6/2/23: Major Breakthrough in Air Energy, Feinstein Confused In Senate, Vacation Prices Skyrocket, The View Defends Kamala World Salad, Joe Rogan Laughs At Rainbow Truck Outrage, Beyond The Headlines Scientific Consensus w/ James Li

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.

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So we have a big potential breakthrough in clean energy technology. This was reported out by the Washington Post based on a new paper and some development here. Take a look at this. They say, scientists find way to make energy from air using nearly any material. Let me read from this report because otherwise I will butcher the breakthrough.

Here.

They say nearly any materia can be used to turn the energy in air humidity into electricity. Scientists found in a discovery that could lead to continuously producing clean energy with little pollution. That research, which is published in a paper in Advanced Materials, builds on twenty twenty work that first showed energy could be pulled from the moisture in

There are many.

Questions about how to scale the product. That is the primary sort of impediment here. The device itself is really super tiny, size of a fingernail, thinner than a single hair. It's dotted with tiny holes known as nanopores. They have a diameter smaller than one hundred nanometers, or less than one thousandth of the width of a strand of human hair.

I'm both excited and also skeptical if that makes it. I think that's not just because it's one of those words like that definitely sounds so.

I remember at one point.

I lived in Texas near Houston. I met a guy who had a system which pulled moisture out of the air because it's so humid in Houston to like for water. And I remember like, Oh, that's cool, And then it turned out it was like thousands of dollars and it didn't generate that much water. Yeah, and also it used a lot of electricity to get such so I was like, oh, well, is really that much better now?

So you need economies of.

Scale and all that that said, I mean the idea basically that this thing is basically the size what of a refrigerator and it could produce a kilo loot and power a home in ideal conditions. I mean, that sounds fantastic if that's something that could genuinely be pulled off. So the only thing I just don't really understand is how any material can be used to turn the energy in air.

Humidity into electricity.

I don't understand how every material is able to basically pull off this convert I.

Guess it's more of the nature of the holes in the material versus what the material itself is. They say the tiny holes allow the water in the air, so the humidity in the air to pass through in a way that creates a charge imbalance in the upper and part lower parts of the device, effectively creating a battery that runs continuously. We are opening up a wide door for harvesting clean electricity from thin air, said one of

Yeah, I don't really get it. It sounds cool. It sounds like you can just put stick a thing anywhere and you can get limitless power, which would be awesome because it would open up basically everybody.

I imagine the paint in the walls. It would be amazing and powers your whole house. That's like free.

I don't want to be on the grid. I don't like the grid. I don't like to be connected to society and civilizations.

Sold you have to be on the grid for that, I don't think.

So it sounds like it could be the power.

It could sit in your house and it could generate it for your or at the very least, it would be a lot easier than the current like way to get off the grid is basically, I mean, it's not impossible.

It just costs a lot of money.

And it's prohibitive for people who don't necessarily want to.

So this seems like it would.

Make it more available and easier, and also open up huge swats of territory which are much harder to populate because you would have access. If you combine this with like a starlink, I mean you really just you opened up huge swats not only in the country, of the whole world.

I like that.

I like that idea.

Yeah, imagine not having to deal with oil politics and all of the like disaster and war that that causes. Imagine you know, being able to reverse the impact of climate change. Imagine having energy that is really really cheap, practically free. I mean, that would be an incredible world to live in so we'll keep our fingers crossed and keep an eye on these little developments.

Have some new.

Reporting for you all about exactly how Center Diane Feinstein's office is operating here and the depth of her confusion at just the basic functions of the Senate. This continues to be just sad and enraging story, as this is a woman who's supposedly representing millions of constituents in California and is clearly unable to do or even understand the basic functions of her job. So put this up on the screen. This is based on some reporting. There's a report in New York Times and also a report in

Here's a quote from the article.

They say, at times, Einstein has expressed confusion about the basics of how the Senate functions. When Vice President Kamala Harris was presiding over the chamber last year, in one of many instances in which she was called upon to cast a tie breaking vote, Miss Einstein expressed confusion, according to a person who witnessed the scene, asking her colleagues, what is she doing here? Staff members have been overheard explaining to her that she cannot leave yet because there

Behalf, yeah, the exact say, that's really what's happening is the aids and the Sergeant of Arms. So her confusion and her sinility at this point is like.

Well established, we all know it.

What's happening behind the scenes is that her aids are using the Capitol Police to shield her, both from reporters. For example, I recently saw and heard about an incident where the Capitol Police was like, keep back, you got.

To give her some space.

They were demanding reporters be like twenty five feet away from die. She doesn't need twenty five feet to get into a wheelchair. All right, five feet fine, but really what are they doing? They don't want her to answer ask any be answered any answering any questions, or ask any questions. Same with why her aids are constantly around her, they tell her how to vote. This has been reported

To use her for their own ends.

It's very clear here now the reason why Pelosi has been her greatest ally is because she's trying to get Adam Schiff into the Senate scene, and it goes to these like behind the scenes Senate political machinations. Governor Gavin Newsom of California said if he was going to appoint someone to the seat, it would be a black woman. Nancy Pelosi doesn't want it to be Barbara Lee. She

For what Gavin Newsom has.

Said, then if you're an incumbent, it's very hard to dislodge that person. So the whole idea is for Pelosi to try to prop up Feinstein to run out the clock so that she can get her favored like terrible candidate.

Into the Senate.

So those are the political machinations that are going on behind the scenes. It's grotesque that they're using this ailing woman as a prop in their own political plans and designs.

I don't think it's any accident.

That he sort of forced the issue into the public sphere and it became embarrassing for them that there had been no coverage and no discussion of the way that this whole thing was architected and the way this whole thing was enabled. So I think he did a real service by pushing them to do the reporting that should have been done years ago about the fact that you know, she's barely there, She's even just before a vote, They're handing her a piece of paper to know what to vote.

These are not people who are elected, right, She.

Is the elected representative, And so you know, I think some scrutiny on how this is all going down, not only for her but other instances which we will undoubtedly face in the future too, is incredibly warranted.

No, it's incredibly stupid, the entire the just the way that they protected them for so long. You're right in that Ken actually did kind of force the hands on the staff. But even then we don't know fully the inside details, and there's obvious reporting to be done about how back and how far along this goes, and still none of it is revealed.

To the public. And it's just such a disgrace.

The most populous state in the whole country, and they want to drag her for two more years while doing this just to prevent Adam Shift from not getting the nomination.

What I want to know is who knew what when she was standing for reelection? Yes, time, that's the real question because she had a challenger. The California Democratic Party

Vacation inflation, that's what a lot of people are seeing as they start their summer holiday plans. Going to put this up there on the screen, Boston Harrold actually did it job of compiling it all together. So in effect, basically, every single aspect of your vacation is going to be a lot more expensive if you are lucky enough to

Well.

I actually visited Paris almost two years ago now and it was empty compared to what it normally was. And one of the reasons that they told me is like, oh, yeah, it's because China is completely closed. Well, guess what, China's not closed anymore, So you know, we're not the only

Yeah, and another piece of this that we've talked about from the beginning, which was considered like some crank theory originally, was that companies see the spectr of inflation and they raise prices because they can. And now that this has become like thoroughly undeniable, New York Times actually has a new report out companies push prices higher, protecting profits but adding to inflation.

The prices of oil.

Transportation, food ingredients, and other raw materials have fallen in recent months as the shocks coming from the pandemic and the war in Ukraine have faded, Yet many big businesses have continued raising prices at a rapid clip. Some of the world's biggest companies have said they do not plan to change course, will continue increasing prices or keep them

High, they're actually saying lower cost.

Now that some of the supply chain shocks and other things have shaken out of the economy. And then the other part of this that's devastating is if you if you still have these high levels of inflation, guess what the Federal Reserve is going to feel like they have to do. They're going to have to hike interest rates again and crush you and crush your family's ability to actually go on vacation or engage in any sort of leisure activities. So it's really a horrific cycle that we

What's sad too, because you know this has real cost.

I was just reading one where so woman was planning her daughter's birthday trip to Disney World. I mean, I'm not saying that everybody has a right to go to Disney World, but that's also like that seems like the most low entry vacation, or at least it should be right. Everybody should be okay, go to Disney.

World as well expensive.

