Archive for the ‘media’ Category

Review: The Chestnut Man

Posted: October 17, 2021 by John Ruberry in culture, media
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By John Ruberry

Late last month a Nordic noir six-episode series, The Chestnut Man, a Danish production began streaming on Netflix. It’s based on the novel of the same name by Søren Sveistrup. It’s an ideal autumn offering on many levels. The Chestnut Man is set in Denmark in October with fall colors at their peak. Halloween–the celebration of it has been spreading in Europe–plays a part in the story, and oh yeah, it’s a compelling crime drama centered on a serial killer who leaves stick chestnut figures, chestnut men, at the scene of each murder. Just as the carving of pumpkins is an old tradition in North America the building of chestnut men is similar a tradition in Scandinavia.

Naia Thulin (Danica Curcic) is a police detective and a single mother whose work keeps her away from her daughter, Le (Liva Forsberg), so the girl spends more time with her quasi-grandfather, Aksel (Anders Hove). By the way Hove was a regular on the ABC soap opera General Hospital.

Thulin is assigned a new partner, Mark Hess (Mikkel Boe Følsgaard). Their first investigation is a chestnut man murder. Hess has a troubled past–he was recently fired from his job in the Hague. The chestnut man case is quickly tied to the disappearance of the daughter of a politician, Rosa Hartung (Iben Dorner), who is the minister of social affairs. Her position puts in charge of foster care and child custody cases.

Obviously I don’t want to give up much of the plot because it will introduce spoilers. Let’s just say viewers will be confronted with twists and turns in the story line. The scars of unhappy childhoods figure in to the plot as well.

I also recently watched two other new Netflix series that I believe any level-headed person should avoid. 

Brand New Cherry Flavor is set in Hollywood in the 1990s and centers on a young Brazilian director (Rosa Salazar) who sees her first movie project stolen by a scumbag Hollywood producer. (Aren’t they all scumbags?) Inexplicably the director consistently barfs up large-eared kittens. Except for the negative portrayal of Hollywood I detested this series. And with a couple of exceptions I hated the characters. Even the kittens disturbed me. And there is a disgusting sex scene I won’t even describe here.

You can judge a book–and a TV series–by its cover. The Netflix graphic promoting Midnight Mass is centered on a main character, a Catholic priest, who has a sinister look on his face. The plot driver of this series is that priest (Hamish Linklater), a mysterious young pastor who arrives at an island parish that serves a tiny fishing community. Let’s just say Midnight Mass has about the same amount of respect for the Catholic Church as The Da Vinci Code, only with tons of gore and blood thrown into the mess. Although to be honest I did enjoy Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code book. The movie? Not so much.

The island’s sheriff, a Muslim, Rahul Kohli, is quite good in Midnight Mass however.

In Midnight Mass the cinematography is beautiful–but The Chestnut Man has that and so much more–I believe you’ll enjoy that series.

The Chestnut Man is rated TV-MA as it contains graphic violence and crime scene photos, foul language, sex, and brief nudity. It is available streaming on Netflix in English, English with subtitles, Danish with subtitles, Spanish, as well as simplified and traditional Chinese. There are bits of dialogue in The Chestnut Man in English and German–with subtitles. I watched it in Danish.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

There will be no Biden reset

Posted: September 19, 2021 by John Ruberry in crime, economy, immigration, media, News/opinion, politics
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By John Ruberry

After a summer of failures, including the resurgence of COVID-19, horrid job numbers, the crisis at the southern border, rampant urban crime, and our humiliating exit from Afghanistan, there was hope within the Biden White House, cheered on by the compliant media, that a reset was due with the new season.

But over this weekend, which isn’t over yet as of this writing, things got worse. In a flashback to the Obama years, the Pentagon chose Friday afternoon–a Friday news dump–to reveal not only that the August drone strike in Afghanistan didn’t slay any ISIS-K terrorists, but the bombing killed an aid worker and nine members of his family, including seven children. Also that afternoon France recalled its ambassador to the USA after the Biden administration, behind France’s back, announced a deal with Great Britain to sell nuclear submarines to Australia. But France already had a deal, now cancelled, with the Aussies. If you ever worked as a salesperson and saw a sleazy co-worker swipe a lucrative sale from you, then you know that feeling of betrayal.

Also on Friday, in a story that is largely being ignored by the national media except for Fox News, a Third World-style shanty town, with thousands of illegal immigrant inhabitants, was discovered on the Rio Grande in Del Rio, Texas.

There will be no reset for Joe Biden and his administration. That’s because, as I’ve written at DTG over these last few weeks, it is very likely that the president is suffering from cognitive decline. There are people in their seventies and eighties who still have nimble minds. Biden, who turns 79 later this year, is not one of them. Age-related cognitive decline is not reversible. And with crisis after crisis emerging, it’s becoming clear that no one is in charge at the White House, even though, as John Kass remarked, Biden’s chief of staff, Ron Klain, is openly referred to as “President Klain.”

I get it. Sometimes calamity after calamity happens. Lyndon B. Johnson suffered an entire year, 1968, like that. And LBJ of course decided not to run for a second full-term as president that year.

But some of Biden’s debacles were preventable, such as his abandoning Donald J. Trump’s remain-in-Mexico policy regarding migrants, which led to the crisis at the southern border. No one, outside of military contractors, wanted our military involvement in Afghanistan to indefinitely continue. But Biden promised our withdrawal from Afghanistan wouldn’t look like our departure from South Vietnam. Well, Biden was right on that vow–our exit from Afghanistan was worse than that.

The administration’s response to COVID-19, once seen as a strong point for Biden, is also a problem for him. Last week a poll revealed that for the first time a majority of Americans don’t approve of the way Biden is handling fighting the virus. 

So far Biden has gotten a pass for gasoline prices being 40-percent more than they were one year ago when that mean Tweeter with the orange hair was president. Escaping blame for Americans paying more at the pump can’t last forever. for Biden. As temperatures cool urban crime will decline but it will bounce back, as it always does, in the spring. That will give Biden and the Democrats another headache in 2022. Look for Republicans running for House and Senate seats to use crime fears as a central theme in their television commercials, as they did with great success last year. Despite denials the Democrats are the party of “Defund the Police.” Biden has gotten a pass for inflation for now. But his reckless policy of printing money will likely create even more inflation.

What else?

I’ve mentioned this quote before but it needs to be repeated.

Barack Obama reportedly once said of his vice president, “Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to f**k things up.” And that was before Biden’s cognitive decline set in.

I don’t like quoting myself, but I really think my Tweet of mine from last month hit the nail on Biden’s head.

“If I just awakened from a 10-year long coma and I saw what a mess America finds itself in now I would come to one quick conclusion. Somehow Joe Biden became president.”

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

Cognitive decline: the mainstream media is still protecting Biden

Posted: September 12, 2021 by John Ruberry in culture, entertainment, media, News/opinion, politics
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By John Ruberry

After the collapse of the government of Afghanistan last month mainstream media reporters remembered for a little while that they were supposed to be journalists instead of propagandists and protectors of the Democratic Party.

They criticized President Joe Biden for the Afghan debacle, which was easily the worst foreign policy disaster since the fall of Saigon in 1975. It may have been the worse than that, as no one expected the Viet Cong to attack America. 

But those catcalls from the media only went so far. No one, outside of conservatives, has addressed the metaphorical crazy grandpa in the basement–Joe Biden’s clear cognitive decline. 

Okay, let’s get something out of the way. I am not a doctor and I have never met Joe Biden. But even two years ago, as he announced his run for the presidency, it was clear, to phrase it as Mark Levin did, that “the spin was off of his fastball.” Of course Biden, always a mediocrity, never had much of a fastball. 

And of course to prevent a Bernie Sanders Democratic nomination and a likely Donald Trump victory, US Rep. James Clyburn led the rush to annoint Biden as their only hope to defeat Trump. And Biden campaigned, sort of, for the presidency from what Sean Hannity called “his basement bunker.” 

Greg Ganske, an MD and former Republican member of Congress, knows Biden, In an op-ed for the Des Moines Register, he decried Biden’s mental decline.

