Secretary Marco Rubio gave an inspiring speech in Munich. The crux of it was a call to return to Western values. New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez gave her response, and it was the perfect answer to those who want to turn the USA into a communist nation. The New York Representative spoke to students at […] The post AOC Pushes Marxism in Munich in Response to Sec. Rubio’s Speech appeared first on www.independentsentinel.com.

Academy Award-winning actor Robert Duvall died on Sunday, a Facebook post from his wife confirmed on Monday. He was 95 years old. Luciana Duvall, 54, an Argentine actress and director who has been married to the actor since 2005, shared the news in a post including a photo of them in days past. “Yesterday we said goodbye to my beloved husband, cherished friend, and one of the greatest actors of our time. Bob passed away peacefully at home, surrounded by love and comfort,” she wrote in a statement. “To the world, he was an Academy Award-winning actor, a director, a storyteller. To me, he was simply everything,” she continued. “His passion for his craft was matched only by his deep love for characters, a great meal, and holding court. For each of his many roles, Bob gave everything to his characters and to the truth of the human spirit they represented. In doing so, he leaves something lasting and unforgettable to us all. Thank you for the years of support you showed Bob and for giving us this time and privacy to celebrate the memories he leaves behind.” After a short attempt at the military life, Duvall made a go at acting — and eventually became friends with a few others who were also struggling to break into the business around the same time — Gene Hackman, Dustin Hoffman, and James Caan. Duvall won the coveted Best Actor Oscar in 1984 for “Tender Mercies,” and was nominated in the same category for 1980’s “The Great Santini” and for “The Apostle” in 1997. He was nominated for Academy Awards for supporting roles in 2014’s “The Judge,” 1998’s “A Civil Action,” 1979’s “Apocalypse Now,” and 1972’s “The Godfather.” Duvall’s acting career ran for well over half a century, from episodes of “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” in the early 1960s to “The Pale Blue Eye” in 2022, that latter of which also featured a cameo from Senator John Fetterman (D-PA). His first big-screen role was the reclusive Boo Radley in the 1962 film “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Although he tried to keep his distance from politics in more recent years, Duvall was well-known in Hollywood for his conservative views. A lifelong Republican, he was awarded a National Medal of Arts by former President George W. Bush in 2005.

'It's just dangerous.'

climate lawfare scheme

'The people's pardon'

'We swung the pendulum too far'

Amid the scorching/freezing desert of Atacama in Chile, one of South America’s largest botanical storehouses aims to protect both the wild and cultivated heritage of the country’s plant life. Called the Initihuasi Seed Bank, this genetic mothership is the central node in a nationwide network of institutions that are safeguarding the country’s plant diversity, come […] The post Giant Seed Vault Freezes Beneath Atacama Desert, Preserving Chile’s Floral Diversity For the Ages appeared first on Good News Network.

Upon Further Reflection: NY State Canceling 5th Phase Offshore Wind Acquisition

A 3,000-word “news analysis” by New York Times chief White House correspondent Peter Baker on Trump’s supposed cult of personality was headlined cheekily: “A Superman, Jedi and Pope -- Trump’s Relentless Bid to Mythologize Himself.” The online version was more insulting: “Trump’s Relentless Self-Promotion Fosters an American Cult of Personality-- President Trump has engaged in a spree of self-aggrandizement unlike any of his predecessors, fostering a mythologized superhuman persona and making himself the inescapable force at home and around the world.” The story included a photo of a gold-leaf copper statue of Trump, tilted on its side -- a statute paid for by outside private sources selling crypto coins. After a year back in the White House, Mr. Trump’s efforts to promote himself as the singularly dominant figure in the world have become so commonplace that they no longer seem surprising. He regularly depicts himself in a heroic, almost godly fashion, as a king, as a Superman, as a Jedi knight, as a military hero, even as a pope in a white cassock. While Mr. Trump has spent a lifetime promoting his personal brand, slapping his name on hotels, casinos, airplanes, even steaks, neckties and bottled water, what he is doing in his second term as president comes closer to building a cult of personality the likes of which has never been seen in American history. Other presidents sought to cultivate their reputations, but none went as far as Mr. Trump has to create a mythologized, superhuman and omnipresent persona leading to idolatry. .... His White House is pressuring the Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery to display portraits of Mr. Trump by his supporters. A group of cryptocurrency investors has shelled out $300,000 to forge a 15-foot-tall gold-covered bronze statue of Mr. Trump called “Don Colossus” to be installed at his golf complex in Doral, Fla. For the record, late Minneapolis resident George Floyd had three memorial services while residing in a 14-karat gold-plated coffin, but no one would dare insinuate that Floyd's supporters were a “cult of personality.” As for fellow presidents, it would be hard to top Barack Obama hero worship from the entertainment community, like Black Eyed Peas musician will.i.am’s infamous celebrity video for Barack Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign, “Yes We Can,” which the Times greeted favorably. The Obama worship often spread to the elitist media itself. It began with a Washington Post front-page story gawking at his “chiseled pectorals” and ended with Times columnist Frank Bruni gushing "We’re going to miss this man, America. Whatever his flaws, he’s been more than our president. Time and again, he’s been our national poet.” Baker himself wrote a gushy Obama tribute book complete with color photographs titled Obama: The Call to History. Amazon includes this sugary blurb:  "Very likely not since tributes to the assassinated John F. Kennedy will a book of photographs of a president so recently departed make millions of Americans want to cry."―James Goodman, The New York Times Book Review But that’s all in the dustbin of history; Obama’s only mention in this long Baker piece is as the racial victim of a clip reposted by Trump. Baker mentions several other U.S. presidents to put up against Trump, who comes out as by far the most cultish American leader, approaching Joseph Stalin and Mao Tse-Tung territory. Cults of personality are traditionally associated with dictators and demagogues, not democrats. They are figures like Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Benito Mussolini and more recently the shirtless, horseback-riding Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. But Mr. Trump does not seem concerned that he might be heading down a dangerous path. Baker did some cherry-picking to establish a pattern of commentators and Democratic politicians accusing Trump of encouraging a personality "cult," then came back to the Trump statue, which remains un-erected. The efforts to exalt himself, however, have accelerated in the past year far beyond his first term and have increasingly come to resemble eccentric regimes in far corners of the world. To those who have spent time in the former Soviet Union, the “Don Colossus” statue bears a striking resemblance to the rotating gold statue erected by Saparmurat Niyazov, the megalomaniacal former dictator of Turkmenistan who called himself Turkmenbashi and even renamed the months of the year after himself and his family. Trump’s “Don Colossus” statue, tacky or not, was not commissioned by the president, and February is not yet known as “Trumpuary."