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Churchill, Washington Statues And Cenotaph War Memorial Boarded Up In London

Churchill, Washington Statues And Cenotaph War Memorial Boarded Up In London

Tyler Durden

Fri, 06/12/2020 – 11:45

Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

The statue of Winston Churchill, as well as the Cenotaph war memorial in Central London have been boarded up ‘for their own protection’, even though Black Lives Matter have canceled demonstrations scheduled for this weekend.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan ordered the boarding up of the monuments, along with a host of others throughout the city, claiming that it is ‘to make sure they are protected’. Khan is pushing an ongoing effort to ‘diversify’ the landmarks of London.

Khan also suggested that it is ‘extreme far right groups who advocate hatred and division’ that would cause violence, despite the fact that for the past two weeks the violence against police and vandalism of monuments has been perpetrated solely by BLM agitators.

The boarding went up around the Churchill statue and other monuments last night. Churchill is now completely obscured:

Other statues such as this one of King James II got the same treatment:

A statue of George Washington in Trafalgar Square is now also completely obscured:

Workmen arrived this morning at Guy’s Hospital to board up a statue of founder Thomas Guy:

The Cenotaph war memorial was also partially obscured:

Statues of Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi were also boarded up.

BLM organisers announced last night that Saturday’s events are  being postponed due to ‘many hate groups’ threatening to counter protest.

Another protest purporting to be organised by ‘Anti-fascists support Black Lives Matter’, run by Labour affiliated far-left group Momentum is still going ahead however.

Police warned earlier this week that clashes were set to erupt after multiple football ‘firms’ as well as Tommy Robinson and his followers vowed to be present to protect the monuments.

The move to completely obscure the monuments from view will likely only attract more angry Brits to converge, demanding they be uncovered and properly protected from ‘woke’ vandal mobs.

It’s also reminiscent of efforts in other European countries to ‘protect’ monuments from terrorists by building barriers around them:

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/30xTDeh Tyler Durden

Fed Sees “Alarming Picture” Of Small Business Health, COVID Has Exposed “Persistent Fragilities”

Fed Sees “Alarming Picture” Of Small Business Health, COVID Has Exposed “Persistent Fragilities”

Tyler Durden

Fri, 06/12/2020 – 11:29

Amid 66 pages of groupthink and mumblespeak, The Fed’s just-released semi-annual Monetary Policy Report builds on Fed Chair Powell’s downbeat assessment of the way forward, throwing more cold water on the stock market’s hopes for a V-shaped recovery, saying that the COVID-19 outbreak was causing “tremendous human and economic hardship across the United States and around the world.”

“ The strains on household and business balance sheets from the economic and financial shocks since March will likely create persistent fragilities. “

Key headlines include:

  • FED SAYS COLLAPSE IN DEMAND MAY ULTIMATELY BANKRUPT MANY BUSINESSES

  • FED SAYS DISRUPTIONS TO GLOBAL TRADE MAY ALSO RESULT IN A COSTLY RECONFIGURATION OF GLOBAL SUPPLY CHAINS

  • FED SAYS FUTURE PROGRESSION OF THE PANDEMIC REMAINS HIGHLY UNCERTAIN, WITH RESURGENCE OF THE OUTBREAK A SUBSTANTIAL RISK

  • FED SAYS EMPLOYMENT FOR LOWER-WAGE EARNERS 35% LOWER THAN IN FEBRUARY, COMPARED WITH 5% TO 15% LOWER FOR HIGHER-WAGE EARNERS

  • FED SAYS SOME SMALL BUSINESSES AND HIGHLY LEVERAGED FIRMS MIGHT HAVE TO SHUT DOWN PERMANENTLY OR DECLARE BANKRUPTCY

  • FED SAYS THE PATH AHEAD IS EXTRAORDINARILY UNCERTAIN

  • FED SAYS WIDESPREAD FAILURE OF SMALL BUSINESSES WOULD ADVERSELY ALTER THE ECONOMIC LANDSCAPE AND POTENTIALLY SLOW THE RECOVERY AND FUTURE LABOR PRODUCTIVITY GROWTH

And, perhaps the most important section of the entire document is as follows:

Despite aggressive fiscal and monetary policy actions, risks abroad are skewed to the downside.

