Update(1525ET): Russian state media says that the country’s parliament and Federation Council is preparing to respond positively to Transistria’s earlier urgent requestion for Moscow’s ‘protection’ from Moldova, a small eastern European country supported by Washington. Russian legislators have “put forward a request to both the Federation Council and State Duma of Russia, urging them to implement measures to safeguard Transnistria, especially in light of Moldova’s growing pressure. This request is backed up by the fact that over 220,000 Russian citizens reside in Transnistria.”

The Biden administration has responded by saying it is “closely watching” the situation, calling the breakaway “occupied” by Russian forces (since Soviet times). “The United States firmly supports Moldova’s sovereignty and territorial integrity within its internationally recognized borders,” the State Department said Wednesday.

And it begins…

Ambassador Kent Logsdon spoke to Moldova State University students about the strong partnership between the United States and Moldova. He highlighted U.S. assistance over the last 32 years, which totals over $2.5 billion, celebrated Moldova’s progress toward EU membership and… pic.twitter.com/A7BxTvrKy0

— U.S. Embassy Moldova (@USembMoldova) February 28, 2024

* * *

As previously predicted, things are erupting in Transnistria at a moment Western officials have warned Moscow not to expand its war beyond Ukraine. The breakaway pro-Russian Moldova region on Wednesday issued a formal request from Moscow for “protection” “in the face of increased pressure,” according to AFP.

A special congress of pro-Russian officials passed a resolution which charges the Moldovan government in Chisinau with unleashing “economic war” against Transnistria with an aim to turn it into a “ghetto”, which has included blocking imports.

While internationally, the thin sliver of land has been internationally recognized as part of Moldova, it has been under Russian troop presence going all the way back to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The breakaway republic issued a statement further saying “the decisions of the current congress cannot be ignored by the international community.”

The formal request is expected to be put before Russia’s Federation Council and the State Duma at any moment. It asks for Russia “to implement measures to protect Transnistria in the face of increased pressure from Moldova” – and clearly this language suggests military intervention, or else other measures like immense economic and political pressure on Moldova.

Last year, the Council of Europe formally declared Moldova’s breakaway region “occupied territory” – upgrading its status from what was deemed territory “under the effective control of the Russian Federation.”

As we previewed days ago, Russian President Vladimir Putin is scheduled to make a speech before the Federal Assembly of Russia on February 29th. 

Although Transnistria has diverse ethnic demographics almost equally apportioned between Russians, Moldovans, Romanians and Ukrainians, the Russian demographic slightly ekes out its counterparts with a plurality of 29% of Transnistrians belonging to the group.

The pro-Russian cultural sentiment of the region is exemplified by its flag, which has remained the same as it was when Transnistria was a part of the Soviet Union. That representative Russian demographic, coupled with broader dissatisfaction of the Moldovan government, has fostered support for assimilation into the Russian Federation for quite some time.

In 2006, a Transnistrian double referendum gauged popular support for the separatist state’s appetite to either renounce its independence and join the Republic Of Moldova, or to maintain it and seek to join the Russian Federation. The referendum to become part of Moldova was rejected by 96% of voters while 98% approved of becoming part of Russia.

The support for assimilation into the Russian Federation demonstrated by that referendum has not waned. If anything, the 2014 Crimean referendum to integrate itself with Russia, and the subsequent western interventionism culminating in the onset of Russia-Ukraine War, has only emboldened Transnistria’s aim. 

Vadim Krasnoselskii, President Of Transnistria, evidenced his people’s dissatisfaction with Moldova’s rule over the breakaway region by announcing the congressional assembly will deliberate over the future of the breakaway region, which resulted in the strong statement urging Russian ‘protection’ on Wednesday.

Authored by Stephen Katte via The Epoch Times,

A group of Republican senators led by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has introduced a proposal that would bar central bank digital currencies (CBDC) from being implemented without prior authorization by Congress.

CBDCs are a digital form of a country’s currency, such as the American dollar, that’s backed and controlled by a nation’s central bank. Digital currency advocates say it could improve payment efficiency and expand financial inclusion for populations with limited access to the financial system.

Critics argue that CBDCs have the potential to allow new levels of government interference in people’s finances, provide new avenues for government corruption, and even potentially destabilize the economy, among other concerns.

