Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 6/16/23: Saturn Moon Has Ingredients For Life, Charles Barkley On CNN: "I'm Joining The Titanic", Beyond The Headlines On Inflation w/ James Li

Episode Date: June 16, 2023

This week we discuss a Saturn Moon discovery that might have ingredients for Life, Charles Barkley's comments on joining CNN show his concern about "joining the Titanic", and James Li brings us a new episode of "Beyond The Headlines" On Inflation.To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. But there were some dark truths behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. Enter Camp Shame, an eight-part series examining the rise and fall of Camp Shane and the culture that fueled its decades-long success. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus.

So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. DNA test proves he is not the father. Now I'm taking the inheritance. Wait a minute, John. Who's not the father? and subscribe today. his irresponsible son, but I have DNA proof that could get the money back. Hold up. They could lose their family and millions of dollars? Yep. Find out how it ends by listening to the OK Storytime podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. I'm also the girl behind Boy Sober, the movement that exploded in 2024.

You might hear that term and think it's about celibacy, but to me, Boy Sober is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's flexible, it's customizable, and it's a personal process. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it.

Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, Ready or Not 2024 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, add 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 Some new developments in our search for extraterrestrial life,

not here on Earth, but somewhere in our solar system. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. It's 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 moons of Saturn. It's a tiny, tiny orbiting moon of Saturn. They say it has, quote, all of the key building blocks of life. The moon is only about 300 miles in diameter,

but it has a global subsurface ocean of more than 30 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 in the moon crust at supersonic speeds. Quote, these geysers enable spacecraft flying by to study the chemical makeup 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, Enceladus, 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 mythology. And Enceladus is one of the giants who is the offspring of Gaia, 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 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 base. This is exciting because it makes Enceladus, Enceladus, however you 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, Sagar, is if there 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 vastness of the universe? Yeah, it's just obvious. 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, it's so obvious because we... And actually, even as he points out, 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 measly little planets and their moons, like we're only discovering

this now in 2023. Then you combine that to the Milky Way galaxy, and then you combine that to the milky way galaxy and then you combine that to the all of these other galaxies where you know i i just think it is 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 that the uh 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 inter-solar intergalactic interstellar travel and that those two would find each other 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 know, it does seem quote unquote fantastical. But also considering the number of Enceladuses 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 interesting. Yeah. Well, there's nothing more human than to contemplate the great mysteries of the universe. But hey, now we're starting to get, now things are starting to get interesting. 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 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 Arches National Park. I drove in the middle out at 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 stargazing, you turn the car off and you look up and it is one of the most stunning things I have ever seen in my entire life. Everyone's gotten a little bit of a glimpse of it if you've ever gone camping or something like that. But I beg people, go to an actual dark sky zone or Hawaii. I forget exactly what Keck Observatory, I think is what it's called. Either of those places, it will blow you away. And I'm sure there are several other, I think the South Pacific also,

some areas other than Hawaii that you can visit. But in the United States, National Dark Sky Zone, I think Big Sky, Montana, places like that. It will change your perspective entirely on everything that we're talking about. 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 I can certainly speak to that. Even a 50% chance, change is insane,

but try 100%. Like, I beg you, everybody, you could try and go and experience it for 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. You don't have to travel out of Atlanta.

Apparently with this new talk show, I'm jumping on the Titanic. Everybody keeps saying, abort, abort, abort. I think he's right. Jumping on the Titanic. You know what's funny, though, about that clip is clearly Charles Barkley doesn't need CNN. In fact, I was shocked that he even took the job. And the 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. Right. And the fact that he doesn't need CNN is exactly why his show could actually be interesting. I think you're right. Because he'll say something

