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Princess Grace Kelly of Monaco  (Two Minutes)

3/22/2014

 
Out of all the beautiful women both past and present Princess Grace Kelly in my opinion is the most beautiful by far…the Angelia Jolie’s and Kate Upton’s of today couldn’t hold a candle to her. Please take the time to Google her and you’ll understand where I’m coming from. For those of you who know about her personal life you know her name fits her perfectly…she was a lady of grace. Princess Grace died young at the age of 52 and James Stewart gave her eulogy this is some of what he said: 
 
“I just love Grace Kelly. Not because she was a princess, not because she was an actress, not because she was my friend, but because she was just about the nicest lady I ever met. Grace brought into my life as she brought into yours, a soft, warm light every time I saw her, and every time I saw her was a holiday of its own. No question, I'll miss her, we'll all miss her, God bless you, Princess Grace.” If you know anything about James Stewart when he says something like this it means a lot.

She was born in Philadelphia where her dad was a local hero having won three Gold Medals at the Olympics for Sculling. He was also politically active running for mayor and during World War II, was appointed by President Roosevelt as National Director of Physical Fitness. 
 
More than likely her ethics and grace were due to the top notch Catholic schools she attended all the way through high school. It helped keep her grounded never giving in to the Hollywood lifestyle. She created an international non-profit organization sanctioned by the U.N. that protects the "moral and physical integrity" and "spiritual well-being of children throughout the world, without distinction of race, nationality or
religion and in a spirit of complete political independence." Her daughter Princess Caroline currently runs the charity. 
 
Princess Grace won 12 awards including an Academy Award for Best Actress. Some of her most famous movies include
Dial “M” for Murder, High Noon, High Society, Rear Window, and To Catch a Thief. Her movie career ended when she married the Prince of Monaco…they met on a tour she was on and it was love at first sight. As soon as she got back to the states he flew over to meet her parents and immediately asked her to marry him. This is strange I know but her family had to offer the Prince and the budget of Monaco $2 million dollars in a dowry. 

It was decided when she became Princess that continuing acting would negatively affect her new royal image and her ability to serve in her new role. All those great movies and all those amazing awards came to an abrupt end much to the dismay of MGM who had signed her exclusively to work for them. They did have an outstanding relationship though even having their best costume designer create Princess Grace’s wedding dress. 
 
The Princess of Monaco was married for 26 years and had three children two girls and one boy before her death. Once again a strange thing but if the Prince of Monaco didn’t produce a heir to his throne, upon his death Monaco would fall under France’s rule with no more Monaco monarchy. 

Princess Grace was driving on a narrow road in the mountains with one of her daughters and she suffered a stroke and the car went off the cliff. She was still alive when they found her but she died less than 24 hours later due to head trauma and internal bleeding. Her daughter Caroline survived the crash even though she had terrible injuries. 
 
Her husband Prince Rainier died 23 years after her death and never remarried although he had plenty of women young and old standing in line hoping for the opportunity to become Princess; I think this says a lot about his love for Princess Grace. 
 
As usual there’s so much more to her story but these are some highlights. It’s always a wonderful thing when we come across someone who is amazingly beautiful both inside and outside. Wouldn’t it be great if we had more of that now in Hollywood today?

Russia and the Ukraine (Two Minutes to Read)

3/22/2014

 
In two minutes you’ll know what you need to know about current events in Ukraine and believe me it’s an important issue because our relationship with Russia is at stake which means their allies (i.e. Iran, Georgia, Syria, Venezula, etc.), would be in play. Are things really heated up, let’s take a look at Putin’s recent comments: “There will be
catastrophic consequences should the U.S. meddle in our business.” After he said
this we backed down to saying we’ll take diplomatic actions (we once again drew
a line in the sand only to step back and draw a new one.  
 
A little background; both countries were pivotal in forming the U.S.S.R. back in 1922 and they were pivotal once again when the Soviet Union broke up in 1991. When they broke off, immediately disputes began as there were portions of Ukraine that Russia wanted for strategic reasons such as a major seaport on the Black Sea. In this particular matter Ukraine leased sections of the port to the Soviet Union through 2017.  When the Ukraine wanted to join NATO, Russia became livid because the last thing they wanted was for other countries to have influence over the Ukraine. This is what stoked the fire and got Russia saber rattling; they wanted to have influence over them through energy supplies without any other country having a stake in Ukraine.       

Around 60% of Ukraine’s population is Russian and in 2011 a very pro-Russian president was elected (Viktor Yanukovych). I don’t think there was anything Russia asked for that Yan didn’t allow. Here’s where things got ugly and why we’re seeing what we are on TV; a revolution took place and Russia’s friend (Viktor), was ousted from power and went on the run. Putin cannot afford for Ukraine to become destabilized to where NATO and/or the U.N. could come in and take away Russia’s influence there like the port Ukraine gave them access to on the Black Sea. Strategically it is to them what the Persian Gulf is to us.

So anyhow this is why things are so crazy over there. From a political perspective I don’t think President Obama should be making threats that all options are on the table. First of all he has drawn a red line before and nothing happened so we lost credibility. There’s no way in my opinion we’ll back up any threats we make. The only threats should be coming from the United Nations a united voice not one from the U.S. that won’t be executed. As it is now the perception is it’s us versus Russia and that’s a
terrible position to be in especially when we’re saying things like Putin wants to go back to the old days...how stupid…he has a large ego so this is exactly what we don’t need to do. This reminds me of how he’s worked with republicans, he says bad things about them then wants them to come to the table and negotiate.  What a terrible leader.
 
President Obama and even more so his staff, has had a foreign policy that lacks integrity and shifts around from moment to moment. You can’t have this because other countries don’t know where they stand with us…Israel is certainly confused especially when Obama made his first middle-east apology tour and he didn’t stop by Israel; if I were them I’d be nervous. 

I don’t know what they do behind the scenes but these are some things I’d do in reference to drafting a foreign policy:

Even though we don’t like to call it nation building we’re forcing democracy on countries where it can’t work. Many countries in the middle-east are loaded with various religious sects (tribes), so creating a legislative branch is impossible and any president we help get put into power will be considered by the citizens to be selling out to the west...they don't want leaders like this to be successful. The fact is many of these countries are more stable with a dictator. Our goal should be to reach the hearts and minds of the dictator and key members of his staff which is much easier than
trying to do the same with their entire population.

I’d quit trying to police the world. We went into Iraq for WMD’s but we were also there for humanitarian purposes as Sadam’s Royal Guard was killing and raping (even little girls), any families who were said to oppose his regime. His sons were raping women at will including in public to show their power. I don't want to police the world but in this case I'd be tempted to do something as what they were doing was disgusting. What I don't think we've done is define what humanitarian purposes are and what ones we'd go in to address. We haven't listed the amount of funding  necessary to address these defined humanitarian efforts so it becomes a free for all when Congress determines how much funds to release.  

One of the problems we have is the same people who are holding signs thanking us for coming are the same ones burning our flag telling us to leave. It’s not worth it. For over two thousand years this region has been unstable why in the world are we so arrogant that we think we can fix it?


    Author: John Mann

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