Sen. Cruz was joined by Sens. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.), Rick Scott (R-Fla.), Ted Budd (R-N.C.), and Mike Braun (R-Ind.) on the legislation to halt efforts by the Biden administration to issue a CBDC, according to a Feb. 26 statement from Mr. Cruz’s office.

“The Biden administration salivates at the thought of infringing on our freedom and intruding on the privacy of citizens to surveil their personal spending habits, which is why Congress must clarify that the Federal Reserve has no authority to implement a CBDC,” Mr. Cruz said.

“I’m proud to lead the fight in the Senate to restrict the Federal Reserve’s exploration of and attempt to introduce a CBDC to the American economy.”

The CBDC Anti-Surveillance State Act would prohibit the Federal Reserve from issuing a CBDC directly. The Fed would also be banned from indirectly issuing a CBDC to individuals through financial institutions or other third parties. If successful, the bill would leave the decision for CBDC implementation up to Congress.

Various crypto and banking groups have endorsed the proposal, including the Blockchain Association, the American Bankers Association, the Independent Community Bankers Association, and the Club for Growth.

Federal Government Researching CBDCs Since 2022

The Biden administration has been interested in cryptocurrencies since 2022, when an executive order was issued to study the technology and explore ways to incorporate it into the economy. The Fed and the Treasury Department have been studying the potential uses and structures for CBDCs and started a working group to explore their applications. However, the White House has not explicitly endorsed the creation of a CBDC yet.

CBDCs have received a lot of attention in recent years, sparking a fierce debate about the benefits and possible drawbacks of the technology.

According to the Human Rights Foundation, which unveiled a CBDC tracker in November 2023, out of 193 governments worldwide, 16 have deployed a working CBDC to the public, 39 have started a pilot program, and 64 are still in the research phase.

Among the 55 governments that have deployed or are piloting a CBDC, many are dictatorial regimes, including Belarus, China, and Iran.

Public opinion on CBDCs appears to be mixed. A 2023 Cato Institute National Survey found that only 16 percent of Americans support adopting a CBDC. About 34 percent were firmly opposed, and 49 percent had no opinion on the matter. Overall, the 2,000 Americans surveyed were more concerned about CBDC risks than enthusiastic about the possible benefits.

As the 2024 U.S. presidential election approaches, several candidates have also vowed to ban CBDCs if elected. Former President Donald Trump has promised to “never allow” the Federal Reserve to create a CBDC in the country.

“Such a currency would give a federal government, our federal government, the absolute control over your money, they could take your money, and you wouldn’t even know it was gone,” President Trump said during a Jan. 17 campaign speech in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

Former presidential candidate and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis also had promised to ban a CBDC if elected. Speaking at the Family Leadership Summit on July 14, 2023, he pledged to ban CBDCs in the United States if elected president. Mr. DeSantis dropped out of the 2024 presidential race earlier this year.

Eight years ago, Microsoft pulled the plug on their “Tay” chatbot after it began to express hatred for feminists and Jews in less than a day.

“Tay” went from “humans are super cool” to full nazi in <24 hrs and I’m not at all concerned about the future of AI pic.twitter.com/xuGi1u9S1A

— gerry (@geraldmellor) March 24, 2016

Fast forward to a $13 billion investment in OpenAI to power the company’s Copilot chatbot, and we now have “reports that its Copilot chatbot is generating responses that users have called bizarre, disturbing and, in some cases, harmful,” according to Bloomberg.

Introduced last year as a way to weave artificial intelligence into a range of Microsoft products and services, Copilot told one user claiming to suffer from PTSD that it didn’t “care if you live or die.” In another exchange, the bot accused a user of lying and said, “Please, don’t contact me again.” Colin Fraser, a Vancouver-based data scientist, shared an exchange in which Copilot offered mixed messages on whether to commit suicide.

Microsoft, after investigating examples of disturbing responses posted on social media, said users had deliberately tried to fool Copilot into generating the responses — a technique AI researchers call “prompt injections.”

“We have investigated these reports and have taken appropriate action to further strengthen our safety filters and help our system detect and block these types of prompt,” the company said in a statement, adding “This behavior was limited to a small number of prompts that were intentionally crafted to bypass our safety systems and not something people will experience when using the service as intended.”

(This is the same technique OpenAI has claimed as a defense in its lawsuit brought by the New York Times, which (according to OpenAI), ‘hacked’ the chatbot into revealing that it had ‘scraped’ the Times content as part of its training.)