like that, which clearly, like, you know, is impolitic and not what CNN bosses want to hear. But since he's Charles Barkley, he can get away with it. Well, 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- Former reporter, yes. Yeah. CNN used to dominate on breaking news like Friday when the Trump indictment was unsealed. 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 doing backflips. But CNN 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? 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 writers as msnbc so what is their you know what what is their purpose of existing right now yeah no they're i mean i don't know what the way forward 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 sometimes CNN was even going like further than MSNBC in terms of you know, like liberal Trump derangement And so after you've cultivated that audience for years You can't then turn on a dime and 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 were 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 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 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 people to stick around. I think what we need to do is to make sure that people understand this is only a once-a-week show, but even if Charles does well, it's not like it's going to save the network. Oh, of course, 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 ratings 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 out a plan for making that happen. Yeah, well said. Inflation. Governments fear it, consumers hate it, and the media lies about it. 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.

It's 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. 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. The 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 2020. Shortly after the pandemic took hold of the world, on March 27, 2020, Congress passed a $2 trillion-plus stimulus package called the CARES

Act. Part of the package included direct aid to individuals and households in the form of a $1,200 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 $600 check to individuals making under $75,000 a year. In March of 2021, Congress passed the final coronavirus stimulus bill, the American Rescue Plan Act, which distributed another $1,400 to most Americans. $3,200 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 $2,000 checks make much sense. I'm not even sure that I'm so enthusiastic about the $600 checks. And I think taking them to $2,000 would actually be a pretty serious mistake that would risk a temporary overheat. In a Washington Post op-ed published in February of 2021, 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 1.7% in February of 2021 to 7.9% 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. $1,400 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 market participants viewing this? Absolutely, Mariette. 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 2020 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 very upsetting and frustrating

and troubling because everyone's like, oh, you send checks out and then prices go up. It's like, well, if you do the math, you realize that the checks were a very, very small component of the $5 trillion that went out. I try to explain to people, it's like, look, $5 trillion is $15,000, $16,000 ahead. Like, do you remember sending out $15,000, $16,000 ahead? You know, maybe like one or two grand ahead. So what the hell happened to the other,

you know, $13,000, $14,000? 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. $290 billion went to direct payments. That's the $1,200 check. Another $260 billion for additional supplemental unemployment. Much of the rest, the $1.2-1.4 trillion 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-19 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

2021, 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 29th, 2021, friend of the show Matt Stoller posited on his Substack newsletter, Big, that corporate profits drove 60% of inflation increases. Based on his analysis, after backing out planned inflation, which is roughly 2% historically, 60% of the increase in inflation went directly to corporate profits, while the other 40% 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 freaked out. Just a few weeks later, on January 10, 2022, 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. Inflation conspiracy theory is infecting the Democrat Party and she goes after what she's coining as greedflation. And she's basically saying, look, 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 in a lot of cases. Some of them are doing quite well. But hang on a second. Some are doing quite well. Was that a Freudian slip there?

In September of 2022, 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. As I've said before, you know, inflation has been a little bit of our friend in terms of what we see at retail pricing. We want to make sure that we're not leaving any pricing on the table. We'll take as much pricing as their consumer 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 day, 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 giving this pricing back. Now it's not a matter, can we take a price increase? Now it's about how much of a price increase are you 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 a 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 2020 to 2022, 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 2020 and 2022, 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 25th, 2023, the Wall Street Journal published this article. Greedflation 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 Kleppenstein 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 knot. 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 coverage. It is all propaganda facilitated by the entire legacy media ecosystem on behalf 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 Headlines segments, I would encourage you to check out and subscribe to my YouTube channel, 5149 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. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. But there were some dark truths behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. Enter Camp Shame, an eight-part series examining the rise and fall of Camp Shane and the culture that fueled its decades-long success. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait.

Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. DNA test proves he is not the father. Now I'm taking the inheritance. So don't wait. Head to lose their family and millions of dollars. Yep. Find out how it ends by listening to the OK Storytime podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. I'm also the girl behind VoiceOver, the movement that exploded in 2024. You might hear that term and think it's about celibacy, but to me, VoiceOver is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's flexible, it's customizable, and it's a personal process.

Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast.