Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here, and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election.
We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio ad staff give you, guys, the best independent.
Coverage that is possible.
If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that, let's get to the show. Some new developments in our search for extraterrestrial life not here on Earth, but somewhere in our solar sys. So let's go and put this up there on the screen. This is actually a fascinating development from NASA. They say, quote, a moon of Saturn
has all of the ingredients needed for life. Data from the NASA spacecraft reveals that phosphorus is present in the subsurface ocean of Enceladus, which is one of the moon of Saturn. It's a tidy, tiny orbiting moon of Saturn, they say, it has quote all of the key building
blocks of life. The moon is only about three hundred miles in diameter, but it has a global subsurface ocean of more than thirty miles deep continuously erupting plumes at its south pole, sprays bits of icy particles from that ocean hundreds of miles into space through the cracks and the moon crust at supersonic speeds.
Quote.
These geysers enable spacecraft flying by to study them the chemical mapup of the ocean without having to plunge beneath the ice. Data from the previous NASA mission suggested that the moon possessed every chemical block needed to form life that we have known of in the Solar System except for phosphorus. Now we know that phosphorus, being critical to
DNA crystal, actually has been discovered on this moon. So the name also of the moon and Salatus difficult to say, just for me because I'm not all that read up, but I did know that the way that they named saturn moons was within Greek methodology, and Ensolatus is one of the giants who is the offspring of Gaya aka the earth and Uranus the sky, so it's one of those children in Greek mythology, thus getting the name there of Saturn's moon.
So it's interesting though.
Nonetheless, yeah, well, they have a researcher quoted here who says the next step is to figure out if it indeed is inhabited. It's going to take a future mission to answer that question, so we don't know yet.
Maybe it's a forward operating.
This is exciting because it makes Ensilatus and salitas, how we say, it, an even more compelling destination.
To go and do that kind of search.
I mean, I guess the thing that this made me think of Soccer is if they're even in our own solar system, are places that are potentially that have all the building blocks of life, that are potentially inhabitable, then what does that mean for the.
Like vastness of the universe.
Yeah, it's just, you know, statistically speaking, it's obvious that there must be many, many, many other places that similarly have these same building blocks of life.
Of course, I mean that is it's so obvious because we and actually even as he points out, you know, within space, it says, quote within the cosmos, Phosphorus is by far the rarest as of what we know, at least so far. But it does demonstrate to us just how little we actually even know, you know, even about our own solar system eight or nine Measley, little planets and their moons, like we're only discovering this now in
twenty twenty three. Then you combine that to the Milky Way galaxy, and then you combine that too all of these other galaxies where, you know, I just think it's so ridiculous to even claim, you know, I guess not that many people do claim that we are literally the only life in the entire universe, just that you know, the the what are the odds that we would be at the same that we would reach our stage of development at the exact same time that another civilization had
also reached past development for intersolar intergalactic interstellar travel, and that those two would find each other.
And that's kind of.
What the actual paradox is, not that life has not existed or does exist or whatever in the universe, just that that they would be able to find each other
at the same time. Does you know it does seem quote unquote fantastical, but also considering the number of ensulatuses that are likely out there, the number of earths and all that are out there, it's not as crazy as it seems to be presumed that there's millions, potentially hundreds of millions of type civilizations scattered all throughout the universe. But hey, you know now we're starting to get now things are starting.
To get into Yeah.
Well, there's nothing more human than to contemplate the great mysteries of the universe. And there's nothing that's sort of more centering, I guess, than to contemplate just these the vastness of the universe and what else might be out there helps put everything in context.
Let me put a word in just for darkness.
I did not truly understand darkness until I went to Moab, which is one of the it's a National Dark Sky Zone in the United States. Moab is the desert the town in Utah for the Artist National Park.
I drove in the middle.
Out night, pitch black. You can barely see anything except for the distance of your headlights. You get to the parking lot where everybody's going stargaze, and you turn the car off and you look up and it is one of the most stunning things I've ever seen in my entire life. Everyone's gotten a little bit of glimpse of it if you go on camping or something like that.
But I beg people go to an.
Actual dark sky zone or Hawaii. I forget exactly what ket conservatory I think is what it's called. Either of those places, it will blow you away. Yeah, and I'm sure there are several other I think the South Pacific also some areas and all of the other than Hawaii that you can visit. But in the United States National Dark Sky Zone, I think Big Sky Montana.
