Let's Do Popcorn! News for 1-11-18
On the same day it announced it was raising the starting hourly wages to $11/hour, expanding employee benefits and offering worker bonuses of up to $1000, Walmart is closing dozens of Sam's Club stores nationwide and laying off thousands of workers.
The closures affect stores in Alaska, New Jersey, New York, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Louisiana, North Carolina, Tennessee and Texas. In some locations, per social media, people showed up to work only to be told that their location was closed.
No formal announcement was posted by Sam's Club, but the company acknowledged the closures on Twitter with a general statement.
It bears repeating: the closures come on the same day that Walmart announced it was raising its minimum wage to $11 per hour.
The DNC Fraud lawsuit was filed on behalf of donors to the Democratic party in the wake of the revelations from the publication of DNC emails that demonstrated the party’s partisan efforts to support Hillary Clinton and to undermine Bernie Sander’s campaign. After the suit was dismissed late last year, Disobedient Media reported that the Becks filed an appeal to that ruling.
The Becks stated via social media that “After posing two separate jurisdictional questions, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals has found jurisdiction sufficient for the case to proceed on appeal.
The bipartisan group of senators has reached "an agreement in principle" to address border security, the diversity visa lottery and chain migration after four months of negotiations.
Democratic California Sen. Dianne Feinstein
When asked why she did not inform Sen. Chuck Grassley on her unilateral decision to release the Fusion GPS transcript, she said she was pressured.
"I meant to tell him, and I didn't have a chance to tell him, and that concerns me," Feinstein told CNN Congressional correspondent Manu Raju, adding "I just got pressured, and I didn't do it."
When asked to elaborate, Feinstein tried to take back her statement, saying "I wasn't pressured," without any further comment. Her office later said she misspoke and that she wasn't pressured to release the transcript.
As The Daily Caller's Peter Hasson notes, Feinstein, 84, expressed regret for keeping Sen. Grassley in the dark, and suggested it was because of a “bad cold.”
“The one regret I have is that I should have spoke with Senator Grassley before,” she told NBC News.
“And I don’t make an excuse but I’ve had a bad cold and maybe that slowed down my mental facilities [sic] a little bit.”
I don't make an excuse BUT - here is an excuse.
She was pressured. No one knows who pressured her but it is pretty obvious to me. That's just me though.
James O'Keefe of Project Veritas has released a new undercover video which reveals Twitter "shadow banning" and creating algorithms that censor certain ideas.
The first clip features a former Twitter software engineer who explains how/why Twitter "shadow bans" certain users:
Abhinav Vadrevu: "One strategy is to shadow ban so you have ultimate control. The idea of a shadow ban is that you ban someone but they don't know they've been banned, because they keep posting but no one sees their content."
"So they just think that no one is engaging with their content, when in reality, no one is seeing it. I don't know if Twitter does this anymore."
Olinda Hassan, a Policy Manager for Twitter’s Trust and Safety team explains on December 15th, 2017 at a Twitter holiday party that the development of a system of “down ranking” “shitty people” is in the works:
“Yeah. That’s something we’re working on. It’s something we’re working on. We’re trying to get the shitty people to not show up. It’s a product thing we’re working on right now.”
So who determines who the 'shitty' people and who are the 'good' ones? If you are on Twitter you might want to tell your followers there are other sites out there. Of course if you are shadow banned they won't get the message and you won't know they didn't get it.
Twitter can run their company any way they wish. They will learn just like the NFL.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act has been renewed by the House of Representatives. It is a law that allows the NSA to collect texts and emails of foreigners abroad without an individualized warrant, even when they communicate with Americans in the US.
President Donald Trump sent a chill down the spine of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos by reiterating his support for an Internet tax.
The Ecuadorian Ministry of Foreign Affairs says they have granted naturalization to Julian Assange, among "fears of threats to Assange's life from third parties."
When the inside changes, the outside must reflect the change. That is Law.
What do people do when centralized systems fail to deliver what was promised?
Decentralize of course.
That is what is happening and has just begun. It will be fine. Only those who gain so much in the present system are upset. They use silly things, lies, mis-directions, to their followers in order to try to wrestle control away from those who now have control.
It's ok. I know they will go into a hole if they are not there yet. It is of their own making. They will come out of it better for the experience.
It's all good!
An all time new high. We closed on the highs for the day so I expect more tomorrow.
S&P 500 Resistance – 2785, 2805
S&P 500 Support – 2760, 2752, 2730, 2715, 2682, 2655, 2638, 2607, 2575
A day of rest. Target 3200 remains.
Take care,
Rita
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