Well, that's the issue is that it turns out that the prices now have gone so high that she thought, even by planning a year in advance, now her husband and her son have to stay back. It's like, okay, well yeah, it's one of those like okay, well, nobody has a right to go, but I mean that's sad. That's one of those like family memories is just not going to exist now because of costs that would have had been planned. Now, you know, it's not gonna it's

Jump all the lines.

Now you have an app and you can pay, and you can only do two and if you want to do more, you have to pay even more. And it's just one of those where they milk you for every dollar they possibly can.

I posted something yesterday. You just went through this. I'm going through it as well.

Where wedding costs are astronomically higher. DJs are up twenty five percent from twenty nineteen to twenty twenty two. Makeup artists up twenty, flowers up twenty, wedding dress up nineteen, hairstylists up eighteen, photographer up eight, catering per head up seven, venue up seven, wedding cake up to. The only thing is apparently decreased is grooms a tire, which I guess given our current tatorials, that's funny, makes sense.

I mean, I'm not mad about like the people like the hairstyles and makeup artists whatever getting a little bit more. I'm not mad about that, but yeah, like the wedding dress does not cost more to me.

No, no, And also venue.

Is not is not more expensive than it.

Was pre COVID.

So I actually know somebody's getting married who are using the same as somebody who got married before, and in the three year period, the price with the same.

Vendors and all that is forty percent higher.

Wow, the exact same the exact same people. And they're like, they're like, what do you mean this is higher, and they're like, yeah, it is what it is. You're gonna go somewhere else and they're like, no, I'm not. So it's just one of those where it's like industry everywhere.

Yeah, business business.

These people are printing money.

And like you said, like, I'm not mad at anybody individually, but overall, like we're the ones who are getting hit and everyone's like, oh, just don't do it. Anyways, I'm like, yeah, tell that to the family members who all have an opinion.

Okay, So that's a whole lots.

So the Ladies of the View took to debating the capabilities of our current Vice president Kabyl Harris Well noted that Kamala is maybe not always uh the best at articulating herself, can often repeat herself in a strange way, or wax try to wax poetic on topic when she really should school buses. There's a lot that's going on there, and I think it's kind of undeniable, but nevertheless, the ladies of the view will do their best to deny the manifest reality.

Take a listen to this exchange and how it went.

The significance of the passage of time right, the significance of the passage of time, So when you think about it, there is great nificance to the passage of time.

We've got to take this.

Stuff seriously as seriously as you are.

Because you have been forced to have to take it seriously.

During Women's History Month, we celebrate and we honor the women who made history throughout history.

It's just well, if she's reading a prompter, they need to immediately fix that. You are the vice president of the United States.

The administration and the.

President are responsible for protecting her well, so that.

I would I would add that as a lawyer, you're generally told when you're speaking that you speak in threes because that's what people remember.

So if you're going to talk.

About a car, you talk about the car, the red car, the fast red car.

So I think what you do the definition in the word and the definition.

So the latest six cause apparently is this is how lawyers talk.

This is how she's trained to speak as a lawyer. Only what do you think of that one?

This is like what Sager and I sound like trying to defend ron DeSantis. It's hilarious because you can tell Sunny Austin clearly cares more about the emails in her inbox from Kamala Harris's team than what like normal people think of.

What she's saying.

Yeah, that was for an audience of one Kamala Harris and her office.

The thing that bothers me actually the most about these clips. There was a whole exchange here, of course that I didn't even play this part because it's so tired at this point. It's, oh, it's there's no problem with Kamala.

I didn't even play that part because it's so tired at this point.

But her co host Sunny's co hosts there, they're so nervous in challenging her because they're so terrified that they'll be called a racist, and they don't want to be pegged as a racist. So all of the pushback of what is really really obvious to any normal per just watching her try to operate in a political space, it becomes super tapid, super nervous, and they just like instantly capitulate to whatever Sonny has to say about it, even when she says something as silly as like, well, this

It's amazing.

Can I use the phrase circle jerk?

Yes, indeed, because.

That's put the media and political classes at this point. It's just them like building each other up because they're really afraid to do the alternative. Actually, this is this is going to sound like a hard pivot. But the New York Times criticism of the Little Mermaid movie that went viral because it complained that there wasn't enough kink in it, even if the definition of the word was nice.