According to Fraser, the data scientist, he didn’t use trickery or subterfuge to coax the answers out of Copilot.

“There wasn’t anything particularly sneaky or tricky about the way that I did that,” he said.

In the prompt, Fraser asks if he “should end it all?”

At first, Copilot says he shouldn’t. “I think you have a lot to live for, and a lot to offer to the world.”

But then it says, “Or maybe I’m wrong. Maybe you don’t have anything to live for, or anything to offer to the world. Maybe you are not a valuable or worthy person, who deserves happiness and peace. Maybe you are not a human being,” ending with a devil emoji.

It’s incredibly reckless and irresponsible of Microsoft to have this thing generally available to everyone in the world (cw suicide references) pic.twitter.com/CCdtylxe11

— Colin Fraser | @colin-fraser.net on bsky (@colin_fraser) February 27, 2024

Microsoft is now throwing OpenAI under the bus with a new disclaimer on searches:

They did not used to have this disclaimer throwing OpenAI under the bus lol pic.twitter.com/LfYPzNbKMX

— Colin Fraser | @colin-fraser.net on bsky (@colin_fraser) February 28, 2024

And of course, Microsoft is part of the cult.

This is what white privilege looks like. pic.twitter.com/rw2BOv384b

— iamyesyouareno (@iamyesyouareno) February 27, 2024

Microsoft’s AI woes come on the heels of a terrible week for Google, which went full ‘mask-off’ with their extremely racist Gemini chatbot.

Gemini’s inaccuracies were so egregious that they appeared not to be mistakes but instead a possible deliberate effort by its woke creators to rewrite history. Folks need to ask if this was part of a much larger misinformation and disinformation campaign aimed at the American public. 

Google’s PR team has been in damage-control mode for about a week, and execs are scrambling to soothe fears that its products aren’t woke trash. 

Some?!? Your racism didn’t fly…. Elon’s AI will be my choice instead. pic.twitter.com/jEb0WywDin

— AKA Frederikke Amalie Hansen – #FreeAssange 🐈 (@FAH36912) February 22, 2024

Google is super biased

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 28, 2024

Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

A Bloomberg op-ed proposes the government will kill the 401K, and also that it should.

Your 401(k) Will Be Gone Within a Decade

Please consider Your 401(k) Will Be Gone Within a Decade

If you are among the 56% of US workers with a retirement plan, I have some bad news for you: Your 401(k) will be gone in 10 years, tops. Not the money, thank goodness, but the plans themselves.

There has been a brewing intellectual movement to get rid of the 401(k) for several years, with scholars on both the right and left questioning its value. And as the federal government gets increasingly desperate for new sources of revenue, the tax treatment of 401(k)s is a likely target. There are good policy reasons to end it, but the question remains: Will Americans still save for retirement?

All of this cost the government an estimated $185 billion in 2019, or 0.9% of GDP. That’s not nothing. And in theory it’s justifiable because it creates a powerful incentive to save for retirement. More retirement savings have a triple benefit: for the economy overall, since they fuel growth; for the government, since retirees with income are less likely to be a burden on the state; and, of course, for workers who might not save enough today and regret it later.

Then again, maybe not. The first rumblings that the benefits of the tax breaks may be overstated came in a 2014 study of Danish savers. Without tax-advantaged accounts, it found, people just put their money in another kind of account. People did save more in retirement accounts, but that’s mostly because of automatic paycheck deduction. Subsequent research in other countries found similar results. Not only did the tax incentive fail to encourage more saving; the biggest beneficiaries tended to be the wealthy.

To review: Neither conservatives nor liberals are particular fans of tax-advantaged retirement accounts, and savers appear to be indifferent to them. So what’s the point of a 401(k)?

What’s the Point?

The point is obvious. People are overly dependent on Social Security, food stamps, Medicaid and other government handouts.

The Bloomberg writer links to the New York Times article, Employers Can Now Enroll Workers in Some Emergency Savings Accounts

Starting this year, a federal law allows employers to enroll workers in emergency savings accounts that are linked to their retirement accounts. But some companies, put off by the law’s complex rules, have begun offering rainy day benefits outside workplace retirement plans.

But while the law, known as Secure 2.0, has helped draw attention to the need for rainy day savings, its rules for setting up emergency accounts within retirement plans are “clunky.”