The future progression of the pandemic remains highly uncertain, with resurgence of the outbreak a substantial risk. In addition, the economic damage of the recession may be quite persistent.

The collapse in demand may ultimately bankrupt many businesses, thereby reducing business dynamism and innovation. Unlike past recessions, services activity has dropped more sharply than manufacturing – with restrictions on movement severely curtailing expenditures on travel, tourism, restaurants, and recreation – and social-distancing requirements and attitudes may further weigh on the recovery in these sectors. Disruptions to global trade may also result in a costly reconfiguration of global supply chains. Persistently weak consumer and firm demand may push medium- and longer-term inflation expectations well below central bank targets, particularly in regions with already low inflation at the onset of the recession.

Finally, additional expansionary fiscal policies – possibly in response to future large-scale outbreaks of COVID-19 – could significantly increase government debt and add to sovereign risk, especially for countries with already limited fiscal space.

Of course The Fed offers its usual gruel, saying that to combat those hardships, it’s “committed to using its full range of tools to support the U.S. economy in this challenging time.”

But it appears the market is starting to wake up…

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell will testify before congressional committees on the new report Tuesday and Wednesday.

*  *  *

Read the Full Monetary Policy Report below:

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2UCVoTP Tyler Durden

Gamma Turns Negative As Futures Slide On Florida Covid Surge Report

Gamma Turns Negative As Futures Slide On Florida Covid Surge Report

Tyler Durden

Fri, 06/12/2020 – 11:16

Earlier this week we published an in-depth note from Goldman laying out “all you need to know” about gamma and option-driven equity flows, which explained why “gamma has the potential to be one of the most important non-fundamental flows in equity markets (particularly when “short gamma” causes volatility to accelerate), but tracking gamma is complex and dynamic.”

In this context, overnight Nomura’s Charlie McElligott described Thursday’s furious market moves from a “Greek” background, noting that the “Dealer gamma position flipped short midday yesterday in SPX/SPY consolidated options on the initial move through 3085 to the downside, which coincided with the level break lower around the EU cash equities close (where a number of large vol Dealers reside and thus, we often see signif moves in the US 10:45-11:45 EST window) and remained very heavy into/around the US cash close, when the majority of said US Dealer hedging occurs.”

And while McEligott then pointed out that the overnight bounce helped push spot above the “gamma neutral” line of 3046 “as those vol Dealer flows subsided and / or “reset”—specially on the variance swap delta hedging side” the sharp selling seen in the past few minutes following the report that Florida Covid-19 cases jumped 2.8% to 70,971, the biggest daily jump since May 1, and compared with an average increase of 2% in the previous seven days, as deaths among Florida residents reached 2,877, an increase of 1%…

… dealer gamma is once again back in the red and well below its neutral position of 3,045 meaning that absent a sharp  thrust higher – perhaps with the help of retail buying where we are seeing the usual frenzied BTFDing…

… the pressure for the rest of Friday’s session will be to the downside as dealers will be now forced to chase stocks lower.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2UGJFUe Tyler Durden

Don’t Look Now But The Market’s Overnight Bounce Is Fading Fast

Don’t Look Now But The Market’s Overnight Bounce Is Fading Fast

Tyler Durden

Fri, 06/12/2020 – 10:57

Where did all the Robinhood’rs go?

It seems bad news about a potential Florida 2nd wave sparked the latest purge…

All the majors are now up less than 1%…

Dow futures are down over 500 from pre-open highs…

In context…

It seems the “buy-overnight, sell-day-session” trade is back…

Somebody call Kudlow or Mnuchin!!

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2MTKfcY Tyler Durden

As Businesses Flee The Violence, Will Major US Cities Be Transformed Into Economic Wastelands?

As Businesses Flee The Violence, Will Major US Cities Be Transformed Into Economic Wastelands?

Tyler Durden

Fri, 06/12/2020 – 10:55

Authored by Michael Snyder via TheMostImportantNews.com,

Urban communities all over the U.S. are now facing the possibility of a mass exodus of businesses, and many local leaders are freaking out because they realize what such a mass exodus will mean for their cities.  In the aftermath of George Floyd’s death, peaceful protests were held in more than 300 cities all across America, and a recent CNN poll found that 84 percent of all Americans supported those peaceful protests.  Unfortunately, rioting, looting and violence also erupted in major cities from coast to coast, and very little was done to suppress that violence.  As a result, the core areas of many of our largest cities now resemble war zones, and in the months ahead there will be a constant threat that the violence could flare up again at any time.

Needless to say, many businesses that have been torched or looted are going to be extremely hesitant to rebuild and start over in the same location when the same thing could easily happen again.

For example, one manufacturing company that proudly operated in the heart of Minneapolis for a long time has already made the decision to leave the city for good…

The owner of a manufacturing company based in Minneapolis has decided to move his factory after law enforcement was unable to protect the plant from burning during riots.

The plant shut down early in anticipation of the second night of riots and to ensure the safety of employees, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported. President and Owner of 7-Sigma Inc. Kris Wyrobek said a production supervisor and maintenance worker who live near the plant kept watch over the business and reported a fire at an apartment complex next door.

And in Chicago, Mayor Lori Lightfoot is saying that it will require a “Herculean effort” to prevent a mass exodus of businesses from happening…

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said it would take a “Herculean effort” to keep businesses open in disadvantaged neighborhoods after looting and damage that occurred during the first weekend of protests following the death of George Floyd.

“I’ve been on calls and text messages with people all day who fought hard to bring economic development to areas of the city, only to see the Walgreens, the CVS, the grocery store, everything vanish in an eye blink,” Lightfoot said on a May 31 call with distraught aldermen. “It’s going to take a Herculean effort on the part of all of us to convince businesses not to disappear, to come back. We’re prepared to fight that fight.”

Perhaps if a “Herculean effort” had been made to prevent the violence from happening in the first place, Chicago and other major cities would not be facing such a crisis today.

And many of the businesses that will remain open in the heart of our major cities will now look a whole lot different than they did before.

In Manhattan, the Saks Fifth Avenue store now closely resembles the U.S. embassy in Baghdad…

The Saks Fifth Avenue flagship store in Manhattan is now lined with barbed wire fencing and attack dogs amid weeks of social unrest in the city.

Reuters says the luxury retailer hired a third-party security firm to protect the store and associates. Amid these unprecedented times, it was found necessary to line the store with chainlink fencing with barb wire on top and private security guards with attack dogs.

Of course most other stores in New York City did not take such precautions, and many of them got absolutely gutted as a result.

Thankfully, the violence has subsided in recent days, but chaos continues to reign in some of our biggest cities.

For example, a radical group of protesters has literally taken over a large chunk of downtown Seattle and has dubbed it the “Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone”…

As protesters around the country demand that cities defund their police departments, one group of demonstrators in Seattle is out to prove they don’t need the law enforcement officers.

On Tuesday night, protesters from what is now known as the “Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone” (CHAZ) were joined by other demonstrators as they briefly occupied Seattle’s City Hall. Speakers called for the resignation of Mayor Jenny Durkan and the defunding of the Seattle Police Department before leaving the building about 1 a.m., chanting “defund SPD” as they returned to the zone.

In this “autonomous zone”, demonstrators are passing out free food to everyone and they want to show the world that society actually doesn’t need any police.

I am sure that their “utopia” will be fun for a few days, but soon they will run out of money to feed everyone and it will be very interesting to watch how they handle any serious crimes that start to happen.

Meanwhile, angry protesters all over the nation continue to attack statues, monuments and other political symbols.  In fact, in one part of California there have been several incidents where American flags have been set on fire…

Police are investigating a string of arsons, targeting Citrus Heights homes with American flags on display.

At least four homes were targeted in the Sungarden neighborhood early Saturday morning. So far, police say they don’t know the motive.

A charred pole is all that’s left of the American Flag that had been flying outside Marie Nuzzi’s home.

Hopefully things will start to cool down for a while, but everyone knows that another round of senseless violence could be sparked at any moment.

Yes, some businesses will stick it out and risk being torched or looted again, but many others will leave our major cities and never look back.

In the end, this could create a new cycle of crushing inner city poverty all over America, and that is something that none of us should want to see.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2UE2XcL Tyler Durden

Recreate the Drive-In Experience at Home with These Two Digital Offerings

  • Into the Dark: Good Boy. Available now from Hulu.
  • The Vast of Night. Available now from Amazon Prime Video.

There are supposedly about 330 drive-in movie theaters left in America, and some of them are seeing new life now because of the coronavirus. In case they’re interested, we’ve got the perfect double-feature available: Hulu’s ultimate-shaggy-dog-story Good Boy, and Amazon Prime Video’s keep-watching-the-skies flashback, The Vast of Night.

But if that’s not available to you, go ahead: Put them on back-to-back in your living room, throw in some popcorn and possibly a discarded garment or two, and relive those glorious days of 1957, but without the midnight curfew or the fear of encountering a renegade bra snap.

Both shows are linear descendants of 1950s B-movies or their close relative, television’s Twilight Zone, hitting their marks quickly and creepily, then topping them off with a surprise ironical twists much too delicious to permit any post-prandial-probing by surviving IQ points.

The more shuddery of the two is Good Boy, the newest episode of Hulu’s ongoing Into the Dark horror anthology, a kind of Old Yeller-in-reverse tale. Judy Greer (co-star of FX’s bittersweet crumbling-marriage sitcom Married) plays Maggie, the 2020 version of Mary Tyler Moore, an aging and thoroughly deperkified  reporter-wannabe who fled Wisconsin for the glory of big-city journalism. Instead, she’s childless, boyfriendless and nearly paycheckless—her paper just went all-digital. “No one’s being laid off,” her smarmy editor assures the staff. “You’re become independent contractors!”

When a buddy suggests she might be a little less stressed out if she got an “emotional support dog” from the city pound, Maggie is skeptical. But it works! Maggie picks right up, partly because her new pet Reuben turns out to be “a total dick magnet,” as a friend observes, attracting suitors galore—and partly because the sources of her stress start disappearing, or killing themselves, or turning into the “after” photos in ads for Purina Wolf Chow.

Good Boy is well-served by the unlikely but undeniable chemistry between Greer and Chico, who plays her loyal canine pal Reuben. But a good deal of credit must also go to Steve Guttenberg, whose stunningly authentic performance as a toadying little wretch of a managing editor sets the gold standard for all future newspaper movie and TV shows. If Good Boy were real life, practically every newspaper reporter in America would be a suspect in his extremely satisfying demise.

If Good Boy often plays like a Twilight Zone episode, The Vast of Night practically shares its DNA. The setting for the show is the mythical town of Cayuga, New Mexico, and it’s no coincidence that “Cayuga” was the name of Rod Serling’s production company. And The Vast of Night is presented as an episode of a 1950s TV show called Paradox Theater, introduced by a Serlingesque baritone that warns: “You are entering the realm between the clandestine and the forgotten… .”

The tumbleweed-blown desert streets of Cayuga (population: 402) make a perfect setting for the eerie goings-on in The Vast of Night, which is set in the early 1950s before anal probes by space aliens became America’s national pastime. It’s the sort of nothing and nobody town where the time some years back when a squirrel (or, some passionately insist, a chipmunk) chewed through some basement wires and blacked out the high school gym has turned legend.