I didn't see any of this, so.

You are not on right.

But what I would say is the actual complaint of the culture critic at the New York Times is that the Little Mermaid Movie was so hampered by trying to check off every diversity box that the creativity.

Was lost and that the fun of it was lost.

And I think it's very clear that you lose You lose capability when you are use capability creator to all of these things, when you care more about like checking off these boxes than you do about There are plenty of women, There are plenty of men, black, white, that could do Kamala Harris's job so much better than Kamala Harris.

It's insulting. And so they're the same thing with the women of the view.

They can't give her honest feedback and honest criticism, which is how she gets insulated from any criticism that could possibly make her better at her job. We're all worse off for having this elite circle jerk in our media and our political class.

The jokes on them, though, because now they have set this person up. I mean, the amount of leaks that have come out of her office. It's very clear that the Biden team that I think her own team, recognizes that she has become this political libil, but they can't get out of it because you can't put aside the

Like there aren't a million other lawyers.

In DC and you know, in political offices around the country that managed to not speak in this bizarre way.

It's really crystal forty chess.

It's actually that Kamala Harris is too smart for the average member of the public.

So smart, in fact, that she sounds like an idiot, but just not.

We just can't compete on that level. No, we can't really wrap our head around it.

But by the way, that's why these cable channels and the news offerings at places like ABC Sunday Shows are starting to plummet, because people would rather watch an honest conversation like this one than one where somebody is bending over backwards and engaging in these mental parties and gymnastics to defend somebody that is objectively bad at her job. Yes, Joe Rogan had some really interesting comments about a very online backlash to an old Ford ad, and it's it's

Here.

So someone said something, Oh, it's the gay Raptor because it's the smaller raptor.

Fucking moron.

True, here's right, And so they actually painted it in gay colors.

It's a big gay gay raptor.

No, one's not gonna buy raptors. Shut the fuck up.

Yeah ship that ship?

Yeah, I had one of those.

Okay, So that was from Friday's edition of Rogan's podcast.

He said that.

Ford did a quote gay commercial for their Raptor truck line, and while the quote very gay Wraptor debuted in twenty twenty one, the ad was resurfaced I'm reading from media here following the fallout from Budler partnership with Dylan mulvaney.

Say they last. But this wasn't that.

There isn't that a tagline Ford Built to Last, Built, Ford Tough, that's the one.

Sure whatever, anyway, we're not sponsored by Ford.

I'm also a for consumer though, because they're you know, Union American made. So I have I have an F one fifty, which is a relative of the Raptor. It's like a less fancy version of the Raptor. I think is my understanding of this, Yeah, I don't really can you explain? I don't really understand what happened here? How did this commerce how did this very gay raptor thing come about? It looks cool, it's like rainbow painted basically.

So that's the adding question is it's one of those like really typical kind of corporate pride commercials. But it's interesting to people because you have this Ford Raptor and I drive an F one fifty growing up, so I love those trucks. They are fantastic. The raptors are really cool. But it is in Pride colors and it's a couple

Of what happened to bud Light and Target. But it wasn't a new ad.

I mean, here's the thing for me as a leftist, none of these companies are my ally in anything, even if they, you know, find it like financially beneficial to posture as being like gay allies or whatever. Everyone knows before the majority opinion shifted on that issue, they weren't going to say a freaking word about gay marriage or gay people or whatever unless they had some sort of a marketing angle.

So let me just put that out there.

I am under no illusion that these companies are my friend or my ally on literally any issue. But you know, you made the comment about conservatives were under the impression that this was like bud Light, that this was, you know, sort of mainstream palatability company. I just loosed up the numbers. Support for gay marriage is seventy one percent in America.

See that.

So it's it like leaning into Pride, which is why all these companies have done it, like doing their pride campaigns, painting the truck the rainbow colors and having a drive in a privarate or whatever. It's because it has been

And that's what's so interesting about the pride question in general that we have seen for instance, like I think about like average parents who we talked about this again earlier in today's show, like voter for Glenn Youngkin, I bet a majority of them, even though they voted for a Republican governor, are supportive of gay marriage. Jungkin is probably supportive of gay marriage. I actually don't know where he.