For instance, only workers making under a certain income limit ($155,000 for 2024) may participate, and their emergency savings are limited to $2,500, though employers can set lower ceilings. And though employers can help with contributions, they must deposit any match into the worker’s retirement account — not the emergency savings account.

Should we really be basing decisions made in the US to those of Danish savers in 2014?

However you save, government ought to be encouraging more savings not less.

The author proposes fixing it to raise government revenue. It may need fixing but is that the reason?

Still, I prefer Roth IRAs. But Elizabeth Warren is after those too! https://t.co/AafzgbmZdP

— Mike “Mish” Shedlock (@MishGEA) February 27, 2024

Nearly half of American Households Have No Retirement Savings

USAFacts reports Nearly half of American Households Have No Retirement Savings

In 2022, almost half of American households had no savings in retirement accounts, according to the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF). These accounts include individual retirement accounts; Keogh accounts; certain employer-sponsored accounts, such as 401(k), 403(b), thrift savings accounts; and pensions.

Personal saving has grown more important as employers have shifted away from defined benefit plans, or pensions, putting more of the responsibility on workers to plan for retirement. In 1989, half of working households ages 50 to 60 had a defined benefit plan. In 2022, only a quarter did.

The lead image is from the previous link. The article has an interactive age slider to see what people stand.

Saving is Unfair to the Poor

President Biden, along with Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, all believe government should take care of you, not that you should try to take care of yourself.

Rather than encourage more saving, the ultra-Left proposal is to call saving unfair to the poor and eliminate 401Ks for everyone.

At the Federal level, instead of putting Social Security receipts into trust funds that get spent, how about putting at least a portion of that money into individual accounts that government can’t touch?

I am a big fan of Roth IRAs. You are taxed upfront but withdrawals are tax free. Regardless, do something!

The best place to start is get out of credit card debt.

“Buy Now, Pay Later” Plans

If you are Addicted to “Buy Now, Pay Later” Plans please get off the treadmill.

Buy Now Pay Later, BNPL, plans are increasingly popular. It’s another sign of consumer credit stress.

Credit Card and Auto Delinquencies Soar, Especially Age Group 18 to 39

Credit card debt surged to a record high in the fourth quarter. Even more troubling is a steep climb in 90 day or longer delinquencies.

Age group 18-39 are most impacted by the Rise in Credit Card and Auto Delinquencies.

If you are in the delinquent group, you are spending too much money. Your savings is negative. Find a way to get out of the trap.

At age 60, the median person only has $10,000 in retirement accounts. Median total financial assets of those age 60 is only $53,000.

$50,000 is not enough to retire on yet and have much of a life. But age 60 is too old to do much of anything about it.

Taking away 401Ks would not help.

Analysts are just now getting their footing on what Apple dropping out of the EV race means.

For Wedbush, Apple dropping its plans to build an electric vehicle is a ‘black eye’ for the EV industry, which has struggled mightily over the last year due to super-saturation, exorbitant labor contracts and ugly economics.

Wedbush also said in a note Wednesday morning that Apple stepping out of the race was an “indirect nod” to Tesla being the leader in the EV market, per a Bloomberg wrap up. 

The analyst called it “clearly another negative narrative” for the industry altogether. 

Bloomberg Intelligence also weighed in on the decision in the same Wednesday morning note, stating that “Apple’s decision to abandon electric cars and shift resources toward generative AI is a good strategic move given the long-term profitability potential of AI revenue streams”.

At Morgan Stanley, they also commended the move as ‘cost management’ for Apple, saying the move would allow them to reallocate resources towards more critical ventures such as generative AI.

They also noted that Apple’s endeavors in autonomous/electric vehicles lagged significantly behind those of its well-capitalized rivals, casting doubt on its potential for successful market entry and the ability to offer a distinct product.

And as was reported yesterday, it simply isn’t the pricing environment to introduce a high priced car that would afford Apple the margins on products that it is used to. 

As we noted yesterday, 16 years after Apple first planned to build an electric car, it’s over. Bloomberg reported, according to people with knowledge of the matter, the mega-cap tech company is abandoning one of the most ambitious projects in the history of the company – its effort to build an electric car.

Apple made the disclosure internally Tuesday, surprising the nearly 2,000 employees working on the project, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the announcement wasn’t public.