This is like that.
It will change your perspective entirely on everything that was.
This was actually something that blew Kyle away. Moving from New York City suburbs down to middle of nowhere in Virginia where we live, which obviously is not like total there's still some light pollution, but the vast difference between what he could see in the night sky in New York City versus here kind of blew his mind.
So certainly speak to that.
Even a fifty percent chance change is insane.
But try one hundred percent, Like I beg you, everybody could try and go and experience with yourself.
So anyway, we're not alone. We'll see you later.
So in the midst of all kinds of turmoil over at CNN with the top guy being out of the job, you have Charles Barkley, who is set to start a new talk show there alongside Gail King, and he made some interesting comments about the timing of his new show coming out.
Take a listen, you don't need to go take that news job.
You can come on our show. You know more about hockey than we do.
Have to travel out apparently with this new talk too, I'm jumping on the Titanic. Everybody keep saying aboard a board.
A board, right, jumping on the Titanic.
You know what's funny though about that clip is like, clearly Charles Barkley doesn't need CNN.
In fact, I was shocked that he even took the job.
And the fact that he doesn't need CNN is exactly why his show could actually be interesting because he'll say something like that, which clearly, like you know, is in politic and not what CNN bosses want to hear.
But since he's Charles Barkley, he can get away with it.
Oh right now, they're really getting destroyed.
I mean, you know, CNN actually this is even a reflection by their own reporter Brian.
Stelter, who has literally yeah, used.
To dominate CN used to dominate on brave breaking news like Friday when the Trump indictment was on Seals.
Something's changed.
MSNBC has now capitalized, So MSNBC actually destroyed both Fox and CNN on the day of the Trump indictment. Obviously, the boomers over there are just losing their minds. Nicole Wallace getting them all ginned up. Rachel Maddow is, you know, doing backflips. But CNN, you know, is in a tough spot because they capitalized exactly on that same market, then decided to ditch them. And they're like, well, which way, Like,
who are we? We have no credibility with the right, Their credibility with the left is gone because they are not willing to be as crazy rushing layers as MSNBC.
So what is there? You know, what what is their purpose of existing right now?
Yeah?
No, they're I mean, I don't know what the way for it is for them because they spent so much, so many years cultivating a certain audience and it was basically like the same audience as MSNBC, where I mean sometimes CNN was even going like further than MSNBC in terms of you know, like liberal derangement. And so after you've cultivated that audience for years, you can then turn on a diamond be like actually everything we said was wrong.
Actually our coverage was wrong. Actually our hosts were wrong.
Actually what we were doing was terrible and was bad for the world and bad for democracy and whatever. And we're completely changing course. I mean, I don't even know that they changed course all that much. Yeah, I think you're right, but they did enough for viewers to, you know, the viewing base, the viewing audience that they had themselves cultivated to be like, Okay, well I can go over to MSNBC and get like the comfort food fed right to me. So I don't even know what you're up
to over here. And when you combine that with the fact that it's not like any of this content is that engaging or entertaining anyway, there's just no reason for you we'll stick around.
I think what we need to do is to make sure that people understand this is only a once a week's show. But even if Charles does well, it's not like it's going to save that. Yeah, whoever, the new boss is over there. I just got to say, good luck. That is it and Titanic. One can only pray, one can only hope.
Yes, indeed, I mean, I guess the last thing I'll say is you are talking about still even with writings down, even with profits down, even with all of that, a gigantic juggernaut of a media enterprise. You know, surely there is some path to them being relevant again and providing information and news coverage that people actually want to seek out and actually learn from and actually get something out of.
But it's not clear that there are any New York executives who have figured on a plan for making that happen.
Yeah, well said.
Inflation, Government speirit, consumer hate it, and the media lies about it too. My name is James Lee, and today we will uncover together the web of lies and propaganda spun by the mainstream media to obfuscate the truth about inflation, not.
Just one factor but several that's fueling inflation.
The reason for inflation.
Do you see this flaring up inflation?
That's the main cause of inflation.
An inflation conspiracy theory is infecting the Democrat Party.