Tonight that same gym is the site for big basketball game with Hobbs, a couple of towns over, and nearly everybody is there. About the only two exceptions are a couple of nerdy teenagers with nightshift jobs: Everett (Jake Horowitz, Manifest), a motormouth deejay at the tiny local radio station, and Fay (Sierra McCormick, Supernatural), an operator at the town telephone switchboard. Not quite sweethearts, they like to share science-fictiony stories (Radio-controlled cars! Permanent phone numbers assigned at birth!) So when twilight falls and Cayuga is suddenly wrapped in a matrix of weird electronic noises, flashing lights and rooftop noises that definitely are not Santa’s reindeer, they’re the only ones to realize what must be cause: UFOs! (Though Everett holds out some forlorn hope that it’s merely a Soviet invasion: “This is exactly where they’d come in, too—the southern border!”

The increasingly strained phone conversations between Everett, trapped in his studio, and Fay, locked down at her switchboard, lend The Vast Of Night an impressively tense Sorry, Wrong Number atmosphere that belie the zero-dollar special effects for the low-budget production. If you’re looking for a movie where people say things like “There’s something in the sky!” and “I’ve seen good people go bad, and smart people go mad!”, you’re not likely to do better than The Vast of Night this summer. About the only people who walk away disappointed likely will be New Mexicans, disgruntled that their sunscorched little hellhole town had to be stunt-doubled for by some other pestilential dump in neighboring Texas, which steals everything. As the local saying goes, poor New Mexico, so far from God, so close to Texas.

 

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More examples of the Twitter mob taking over

Every Friday we bring you some of the most ridiculous stories we found throughout the week that are threats to your liberty and prosperity.

This week we are focused on “cancel culture” also known as mob-rule. Here’s how it is killing any remaining freedom of thought and discussion in our society.

Mob punishes soccer player because of his wife’s Tweet

Until last Friday, Aleksander Katai played professional soccer for the Los Angeles Galaxy.

He was fired for something his wife tweeted.

She posted an image of NYPD police cruisers ramming protesters with their car, with the caption, “Ma pobij govna bre!” which is Serbian and translates to “Kill the shits!”

Now… that’s pretty messed up. And someone found the Tweet, translated it, reposted it… and then the mob unleashed holy hell.

But amazingly enough– the mob went after Aleksander Katai.

Hang on, wait a minute. It was Katai’s WIFE who wrote the Tweet. He had nothing to do with it. They weren’t even together at the time, he was off practicing with his team and had no idea what she was tweeting.

Yet according to this supposedly ultra-progressive mob, Aleksander Katai is responsible for his wife’s words and actions.

Doesn’t that sound blatantly misogynist and a direct contravention of the mob’s woke mentality?

You would think so. But there is no reason with this mob. And they went after Aleksander Katai with a terrible fury.

The team forced Katai to apologize and disavow his wife’s tweets, saying “This is a mistake from my family, and I take full responsibility. I will ensure that my family and I take the necessary actions to learn, understand, listen and understand the black community.”

 But the mob was out for blood. So despite the fact that Katai didn’t even do anything, and he still apologized for his wife’s actions, he was still fired.

Click here to read the full story.

Students feel “unsafe” due to professor’s “gender critical” views

Kathleen Lowry was an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Alberta in Canada who taught a class on feminism entitled “Anthropology of Women.”

Prof. Lowry expressed her views to her students on Day 1 of the course that there are two biological sexes– male and female.

Despite being a self-avowed progressive feminist, Lowry’s views (which, by the way, are grounded in science) are totally out of touch with the mob.

Fellow professors tweeted things like “I condemn the position & beliefs of Dr. Kathleen Lowry…” as if Lowry were some sort of Holocaust denier.

And so she was fired because students felt “unsafe” in the classroom due to Lowry’s “gender critical” views.

Click here to read the full story.

Did there used to be a word for “people who menstruate”?

JK Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter series, asked for help on Twitter the other day.

She was trying to remember a word lost to the memory-hole of history.

Criticizing an article that used the term, “people who menstruate,” Rowling tweeted:

“‘People who menstruate.’ I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?”

Naturally this made the mob completely lose its mind. “Women” is now a vile, nasty, offensive word, and everyone from the Harry Potter cast (like actors Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson), to Warner Brothers (which owns the rights to the franchise) denounced Rowling’s disgusting reference to an archaic, offensive word.

Click here to read the full article.