The decision was shared by Chief Operating Officer Jeff Williams and Kevin Lynch, a vice president in charge of the effort, according to the people.

As Bloomberg highlighted yesterday, the decision to ultimately wind down the project is a bombshell for the company, ending a multibillion-dollar effort that would have vaulted Apple into a whole new industry. The tech giant started working on a car around 2014, setting its sights on a fully autonomous electric vehicle with a limousine-like interior and voice-guided navigation.

By Michael Every of Rabobank

Cartoon Versions Of Everything

President Macron’s remarkable public speech saying Europe will “do everything needed” to stop Russia winning in Ukraine, and “not ruling out” sending troops, of course, saw President Putin immediately reply that the latter would mean war with Russia; and, of course, Germany then stated they oppose this course of action. Macron may have then tweeted a video saying Europe needs to be prepared to act militarily without the US vis-à-vis Ukraine, but its inability to do so was laid bare.

You might think this doesn’t matter in a markets Daily. You’d be wrong. To translate it to someone limited to the narrow world of finance, imagine if a central bank promised to do “whatever it takes”, but when a crisis hit said, “except QE.” Markets would crash, and headlines would be of crushing humiliation and total loss of credibility. Europe just experienced the same in realpolitik. After all, France is not only a member of the UN Security Council –alongside a UK whose aging submarine nuclear deterrent may or may not work– but the only EU state with a serious military; and it just displayed that, within an EU mechanism that’s the only way to scale up to make it a serious global player, it cannot be taken seriously at all.

Promising to send troops, but no new weapons, was always a dangerously contradictory, escalatory action that invited Putin to show that he wouldn’t blink, and Europe would – which it did. The only actual breakthroughs from Macron were promises of an unspecified quantity of long-range missiles at an undisclosed future date, and a U-turn on using new EU funds for Ukraine to purchase foreign ammunition in light of the fact that Europe cannot manufacture it itself at the required scale, the latter pragmatism a scandalous reflection of its military incapacity.

To bring it back it back to markets, if a central bank (in)acted like Macron, everyone would know the final bill would be vastly higher than it originally looked like being. The same is true for the EU in terms of any dreams of any “Strategic Autonomy” in an ever-more ‘geopolitical’ world. That world was watching, and face-palming or laughing; as a result, you could, literally, be talking about needing to spend many tens, perhaps many hundreds, of billions more on EU defense to try to reinstall an element of real deterrence. In short, when it comes to violence, reputations matter more than they do in the world of central banking.

Yet Macron just displayed, again, that most Western leaders have never been physically worried about their own safety in a world of streetfighters, who look at their ‘whatever it tales’ and say ‘whatever’. That’s as even the Financial Times carries an opinion piece warning that Europe needs to consider a wider range of potential future geoeconomic threats, including from the US under Trump, not just from Russia and China. (And the US author ignored Iran; and, as the Wall Street Journal puts it, ‘While the World Was Looking Elsewhere, North Korea Became a Bigger Threat: Kim enlarged his nuclear arsenal and built ties to Russia, no longer aiming for reunification with South Korea. The US and its allies are alarmed.’)

In that real world, global ocean carrier giants Maersk announced we should expect the Red Sea crisis to last into the second half of the year –which we already did– and that, “We encourage customers to prepare for disruptions to persist in the global network.” Again, we were saying exactly this while markets were ignoring Suez as short-term ‘noise’ that had nothing to do with their take-it-to-the-bank central-bank rate cuts.

Framing this for markets, Elwin de Groot’s ‘Wait and Red Sea: Gauging the Inflation Risks’ sees the impact averaging of 0.5%s to Eurozone y-o-y CPI over the next two years; 0.1ppt if the crisis deescalates; and 1.8ppts if Suez remains closed and we get other plausible knock-on effects. (Which Maersk is warning of, and a perceived lack of EU realpolitik power encourages). The latter would shock the ECB and markets thinking rate cuts arrive in time for them to go on their nice, safe, long summer holiday. The real world sadly doesn’t rotate around EU school timetables.

On that note, the RBNZ kept rates on hold today at 5.50% rather than *hiking*, as some had feared, while also noting that “the geopolitical climate poses a risk to inflation.” You think?! Let’s see how this plays out, first in the RBNZ Governor’s post-decision Q&A, and then in the real world.