Inflation propaganda has come full circle, and today we are going to go on a three year journey to expose the insane lies we've been told about the causes and effects of inflation. Let's go back to early twenty twenty, shortly after the pandemic took hold of the world, On March twenty seventh, twenty twenty, Congress passed a two trillion
dollar plus stimulus package called the CARES Act. Part of the package included direct aid to endividuals and households in the form of a twelve hundred dollars stimulus check to provide relief for those whose jobs were impacted by pandemic shutdowns. In December of that year, Congress passed yet another stimulus bill, the Coronavirus Response and Relief Act, which doled out another six hundred dollars check to individuals making under seventy five
thousand dollars a year. In March of twenty twenty one, Congress passed the final coronavirus stimulus bill, the American Rescue Plan Act, which distributed another fourteen hundred dollars to most Americans thirty two hundred dollars in total to the people, and some at the very top were not too happy. Economist Larry Summers, Bill Clinton's Treasury secretary and Barack Obama's top economic advisor, was a high profile critic of these relief checks.
I don't think the two thousand dollars checks make much sense.
I'm not even sure that I'm so enthusiastic about the six hundred dollars.
Checks, and I think taking them to two thousand dollars would actually be pretty serious stake that would rink this could temporary overheat. In a Washington Post op ed published in February of twenty twenty one, a month after the final relief check was issued to Americans, Summers wrote that the stimulus checks would quote set off inflationary pressures of a kind that we have not seen in a generation.
And when inflation jumped from one point seven percent in February of twenty twenty one to seven point nine percent a year later, cable News and its army of pundits and experts quickly placed the blame on these stimulus checks the reason for inflation.
The stimulus.
We have placed ourselves at risk for this inflation that we're now seeing.
Fourteen hundred dollars direct payments could be deposited into bank accounts as early as this weekend. Do you see this flaring up inflation the way we are seeing some marketants participants viewing this absolutely ma react.
He just passes this really really massive stimulus, and I think that that's the main cause of inflation. So their assertion is that the economy freaked out because people made a couple thousand dollars more. Is there any truth to that? Andrew Yang, who ran for president in twenty twenty with ubi universal basic income as a core tenant of his platform, he had this to say.
The relief checks and the enhanced child tax credit, it gets mistakenly blamed for inflation later, which is you know, very upsetting and frustrating and troubling. Yeah, because everyone's like, oh, we can you send checks out and then price it go up? But it's like, well, if you do the math, you realize that the checks were a very very small
component of the five trillion that went out. I tried to explain to people, It's like, look, five trillion dollars is fifteen sixteen thousand a head, Like, do you remember sending out fifteen sixteen thousand ahead? You know, it is about like, you know, maybe like one or two grand ahead. So what the hell happened to the other you know, thirteen fourteen ye grand?
Yeah, what did happen to the rest of the money. Taking a closer look at the CARES Act, the first of the three Coronavirus Stimulus bills, only about a quarter of the money went to helping individuals and households. To undred ninety billion went to direct payments. That's the twelve hundred dollars check, another two hundred and sixty billion for
additional supplemental unemployment. Much of the rest the one point two to one point four trillion dollars was handed out to some of the wealthiest in this country, corporations, businesses, and major industries like the airlines as tax breaks, loans,
and grants. So while it is certainly the case that the Fed quote unquote printed a lot of money in the year following the onset of the COVID nineteen pandemic, which could and did contribute to inflation just based on fundamental supply and demand principles, the reality is that almost none of that money went to regular people. So the mainstream narrative continued to evolve in the coming months.
The global supply chain crisis hasn't been seen since World War II. Cargo ships continue to sit in an ocean parking lot off the coast of California as millions of goods are in limbo.
It's an la traffic jam in the Pacific. In October of twenty twenty one, The Wall Street Journal tied inflation to supply chain disruptions occurring as a result of the pandemic aftershock, which isn't inaccurate because the pandemic did throw the entire global supply chain in complete disarray, causing supply shortages and a subsequent price increase. But to what degree
that is the question. And it was around this time where rumblings in independent media along with other academics began to surface about the true impact of the supply chain crisis on prices and what else might actually be the
real driver of inflation. To cite one specific example, on December twenty nine, twenty twenty one, Front of the Show, Matt Stoller posited on his substack newsletter Big that corporate profits drove sixty percent of inflation increases based on his analysis after backing out planned inflation, which is roughly two percent historically, sixty percent of the increase in inflation went directly to corporate profits, while the other forty percent could
be explained by the Fed's monetary policy and the global supply chain crisis provocative, or at least it was at the time, and legacy media totally doubt. Just a few weeks later, on January tenth, twenty twenty two, the Washington Post Editorial Board published an op ed asserting that pinning the current inflation problems on corporate greed is a quote
unquote flimsy argument. Other op eds followed, claiming greedflation, as it later became commonly known to be fake, a witch hunt, some even going as far as calling it a conspiracy theory.
