No Credible Threat of Terror

abcnews.go.com

Flanked by his national security team, President Obama reassured Americans that there was "no specific, credible threat" against the country ahead of the holidays.

"We do not have any specific and credible information about an attack on the homeland," Obama said today at the National Counterterrorism Center. "That said, we have to be vigilant."

Obama said security experts are constantly hard at work putting up safeguards to prevent terrorists from entering the country, while at the same time bringing the fight to terrorists plotting overseas.

Obama also urged “resilience” in the wake of the attack in San Bernardino, California, calling it “one of our greatest weapons” in the fight against terrorism.

“When Americans stand together, nothing can beat us,” Obama said. “We cannot give in to fear or change how we live our lives because that’s what terrorists want, that’s the only leverage they have.”

It's a similar message to one given in November by the president in the immediate wake of the terror attack in Paris, where he sought to reassure the American people that there was no "specific, credible threat" facing the homeland during the Thanksgiving holiday.

But following the attack in San Bernardino, an ABC News/Washington Post poll out Wednesday showed just 22 percent of Americans express confidence in the government’s ability to prevent lone-wolf terrorist attacks.

The animal that lives for 10,000 years

www.bbc.com

They fell out of the sky and landed on the pale blue planet with a splash. Many of the crew missed the whole thing. Deep inside the spacecraft, arranged in neat stacks, were rows and rows of sleeping astronauts. Each was curled up inside their own pod, where they could have stayed for 10,000 years.

These were no ordinary space travellers. In the following weeks, they burst from their shells and developed into full-blown aquatic monsters: they are salmon-pink, with three eyes and eleven pairs of thrashing legs.

This really happened. The year was 1972 and the slumbering passengers werebrine shrimp, otherwise known as "sea monkeys", returning from the Apollo 16moon mission. They had been taken into space to test the impacts of cosmic radiation on astronauts.

This treacherous experiment required a near-indestructible guinea pig. Enter the brine shrimp, whose survival skills defy belief.

You can safely dry them out, set them on fire, dissolve them in alcohol, deprive them of oxygen, zap them with ultraviolet light, boil them at 105 °C or chill them to temperatures approaching absolute zero: the point at which atoms stop moving. They can also survive extremes of pH that would dissolve human flesh, water that is 50% salt, or a bath of insecticides. They are happy in the vacuum of space or at the crushing pressures found under 6,000 metres (20,000 feet) of ocean.

We are now starting to understand how they do it.

Space is drenched in high-energy particles called cosmic rays, which easily rip through cells, tissues and the aluminium walls of a spacecraft. The Moon was the perfect place to study their effects.

Brine shrimp look rather fragile, with their wafting legs and long antennae

The "Biostack I" experiment involved stacking brine shrimp embryos, along with plant seeds and bacterial spores, between layers of radiation-sensitive materials. Any rays that passed through the stack would end up on the detection layer, so the NASA scientists knew exactly which passengers had been hit.

Of 110 brine shrimp embryos that took a galactic bullet, many hatched – albeit with deformities – and a few went on to live full shrimp lives.

A follow-up experiment called Biostack II was taken to the Moon by Apollo 17 later the same year. It achieved similar results.

The strange thing is, brine shrimp look rather fragile, with their wafting legs and long antennae. What is their secret?

Despite their brand name, sea monkeys do not live in the open ocean. They have been splashing around in salty pools and lakes, from the Great Salt Lake in Utah to the Caspian Sea, for over 100 million years.

If you live in a pond, there is always a risk that it will dry out

Brine shrimp are also not shrimp, but they do belong to the same group, the crustaceans. They are tiny, just 15mm long. They eat algae, which they filter out of the water. They swim upside-down and breathe through their legs, and females do not need a male to reproduce.

Crucially, they have a unique affinity for salt. They can tolerate concentrations up to 50%. Such water is far saltier than the ocean, which is only about 3.5% salt, and the salt will be on the verge of precipitating out as a solid. The brine shrimp are fine with this.

But there is a catch: if you live in a pond, there is always a risk that it will dry out. The pools and lakes brine shrimp inhabit frequently disappear for months, years or decades. This should be a gigantic problem, but the brine shrimp simply dry out.

When conditions are favourable, female brine shrimp produce thin-shelled eggs that hatch immediately. But when food is scarce or salt levels are rising, they resort to plan B. They produce hard-shelled "cysts", each of which contains a near-fully-developed larva.

Radiocarbon dating estimated they had been lying there for 10,000 years

These cysts are able to withstand near-total dehydration, losing more than 97% of their water content. All their life processes stop and they enter a state of suspended animation called anhydrobiosis, a bizarre stopover between life and death.

As anyone who has kept sea monkeys as pets will know, to resurrect the embryos you just add water. The cysts take on 1.4 times their weight in less than 24 hours, before hatching into larvae the size of the full stop at the end of this sentence. When they first hatch they have just one primitive eye, though they add two more sophisticated eyes later.