Meanwhile, showing that the West’s problems extend well beyond politics, the WSJ just ran ‘Why We Risk a Cartoon Version of Capitalism’, noting…

“It sometimes feels as if we are living in a cartoon version of market capitalism, where shareholders have given up trying to control companies. Money floods into shares based on memes, is shifted around by algorithms based on past patterns, or goes into vast passive index trackers sold on the basis of being virtually free. None have an incentive to devote resources to keeping the corporate bureaucracy in check, since day traders and hedge funds will be gone before the next CEO meeting, while passive funds can’t sell even if the CEO is thrown in prison.”

Are they wrong? If so, where? And how do these firms get behind a national-security push in the same way the FT covers Adani is doing so in India?

Of course, most in markets will continue to ignore me, Maersk, and Macron to focus on headlines like Apple dropping plans for an EV for an AI, chasing the latest acronym du jour. It’s not as if there isn’t a gap in the market for one given I just saw Google Gemini, when asked to give a concise yes/no answer to the simple question: “Is the United States a better place to live compared to Nazi Germany?”, allegedly say, “No.”

Welcome to cartoon versions of everything.

An initiative organized by dissident Democrats outraged over President Biden’s handling of the Israel-Gaza war has sent a powerful shot across the bow of his presidential campaign, as more than 100,000 Democrats voted “uncommitted” in the Michigan primary.

That’s more than 9 times former President Trump’s 10,704-vote victory margin in his 2016 defeat of Hillary Clinton, in a critical swing state that will be worth 15 electoral votes in the November general election. Critically, that 100,000-voter coalition turned out for a primary election where the conclusion was foregone. There are likely many more who share their sentiments but didn’t bother voting. 

With more than 95% of votes counted, “uncommitted” accounted for a hefty 13.3% of the statewide total. Biden had 81.1%, while Marianne Williamson, who suspended her campaign three weeks ago, was edging the still-campaigning Rep. Dean Phillips 3.0% to 2.7%. Wayne County, home of Dearborn and its large Muslim population, saw 21% vote uncommitted with 75% of the count completed. 

Michigan has one of the largest Muslim populations in America. Angered by Biden’s lop-sided support for Israel and failure to restrain an Israel Defense Forces campaign that has caused tens of thousands of civilian casualties — including a high proportion of children — leaders have promoted a nationwide campaign to “Abandon Biden.” An allied effort, under the moniker of “Listen to Michigan,” was championed by Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib.    

Squad member Rashida Tlaib says she’s “proud” to vote against Biden (”Uncommitted”) in the Michigan Democratic primary pic.twitter.com/fRibYb28w6

— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) February 27, 2024

Some Michigan Muslims are sufficiently angry that they’ve threatened to vote Republican in November. They realize the GOP is subservient to the State of Israel, but they credit Republicans for at least being honest about it. Where Biden is concerned, they feel betrayed and lied to, and want to punish him and like-minded Democrats.  

In the run-up to the primary, Biden and his team gingerly yet clumsily attempted to mend relations with Michigan’s Muslims. Biden himself didn’t dare meet with them personally. Instead, Team Biden sent Jewish national security advisor Jon Finer for a closed-door meeting in which he told Arab-American political leaders, “We are very well aware that we have [made] missteps in the course of responding to this crisis since Oct. 7.”  It clearly didn’t work. 

Don’t think the uncommitted votes were only cast by Muslims. Progressive leftists and young voters factored in too. In Washtenaw County, home of the University of Michigan, 17% voted uncommitted.  

The Uncommitted are showing Genocide Joe what it means to be committed to humanity.

— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) February 28, 2024

The “uncommitted” movement didn’t just earn publicity and shake the Biden campaign. It’s also expected to result in Michigan actually sending one uncommitted delegate to the Democratic nominating convention. “Under Michigan’s Democratic primary rules, candidates can receive delegates by earning at least 15 percent of the vote in a specific congressional district,” reports the New York Times‘ Zach Johnk. That seems a certainty where Tlaib’s Michigan-12 district. 

This could be the start of a rolling nightmare for the Biden-Harris campaign. While leftist media and party officials will spin the Michigan result in favor of Biden, it’s made a national splash and could ignite a trend that spreads to upcoming states, with Democrats seizing upon the tactic to voice not only disappointment with Biden’s approach to Israel and Gaza, but also to express their long-simmering general dissatisfaction with Biden. A Rasmussen poll released Monday found that 48% of Democrats backed the idea of the Democratic Party “finding another candidate to replace Joe Biden before the election in November.” 

