Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone

“The blue whales have stopped singing / because the krill are vanishing / because the oceans are warming / because we are ruled by long-toothed liars / whose insides are full of dead leaves. / The great whales have gone silent / and my bird has gone blind / and there are chatbots in the basement / and corpses in the corn. / Under the overpass it is dry and still. / You would never know that everything is dying. / You should come and visit me. / Meet me over there under the sepia streetlights / with the strangleporn perverts and fentanyl fallen, / all the stillborn scar tissue extractions / from the wreckage of a banished womb, / the NAFTA-noosed factory towns full of deserted buildings / and the window-snarling meth towns full of deserted people, / where the cries of orphaned Palestinians mingle / with the cries of the last baby orangutan / ever born in the wild …” (12/08/25)

https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2025/12/08/the-blue-whales-have-stopped-singing/

Source: Big Head Press
by Scott Bieser

Cartoon. (12/08/25)

https://www.quantumvibe.com/strip?page=2564

Source: Orange County Register
by Sal Rodriguez

“Today marks the 97th birthday of Noam Chomsky, known both for his status as ‘the father of modern linguistics’ as well as his prolific political commentary. I’m aware that as the opinion editor of an editorial page that tilts libertarian he’s an unusual figure to highlight, but he was intellectually influential to me ever since I read a booklet of his (‘9/11’) sometime in 2002 (I would’ve been 11). Though I came to identify more with thinkers like Milton Friedman, Chomsky is still someone whose writings and speeches I return to.” (12/08/25)

https://archive.is/8l2Bh

Source: Common Sense
by Paul Jacob

“The European Commission is fining the X platform 120 million euros (140 million dollars), for ‘transparency failures’: not sharing advertising and user data with the EU and not making it easy to censor account holders. As Reclaim the Net reports, the European Union wants platforms to open themselves to what it calls ‘independent research.’ In practice, this means that ‘academics and NGOs, often with pro-censorship political affiliations’ get special access to the data, ‘exactly the kind of surveillance the [Digital Services Act] claims to prevent.… The EU is angry that X is not policing speech the way it wants.’ My advice to Elon Musk is to shut down X (formerly Twitter) throughout the EU. And refuse to pay the fine.” (12/08/25)

https://thisiscommonsense.org/2025/12/08/dont-pay-dont-play/

Source: The American Prospect
by Ryan Cooper

“A major theme of American politics over the past few decades is Democrats repeatedly bailing Republicans out from the political consequences of their own actions, particularly with health care. During the Obama years, House Republicans voted dozens of times to repeal Obamacare, which Democrats blocked every time. During Trump’s first term, the GOP came within one vote of actually repealing it. Now, with the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), Republicans have finally gotten what they wanted: namely, taking a trillion-dollar bite out of Medicaid, and allowing Biden-era Obamacare subsidies to lapse, meaning premiums on the exchanges are going to more than double. Except, whoops, it turns out that people don’t like this at all, and even the more dim-witted congressional Republicans are starting to fear this might blow up in their faces.” (12/08/25)

https://prospect.org/2025/12/08/republicans-scramble-for-health-care-ideas-obamacare-deadline-looms/