Flation conspiracy theory is infecting the Democrat Party, and she goes after what she's coining as greedflation, and she's basically saying with the idea of blaming all these companies for raising their prices when all of the prices of everything that goes into what they make has gone up, and they're trying to just keep their heads above water.
And in a lot of cases, some of them are doing quite well.
Hang on a second, some are doing quite well. Was that a Freudian slipped there? In September of twenty twenty two, The Intercept reported that CEOs of major corporations have been praying for inflation because it's an excuse to jack up prices. And this was all caught on tape.
We view a little bit of inflation as always good in our business.
We would expect to be able to pass that through.
And as I've said before, you know, inflation has been a little bit of our friend in terms of what we.
See at reach out pricing.
We want to make sure that we're not leaving any pricing on the table. We'll take as much pricing as then sure we can absorb.
And we know if we need to take more pricing we have room to do it.
Today We've seen no resistance from our customers.
I'm really pleased.
Our sales teams have gotten much better at pricing than ever in the history of the company.
We're not going to be given this pricing back now.
It's not a matter can we take.
A pricing increase?
Now, it's about how much of a price increase? So you're going to take.
Inflation is good for business. Inflation is our friend. We will raise prices as much as we can, and we aren't going to give it back. Sounds a lot like corporate manufactured inflation that has nothing to do with global supply chain disruptions or monetary policy. You tell me what you think. It's not exactly secret that in the past couple of years despite constant talks of a recession. Is
it already here? Is it six months away? Corporate profits have been at an all time high, and according to data released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the past three years from twenty twenty to twenty twenty two saw a dramatic increase in the contribution of corporate profits as a percentage of unit price, while other costs such as
employee compensation have decreased. In March of this year, the Economic Policy Institute estimated that between twenty twenty and twenty twenty two, corporate profits have contributed to more than a third of price growth. So how does mainstream media square this circle? How do they continue to do the bidding of their corporate masters while also facing facts that corporations
are greedy by nature? I will tell you just a few weeks ago, on May twenty fifth, twenty twenty three, the Wall Street Journal published this article greed inflation is real and probably good for the economy. Ah okay, So this brings us full circle. As Friend of the Show and Intercept reporter Ken Klippenstein aptly pointed out that over the course of a couple of years, the idea that corporate profits contribute to inflation went from a conspiracy theory
to real and probably a good thing. The journal claims that quote a bit of corporate greed, which they admit is contributing significantly to inflation, is actually a good thing because it may be helping the fight against recession. A bit of mental gymnastics, they got themselves tied up in a little bit of a not hard to say, but
to lay out the message clearly. What they are saying is that inflation from corporate price increases, which so happens to put money in the hands of shareholders, that's actually a good kind of inflation. But in another one of their recent articles, they say that inflation from wage growth, where money is put in the hands of a regular worker, that's a bad kind of inflation that we really need to be worried about. I hope you see the game.
The farcical nature of mainstream media covered. It is all propaganda facilitated by the entire legacy media ecosystem on half of their corporate and billionaire owners, who will undoubtedly benefit from such massive increases in corporate profits, all with the
goal of maintaining their power and control over you. But we have a choice we can choose to believe in this type of propaganda, or we can refuse such narratives that blame regular people, narratives that are meant to divide the working class, narratives that are designed to indoctrinate you into defending your oppressors. Only then can we potentially change the status quo. Thank you so much for watching. What
do you think? Sound off in the comments below. If you enjoy these beyond the headline segments, I would encourage you to check out and subscribe to my YouTube channel fifty one forty nine with James Lee. The link will be in the description below. I'd really appreciate that, and as always, keep on tuning into breaking points and thank you so much for your time today