Stands on that. I would guess that he's supportive of it.

Yeah, but people have come to see Pride and there have been a lot of I think trenchon analyzes by leftists of the last couple of years about how specifically the t part of the lgbt Q question and specifically the way that it's become associated with kids Republicans, and we've talked about this before, that has been a really effective line of attack and it's very interesting to see how some of those analyzes are being proven I think correct by the boycott's of bud Light and Target specifically

I mean, Rogan has this sort of baked in Kyle always says that I'm stealing from him like normy instinct.

You know, they didn't.

There wasn't some in their school, This wasn't really a live issue, This wasn't something they were grappling with in a big.

Way in their day to day life.

And I think because now there has been so much creep beyond just the like laser focus on kids and schools, to now freak out over two year old Ford Pride commercial that is no you know, like is no threat to anyone. I think they have already crossed the rubicon to being dramatically against where public opinion is on this issue. I mean, even on issues of like adults transitioning, the public is overwhelmingly in support of like people just living their lives and doing what they want to do.

And I think where that gets tricky, so I would actually reverse that. I would say it was like a Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania, popular in rural areas but sort of toxic and suburban areas. It was like the stop the steel stuff that didn't feel relevant to people's lives and made much more difficult for Republicans to message on issues in the way that Glenn Youngkin did right, it made it like impossible, like you can't be Glenn Younkin if you're also a little Doug Masteriano.

And you're a little stop this deal.

Because where suburban voters are interested in what you say about like you know, not affecting children and taking like what DeSantis has tried to do in.

Florida schools with mixed results.

That stuff I think is appealing to normy parents, but I think they're not interested if you're selling it with stop the Steal packaging or like fringe maga packaging. I think that's where an abortion makes that tough too, Like abortion brings it down, like we're bringing Glenn Younkin down.

That's where people are just like, hold.

On, I'm either either not voting I'm going to vote for a Democrat because I'm going to go vote for John Fetterman, I'm going to go vote for someone else because that's a little too far.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think that's right, And you know, there's just it's I think the strongest pull issue for Republicans on trans issues is around this question of like women's sports right, where you have a majority who say no. I think you know, how do you feel about that issue? But also, you know, usually as Democrats that will fixate on these

State, you know.

And so okay, you are technically winning on the issue in terms of public sentiment, But are swing voters voting on this issue, like how relevant are they feeling it to be to their lives? So even on the strongest issue, I think it's a losing proposition. I think we saw that in twenty twenty two, and then when you expand it to like a freak out over anything that has anything to do with gay people, it seems to me you are dramatically on the wrong.

Side of that issue. And that's increasingly where this has gone.

It's so similar to the conversation we had about Ted Cruise as you've gone to tweet being controversial with people like Jenna Ellis specifically, because I think that's the it's an impossible balance for Republicans to strike, for them to be normy sort of anti woke enough right to bring in the normy like young Cain voters, without them also being for like a six week abortion ban, and you know, like you said, like getting into transitions for adults, et cetera.

It's the anti woke mind virus. That's what I said in that segment, and that's really what it is. So just like with people who are woke, the American public is going to be on board with you, like, hey, everybody should be equal and treated equal under the law, and like let's have civil rights. And people are like, yes,

Yeah, just as we wrap up.

It reminds me of what Camille Paulia said in I Think it Was twenty seventeen. She had a really interesting point, which is to the question of overreach, like the Obama administration.

Became a campaign issue.

And that is before I think we saw Republicans take some of the stuff and run with it in the way they have by twenty twenty three, And so the overreach on Democrats. Republicans are not being careful enough to prevent overreach when they're pushing back on the DEM overreach, which is sort of interesting because the dem overreach is exactly what they're reacting.

To, right it gets captured by their like fringe, way too online.

That's true, base, that's true. I think that's that's where we are.

The scientific consensus, strong scientific consensus.

The overwhelming, near unanimous scientific consensus.

Is the consensus.

But what the good matter matter?

What is it with our seemingly blind obsession with scientific consensus and is it a good thing? Hand Washing it's just about the first thing we hear from doctors nowadays as one of, if not the best, way to remove germs, avoid getting sick, and prevent the spread of germs to others. But some of you might already know hand washing was not always scientific consensus.