It’s gotten worse since the election. In a CNN interview, he opined, “Um, you know there’s a, uh, during World War II, uh you know, where Roosevelt came up with a thing, that uh, you know, was totally different, than a, than the, he called it, you know, the WWII, he had the War Production Board.” In March he forgot the name of his Defense Secretary, Lloyd Austin, at a White House event, calling the Pentagon chief “the guy who runs that outfit over there.”

I am not alone in seeing a difference in President Biden. Mike McCormick, who worked 15 years as a White House stenographer and with Biden from 2011 to 2017, has said, “He’s lost a step and he doesn’t seem to have the mental acuity he had four years ago. He doesn’t have the energy, he doesn’t have the pace of his speaking. He’s a different guy. He read that Democratic National Committee speech verbatim — it’s not Joe Biden anymore.”

John Kass, the former Chicago Tribune lead columnist, calls Biden “President Meat Puppet.” 

During the 2020 presidential campaign while watching Biden, well, sort of campaign on television, I was reminded of a Star Trek episode centered on the doomed and flawed John Gill, Captain Kirk’s former history professor, who creates a Nazi government because that fascist nation was, in Gill’s opinion, “the most effecient state Earth ever knew.” Not true, I need to add, although oddly enough Spock agreed. 

The Enterprise’s power trio watch in horror and pity as Gill, a puppet of the evil Melakon, addresses his planet in a televised address by announcing an attack on the scapegoat planet Zeon. “Captain, the speech follows no logical pattern,” says Spock. “Random sentences strung together,” Kirk adds. “He looks drugged, Jim,” observes Dr. McCoy, “Almost in a cataleptic state.”

“They’ve kept what’s left of him as a figurehead,” Kirk says. 

Last year Lou Aguilar of the American Spectator noticed the similarities between Biden and Gill in 2020. So did Victor Davis Hanson for American Greatness last month. But these men are conservatives.

Now I am not claiming Biden is a fascist. Calm down, leftists. He is not. Biden is a confused and tired old man–but only conservative pundits are noticing that. Are we smarter than liberals? Well yes, of course we are, but it seems at the very list our “betters,” the liberal elite that is, are looking the other way in regards to the president’s mental status. Or perhaps the liberal media is purposely hiding Biden’s cognitive decline, as seems to be the case with George Stephanopoulos, who allowed a portion of his most recent interview with the president to end up on the cutting room floor as he confused key details of his late son Beau’s military service. I suspect the latter scenario is the case.

Dr. Ronny Jackson is now a Republican congressman. He was the White House physician during the Trump presidency. Two months ago he called on Biden to take a cognitive test and for the results of it to be made public. Three years ago Jackson said he administered one to Trump and he reported that “45” answered every question correctly.

Here’s the problem the mainstream media faces. Biden will continue to have good days and bad days–but as I’ve observed with relatives of mine suffering from cognitive decline, the good days always become fewer. 

Oh, how many more times will Biden be hours late for a press conference? Why always so late?

Eventually Biden’s slipping mental state will be too obvious for even the liberal media to ignore. And when they finally do notice–it’s up to us to remind them that conservatives blew the whistle on Biden first. 

Perhaps at that time, in an act for redemption, the lefty talking heads and writers can reveal who the power is behind the Biden the Figurehead.

Kass has an idea, “Ron Klain, the White House chief of staff, is now openly referred to as President Klain.”

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

The incomplete list of people to blame for the Biden debacle

Posted: August 29, 2021 by John Ruberry in elections, media, News/opinion, politics
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By John Ruberry

Seven months in and it’s already fair to call the Biden presidency a debacle. Our humiliation in Afghanistan tops Biden’s list of failures. Yes, John F. Kennedy botched the Bay of Pigs invasion and helplessly saw the Berlin Wall built during his first seven months in the White House, but to paraphrase what Sen. Lloyd Bensten said of Dan Quayle, Biden is no JFK. And Kennedy, while we’ve learned years later that he was not a healthy man, showed no signs of cognitive decline during his brief presidency. JFK was 46 when he was assassinated. Biden turns 79 later this year.