Southern band changes name, preemptively grovels for forgiveness

The mob has already caused some offenders to preemptively grovel for forgiveness.

For instance, the country band Lady Antebellum announced on Twitter– where all important announcements now occur– that it is changing the name of the band.

Antebellum refers to the pre-Civil War era in the southern United States.

No one had actually complained about the band name though, at least not yet. But Lady Antebellum saw the angry mob forming a mile away as confederate flags and statues came tumbling down.

So the band figured it would preemptively grovel for forgiveness.

The members said they named the band after the Antebellum style home they first took band photos in front of. But they now see that Antebellum’s association with the confederacy could be seen as offensive to some. And they are deeply sorry.

The big reveal on the new name: Lady A.

Which kind of makes me wonder, how much longer until “Lady” is also offensive, and the band changes its name to “Person Who Menstruates A” ?

Click here to read the full story.

Twitter suggests reading an article before sharing

Just to give you an idea of how well informed our new Twitter-mob rulers are, check out a new feature Twitter is testing.

Twitter support announced:

“Sharing an article can spark conversation, so you may want to read it before you Tweet it.

“To help promote informed discussion, we’re testing a new prompt on Android –– when you Retweet an article that you haven’t opened on Twitter, we may ask if you’d like to open it first.”

What a revolutionary idea.

Click here to see the Tweet.

Source

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Recreate the Drive-In Experience at Home with These Two Digital Offerings

  • Into the Dark: Good Boy. Available now from Hulu.
  • The Vast of Night. Available now from Amazon Prime Video.

There are supposedly about 330 drive-in movie theaters left in America, and some of them are seeing new life now because of the coronavirus. In case they’re interested, we’ve got the perfect double-feature available: Hulu’s ultimate-shaggy-dog-story Good Boy, and Amazon Prime Video’s keep-watching-the-skies flashback, The Vast of Night.

But if that’s not available to you, go ahead: Put them on back-to-back in your living room, throw in some popcorn and possibly a discarded garment or two, and relive those glorious days of 1957, but without the midnight curfew or the fear of encountering a renegade bra snap.

Both shows are linear descendants of 1950s B-movies or their close relative, television’s Twilight Zone, hitting their marks quickly and creepily, then topping them off with a surprise ironical twists much too delicious to permit any post-prandial-probing by surviving IQ points.

The more shuddery of the two is Good Boy, the newest episode of Hulu’s ongoing Into the Dark horror anthology, a kind of Old Yeller-in-reverse tale. Judy Greer (co-star of FX’s bittersweet crumbling-marriage sitcom Married) plays Maggie, the 2020 version of Mary Tyler Moore, an aging and thoroughly deperkified  reporter-wannabe who fled Wisconsin for the glory of big-city journalism. Instead, she’s childless, boyfriendless and nearly paycheckless—her paper just went all-digital. “No one’s being laid off,” her smarmy editor assures the staff. “You’re become independent contractors!”

When a buddy suggests she might be a little less stressed out if she got an “emotional support dog” from the city pound, Maggie is skeptical. But it works! Maggie picks right up, partly because her new pet Reuben turns out to be “a total dick magnet,” as a friend observes, attracting suitors galore—and partly because the sources of her stress start disappearing, or killing themselves, or turning into the “after” photos in ads for Purina Wolf Chow.

Good Boy is well-served by the unlikely but undeniable chemistry between Greer and Chico, who plays her loyal canine pal Reuben. But a good deal of credit must also go to Steve Guttenberg, whose stunningly authentic performance as a toadying little wretch of a managing editor sets the gold standard for all future newspaper movie and TV shows. If Good Boy were real life, practically every newspaper reporter in America would be a suspect in his extremely satisfying demise.

If Good Boy often plays like a Twilight Zone episode, The Vast of Night practically shares its DNA. The setting for the show is the mythical town of Cayuga, New Mexico, and it’s no coincidence that “Cayuga” was the name of Rod Serling’s production company. And The Vast of Night is presented as an episode of a 1950s TV show called Paradox Theater, introduced by a Serlingesque baritone that warns: “You are entering the realm between the clandestine and the forgotten… .”