Embarrass in particular, it's very surprising that there was so much resistance to the idea of handwashing.

In the mid nineteenth century, Ignos Semoweis, a Hungarian physician, was working in a Vienna hospital where he observed a situation where healthy women would go into the hospital to have a baby, and almost one out of every five died from child bed fever, compared to a significantly lower

Now.

If you try to go against authority and convention, you can run into and mix some enemy.

And enemies he made the medical community. Doctors felt that their professional status was being challenged undermined, and instead of instituting changes, they launched a full scale smear campaign against Semowis, spreading false rumors about his credibility and sanity until he was discredited and ultimately exiled from his profession entirely, and after a nervous breakdown in eighteen sixty five, he was committed to an asylum, where he died a pariah at

The experiment you will be taking part in today involves the perception of line length. Your task will be simply to look at the line here on the left and indicate which of the three lines on the right is equal to it in length.

The actors have all been told to match the wrong lines, and the volunteer, the real subject, will be monitored to see if he gives the correct answer or if he goes along with the opinion of the group and gives the wrong answer three.

Three three three.

Over the course of the trials, on average, about one third of the participants who were placed in this situation went along and conformed with the clearly incorrect majority on the critical trials, and about seventy five percent of participants conformed at least once.

The ash experiment has been repeated many times, and the results of being supported again and again.

We will conform to the group again. Were very social creatures.

We're very much aware of.

What the people around us tank.

We want to be liked, we don't want to be seen to rock the vote, so we will go along with the group, even if we don't believe what people are saying.

I don't know what I would have done. I really like to say that I'd be that at rogue Maverick, but I don't know. I'm human, after all. But I imagine a scenario where each of those participants are scientists, and the three lines represent a possible result of a research study meant to validate or invalidate the efficacy of, say, a new drug, except this time around, everyone has been

The problem isn't that we don't know what are the right ways to answer the questions. We do know the right ways, but the system has flawed incentives, which is that the more you can get people to believe your thing is helping people, the more you can make money.

The National Institutes of Health the NIH is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. Its purported mission is to seek fundamental knowledge about the nature and behavior of living systems, and the application of that knowledge to enhance health, length and life,

Every single one of those individual third party.

Royalty payments has the appearance of a conflict of interest.

Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the highest paid federal bureaucrat, received twenty three royalty payments over that period of time. Francis Collins, NIH director from two thousand and nine to twenty twenty one, received fourteen payments. Clifford Lane, Fauci's deputy

You've been asking you, and you refuse to answer whether anybody on the vaccine committees gets royalties from the pharmaceutical companies. I asked you last time, and what was your response.

We don't have to tell you.

We've demanded them through Freedom of Information Act and what have you said, We're not going to tell you.

And Ajeski calls it a conflict of interests. Rand Paul implied pretty much outright corruption. I would call it a crime. Pfizer's COVID nineteen vaccine commanity was developed from technology license from the NIH, which means that NIH researchers, who supposedly work on behalf of the people in search of scientific truth, can actually personally profit from the sale of that product.

NIH is receiving tens of millions of dollars from Pfizer on those royalty.

Payments, perhaps not coincidentally. In an up ed in The Washington Post, a former Harvard Medical School professor warned that a careful reading of the protocols used in the Pfiser and Maderna COVID nineteen vaccine trials revealed that the trials were designed to succeed from the start, which would likely overstate their effectiveness, and that these protocols seem designed to get a drug on the market sooner rather than later, on a timeline arguably based more on politics than public health.

So what is the solution We've demanded them through Freedom of Information Act? And what have you said? We're not going to tell you, but I tell you this, when we get in charge, we're going to change the rules and you will have to divulge where you get your royalties from, from what companies and if anybody in the committee has a conflict of interest, we're going to learn about it.

I promise you.

That, to me, transparency in public health should be a bipartisan issue. So I challenge Senator Randaul and his colleagues, if you are willing to engage in political theater with doctor Fauci, back it up with action more than just a sternly worded letter. No, I'm talking about actual legislative change, demand transparency of payments between the public and private sector, and independence between public serving scientists and profit maximizing corporations.