It is an aggressive strategy for an aggressive environment, and it works. In the 1990s, oil exploration crews were drilling near the Great Salt Lake when they dredged up a mat of cysts between two layers of salt. Wondering whether they would hatch, they put some in water and reportedly a few did. Radiocarbon dating estimated they had been lying there for 10,000 years.

How did they get away with it?

Water is the liquid in which the molecules inside our cells move and mix, giving rise to life-sustaining chemical reactions. So taking it away brings those processes to a halt.

But for most animals, losing too much bodily water doesn't just shut things down, it causes lethal damage. Humans can only lose 15% of our bodily water, and few animals can lose more than 50%.

As water is removed, the molecules inside our cells lose the three-dimensional network that buoys them up. Proteins, sugars, and chromosomes become warped and break down.

Ice crystals act like tiny knives, ripping cells apart from the inside out

The challenge is to allow molecules to keep their shape as they dry out. For this, brine shrimp have a sweet solution: they turn their cells into solid sugar.

The cysts are loaded with an unusual sugar called trehalose, which makes up 15% of their dry weight. It forms a solid rather like the glass in windows. This "matrix" props up proteins and membranes, maintaining their structures, and freezes them in place.

Trehalose is the magic ingredient uniting most organisms capable of suspended animation, including the near-invincible tardigrades, certain nematode worms, and the larvae of an African fly called thesleeping chironomid.

On its own, trehalose simply allows the brine shrimp to cope with dehydration. But that may be the key to many of their abilities. As it happens, giving up water has some surprising bonuses.

In the warm temperatures humans tend to favour, water is famous for its life-giving properties. But if you chill it or heat it too much, it becomes deadly. Ice crystals act like tiny knives, ripping cells apart from the inside out. Liquid water also expands as it approaches its freezing or boiling point, with similarly lethal effects.

It seems that their willingness to live in toxic places actually means their lives are safer

If you take away water, you take away all these threats. What's more, radiation does not pack much of a punch either.

Normally, cosmic rays interact with water molecules in the body. This unleashes highly reactive forms of oxygen, including chemicals similar to bleach. These chemicals rampage through cells and tissues, destroying anything in their path. Dried-out brine shrimp embryos side-step this danger.

Still, dehydration is not a cure-all. It does not protect DNA from a direct hit by a cosmic ray, or stop proteins unravelling as they heat up. So brine shrimp cysts have evolved several other tricks, from DNA repair molecules to proteins that lack a fixed structure in the first place.

Why did evolution push brine shrimp to become so resilient? It seems that their willingness to live in toxic places actually means their lives are safer.

Brine shrimp inhabit salt lakes, the conditions in which are so hostile that they are also known as "seas of death". For instance, the Great Salt Lake is between 5 and 27% salt, depending on how much water it holds.

Only a few animals can handle such extremes

The Lake sits at the bottom of a flat basin, which poses an additional challenge. If the water level drops by just a foot, the shoreline could move up to a mile. From 1963 to 1986, the lake swelled by nearly 60%.

If a shrinking shoreline and water saltier than bacon weren't enough, at the Great Salt Lake's high altitude creatures must be able to cope with 15% more ultraviolet light than there is at sea level. The final insult is the risk of suffocation, because salty water holds less dissolved oxygen. 

As you might expect, only a few animals can handle such extremes. Apart from the larvae of two species of insect calledbrine flies, brine shrimp have the lake entirely to themselves. That means there are no predators hunting them.

However, brine shrimp's relationship with salt is not entirely positive.

Their cells cannot cope with too much salt, so they pump it out of their bodies and their hard exoskeletons stop it creeping back in. This is an energy-sapping process, so you could be forgiven for wondering why they bother to live in the salt lakes at all.

Their diet seems to be the key. In order to survive on tough, toxic algae, brine shrimp have struck up a relationship with the bacteria in their guts, which help them to digest their meals. Odrade Nougué of the University of Montpellier in France wondered if it might be these microbial companions that like salt, not the brine shrimp themselves.

Every summer when females lay their eggs, thick "slicks" marble the lake's surface

In a study published in September 2015, Nougué and her colleagues raised brine shrimp larvae in sterile conditions to get rid of the gut bacteria, then exposed them to water with different concentrations of salt. She did the same with bacteria that still had their normal gut microbes.

It turned out that the sterile brine shrimp did better in low salt, while the bacteria-riddled batch needed lots of salt. To Nougué, this suggests that the brine shrimp are victims of their own symbiotic partners. They cannot live without their gut bacteria and the bacteria want salt, so the brine shrimp have to put up with salt too.

Despite the challenges, living in super-salty water offers big payoffs: it is rich in algae and low in competition. In the Great Salt Lake, brine shrimp number in the billions. Every summer when females lay their eggs, thick "slicks" marble the lake's surface and the shores are awash with their pink offspring. The next spring, as the salt lake warms, billions of tiny larvae begin to hatch.

All these eggs and brine shrimp mean big business for the region, which collects around 9,000