The old proverb, “Success has many friends but failure is an orphan” is true to the extent that people prefer to sweep failure under the rug. Lee Iacocca, the legendary automotive CEO, remarked in his autobiography that there were plenty of people eager to take credit for the success of the Ford Mustang. But not for the flop of the Edsel car a few years earlier. 

As a civic duty I’m going to point out those deserving people and groups to blame for Biden, our White House Edsel, being elected president. And there are many.

Dr. Kevin C. O’Connor. The White House physician is also Biden’s personal doctor. In late 2019, as he released Biden’s medical records, O’Connor said, “Vice President Biden is a healthy, vigorous, 77-year-old male, who is fit to successfully execute the duties of the Presidency, to include those as Chief Executive, Head of State, and Commander in Chief.” Wow. Biden wasn’t “vigorous” two years ago. And just how healthy is Biden?

Do you care to update your comments, O’Connor? And please, doctor, don’t hide behind patient confidentiality laws. Biden is responsible for the safety and well-being of 330 million Americans.

Jill Biden. Someonse else nailed Jill’s role in this tragedy on the head last week and I’ll hand things over to her. “Who are the people responsible for putting someone this incompetent and frankly this mentally frail in this position. …I’m sorry, as a political spouse, I can’t help but look at Jill Biden,” Fox News’ Rachel Campos-Duffy, who is married to a former congressman, said last week. “No one knew better his state of mind than Dr. Jill Biden. And if you ask me the most patriotic thing Jill Biden could have done was tell her husband, to love her husband, and not let him run in the mental state that he is in. I think she failed the country as well.”

US Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC). After lackluster performances in the Iowa Caucuses and the New Hampshire primary it appeared that Joe Biden’s third presidential run would end up like the others, along the lines of a batter being dealt a three pitch strike-out. But to prevent a Bernie Sanders nomination–and a Trump reelecton–Clyburn gave Biden a strong endorsement shortly before the South Carolina primary. Biden won the primary and essentially coasted to the Democratic nomination, while conducting his campaign, to use Sean Hannity’s favorite phrase, from his “basement bunker” in Delaware.

Senior Biden campaign officials. I’m sure they knew all about Sleepy Joe’s mental state.

The media. I excoriated the mainstream media’s role in elevating Biden in a post here last week. I suspect reporters knew–and still know–that Biden is a weak old man. But they chose to keep it to themselves. And because the person they loathe, President Donald J. Trump, absolutely could not be reelected, they had to cover up, or at least obscure, Sleepy Joe’s many weaknesses.

Never Trump Republicans. Perhaps the GOP Trump haters belong at the top of this list. Are you happy now?

Biden voters. On WIND-AM Radio last week, co-host Amy Jacobson observed that many Biden voters approached last fall’s election as if it was a student council race. Trump was that mean bully and rude Tweeter and he just had to go. He just had too, you know! And besides Trump wasn’t “cool.” As Barack Obama famously and correctly said, “Elections have consequences.” In high school if you elect the wrong people to the student council it might mean that films you don’t like are screened on Campus Movie Night. The stakes regarding elections to the most powerful office in the world are immeasurably higher.

Barack Obama. Sometime in 2019 Obama should have convincingly told Biden, “C’mon man, you’re too old and to feeble to be president.” Or maybe Biden was unqualified to be president even before his cognitive decline set in. “Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to f**k things up,” Obama supposedly said about his vice president. 

Joe Biden. Surely in his more lucent moments Biden must realize that whatever mojo he had as a politician, other than name recognition, was gone. And even when he was at the peak of his skills, Biden was simply a mediocrity.

I’m certain I’ve left many worthy people of shame and blame in this list. Feel free to add others who come to mind in the comments section.

Update 8:00pm EDT:

I can’t believe I forgot the 50 former intelligence officials who made the false claim that the Hunter Biden laptop discovery appeared to be a disinformation campaign put forth by Russia. These “experts,” swamp rats really, either had no clue if that claim was true or they were lying.

The propagandists that we call the mainstream media utilized this denial as justification for not reporting on the Hunter haptop scandal.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

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