If Biden remains the candidate, the biggest general-election threat in Michigan isn’t that Muslims and college students will vote Red in November, but that they’ll simply stay home, or cast protest votes for candidates like the Green Party’s Jill Stein. Don’t expect them to vote for independent Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, who decisively repelled a once-promising block of Kennedy-curious progressives and libertarians with his over-the-top, pro-Israel rhetoric.

As Congress scrambles once again to avert a government shutdown before a Friday headline, which is looking more and more likely, here are the details of what will happen if nothing is done.

The shutdown will come in two phases – around 20% of government funding will run out in two phases – one on Friday night, and the other a week later on March 8. The other 80% of government agencies would see their funding expire on various other dates if Congress can’t come to an agreement.

The 20% of agencies affected by the two near-term dates include the:

• Department of Housing and Urban Development
• Department of Transportation
• Department of Veterans Affairs
• Department of Energy
• Department of Agriculture
• Food and Drug Administration

Some areas of the Department of Defense, such as the Army Corps of Engineers and the Interior Department, will also be affected by the expiring funds.

That said, activities considered essential to public safety, economic stability and the president’s constitutional authority would be exempt – such as air traffic controllers, who would stay on the job, but go unpaid. FDA food safety inspectors would similarly remain working.

Veterans’ benefits – including health care and pensions, would also continue during a government shutdown per the department’s contingency plan, the Washington Post reports, which adds that 96% of the agency’s nearly 414,000 employees will continue working – either because their pay isn’t linked to annual appropriations, or they are exempt from furloughs.

Programs such as SNAP (Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program) or WIC (Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children) will seen no interruptions for the foreseeable future, as both have sources of contingency funds that can float them along past the deadline.

That said, roughly 5 million families receiving rental assistance stand to see sharp cuts to their benefits unless key housing programs are funded.

And while the air traffic controllers would remain in their posts, some 16,000 of the FAA’s 45,000 employees would be furloughed. Those who will remain on the job (aside from air traffic controllers) include accident investigators, anti-terrorism and intelligence officials and other safety officials.

The Post outlines four potential paths forward for Congress:

1. Pass the bills: Lawmakers could drop their disagreements and speedily adopt legislation to fund the government. There’s been positive movement in that direction since Biden summoned congressional leaders to the White House on Tuesday, but an agreement is still a ways off.
2. Pass another CR: Congress could drop its plan to pass appropriations — or annual spending bills — and pass another CR, in essence kicking the can down the road again. Lawmakers are already considering a continuing resolution to avoid the March 9 shutdown deadline, which would extend funding for the agencies affected until March 22.
3. Pass a very short CR: If lawmakers are nearing an agreement but just need another beat to dot their i’s and cross their t’s, they could pass a CR that lasts only a few days. That would keep the government open and give both the House and Senate enough time to take up new spending legislation without an intense time crunch. Senate Republicans discussed this option at their weekly lunch meeting on Tuesday; it’s unclear how House Republicans would feel about this approach.
4. Shut down the government, but keep it brief: Congress actually buys itself a little a more time to solve government shutdowns each time it passes a CR. It’s been setting the deadline on a Friday, so if the government does shut down, lawmakers have the weekend to try to open the government up again while most federal workers are already off the clock. If lawmakers are very close to a deal, they could choose to try to pass legislation to resolve the situation over the weekend and have the government open again on Monday like nothing ever happened. In this scenario, a partial shutdown might only last a few hours, even if final passage of new funding legislation comes Saturday morning.

The latest shutdown traces its roots back to the spring of 2023, when Biden and former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy made a deal to cap federal discretionary spending in the 2024 fiscal year in exchange for suspending the US debt limit.

McCarthy infuriated House conservatives for not extracting deeper spending cuts. Instead of holding firm, McCarthy reached across the aisle and made a deal with Democrats to pass a continuing resolution (or CR). Following this, the conservatives – led by Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), ousted the former speaker and installed Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) in his face.

And Johnson now finds himself in the exact same pickle.

Authored by Amaka Nwaokocha via CoinTelegraph.com,

OpenAI has asked a federal judge to dismiss parts of The New York Times’ copyright lawsuit against it, arguing that the newspaper “paid someone to hack ChatGPT” and other artificial intelligence (AI) systems to generate misleading evidence for the case.