The tumbleweed-blown desert streets of Cayuga (population: 402) make a perfect setting for the eerie goings-on in The Vast of Night, which is set in the early 1950s before anal probes by space aliens became America’s national pastime. It’s the sort of nothing and nobody town where the time some years back when a squirrel (or, some passionately insist, a chipmunk) chewed through some basement wires and blacked out the high school gym has turned legend.

Tonight that same gym is the site for big basketball game with Hobbs, a couple of towns over, and nearly everybody is there. About the only two exceptions are a couple of nerdy teenagers with nightshift jobs: Everett (Jake Horowitz, Manifest), a motormouth deejay at the tiny local radio station, and Fay (Sierra McCormick, Supernatural), an operator at the town telephone switchboard. Not quite sweethearts, they like to share science-fictiony stories (Radio-controlled cars! Permanent phone numbers assigned at birth!) So when twilight falls and Cayuga is suddenly wrapped in a matrix of weird electronic noises, flashing lights and rooftop noises that definitely are not Santa’s reindeer, they’re the only ones to realize what must be cause: UFOs! (Though Everett holds out some forlorn hope that it’s merely a Soviet invasion: “This is exactly where they’d come in, too—the southern border!”

The increasingly strained phone conversations between Everett, trapped in his studio, and Fay, locked down at her switchboard, lend The Vast Of Night an impressively tense Sorry, Wrong Number atmosphere that belie the zero-dollar special effects for the low-budget production. If you’re looking for a movie where people say things like “There’s something in the sky!” and “I’ve seen good people go bad, and smart people go mad!”, you’re not likely to do better than The Vast of Night this summer. About the only people who walk away disappointed likely will be New Mexicans, disgruntled that their sunscorched little hellhole town had to be stunt-doubled for by some other pestilential dump in neighboring Texas, which steals everything. As the local saying goes, poor New Mexico, so far from God, so close to Texas.

 

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How 2020 Demolished the Case for Gun Control

“It’s the job of law enforcement to have guns and to decide when to shoot. You just do not want the average citizen carrying a gun in a crowded place.”

Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg made that comment in December after an armed citizen may have averted a mass shooting by killing a gunman at a Texas church. The statement hasn’t aged well.

How convincing can Bloomberg’s “only cops should have guns” message be to Americans who have seen and shared fresh examples of unjustified and brutal police conduct? Or who have witnessed scenes of rioters and looters putting their lives and property at risk because law enforcement agencies failed to protect them?

This video essay is based on the column, “The Year Gun Control Died,” published on June 5, 2020.

Written by J.D. Tuccille. Voice over by Katherine Mangu-Ward. Graphics by Lex Villena. 

Music Credits: “Bloodstain” by Royal Nature licensed through Artlist.

Photo credits: Seattle Riots, Bethanie Mitchell/SIPA; Native American defending neighborhood, Sait Serkan Gurbuz/ZUMA Press/Newscom; Roof Korean, Associated Press.

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How 2020 Demolished the Case for Gun Control

“It’s the job of law enforcement to have guns and to decide when to shoot. You just do not want the average citizen carrying a gun in a crowded place.”

Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg made that comment in December after an armed citizen may have averted a mass shooting by killing a gunman at a Texas church. The statement hasn’t aged well.

How convincing can Bloomberg’s “only cops should have guns” message be to Americans who have seen and shared fresh examples of unjustified and brutal police conduct? Or who have witnessed scenes of rioters and looters putting their lives and property at risk because law enforcement agencies failed to protect them?

This video essay is based on the column, “The Year Gun Control Died,” published on June 5, 2020.

Written by J.D. Tuccille. Voice over by Katherine Mangu-Ward. Graphics by Lex Villena. 

Music Credits: “Bloodstain” by Royal Nature licensed through Artlist.

Photo credits: Seattle Riots, Bethanie Mitchell/SIPA; Native American defending neighborhood, Sait Serkan Gurbuz/ZUMA Press/Newscom; Roof Korean, Associated Press.

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