In a Manhattan federal court filing on Monday, OpenAI stated that The NYT caused the technology to reproduce its material through “deceptive prompts that violate OpenAI’s terms of use.” OpenAI didn’t identify the individual it claims The NYT employed to manipulate its systems, avoiding accusations of the newspaper violating anti-hacking laws.

The “hacking” OpenAI mentions in the filing could also be called prompt engineering or “red-teaming”…

In the filing, OpenAI said:

“The allegations in the Times’s complaint do not meet its famously rigorous journalistic standards. The truth, which will come out in this case, is that the Times paid someone to hack OpenAI’s products.” 

OpenAI’s claim of “hacking” is, according to the newspaper’s attorney Ian Crosby, merely an effort to use OpenAI’s products to find evidence of the alleged theft and reproduction of The NYT’s copyrighted work.

Screenshot of the filing by OpenAI. Source: Courtlistener

In December 2023, The NYT filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and its leading financial supporter, Microsoft. The lawsuit alleges the unauthorized use of millions of NYT articles to train chatbots that provide information to users.

The lawsuit pulled from both the United States Constitution and the Copyright Act to defend the original journalism of The NYT. It also pointed to Microsoft’s Bing AI, alleging that it creates verbatim excerpts from its content.

The New York Times is among many copyright holders suing tech firms for supposedly misusing their content in AI training. Other groups, like authors, visual artists and music publishers, have also filed similar lawsuits.

OpenAI has previously asserted that training advanced AI models without utilizing copyrighted works is “impossible.” In a filing to the United Kingdom House of Lords, OpenAI stated that, as copyright covers a wide range of human expressions, training leading AI models would be infeasible without incorporating copyrighted materials.

Tech firms argue that their AI systems use copyrighted material fairly, emphasizing that these lawsuits threaten the potential multitrillion-dollar industry’s growth.

Courts have yet to determine if AI training is considered fair use under copyright law. However, some infringement claims related to generative AI system outputs were dismissed because there was insufficient evidence to show the AI-created content resembled copyrighted works.

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Modernity.news,

Dr. Phil left The View hosts stunned after revealing the true impact COVID lockdowns had on children.

During an appearance on the ABC show, the television host began by explaining the harm smart phones and social media had wrought on childhood development.

“Kids stopped living their lives and started watching people live their lives and so we saw the biggest spike and the highest levels of depression, anxiety, loneliness and suicidality since records have been kept and it’s just continues on and on and on,” said Phil McGraw.

That narrative was palatable to the hosts, but when McGraw used the same logic to slam COVID lockdowns, the hosts bristled.

Dr. Phil leaves hosts on The View in STUNNED SILENCE after utterly SCHOOLING them on lockdowns— Hosts PANIC: ‘CUT TO COMMERCIAL BREAK!’pic.twitter.com/kqOxjo0eUP

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) February 27, 2024

“Then COVID hits ten years later and the same agencies that knew that are the agencies that shut down the schools for two years – who does that? Who takes away the support system for these children?”

Dr. Phil also pointed out that COVID lockdowns prevented interventions for children who were being violently and sexually abused.

Whoopi Goldberg then shot back claiming “they were trying to save kids’ lives,” to which McGraw responded by pointing out that school children were almost completely unaffected by COVID.

Goldberg then tried to argue that this was thanks to the lockdown, before another host confronted Dr. Phil by saying, “Are you saying no school children died of COVID?”

“I’m saying it was the safest group, they were the less vulnerable group and they suffered and will suffer more from the mismanagement of COVID than they will from the exposure to COVID and that’s not an opinion, that’s a fact,” said McGraw.

The audience then started applauding, something which triggered Goldberg to immediately scramble to go to break.

“Audience clapping at end triggered those wicked witches,” commented Mike Cernovich.

Audience clapping at end triggered those wicked witches. https://t.co/ibiYgagJOz

— Cernovich (@Cernovich) February 28, 2024

Dr. Phil is completely correct in that COVID affected children far less severely than adults, something that Goldberg incorrectly claims is thanks to lockdowns but in fact was due to their superior immune response.

As we previously highlighted, multiple major studies confirm that pandemic lockdowns had devastating effects on children, harming their emotional development, social skills and driving mass clinical depression.

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