I first met Brian Kemp as a young State Senator from Athens, Georgia.

My first trip to Sin City was during Christmas week in 1995.

Growing up in a household where both parents were heavy smokers, I can attest directly to the lifetime impacts of second-hand smoke.

I first met then-U.S. Senator Joe Biden of Delaware in 1988, during what would be his first of two unsuccessful campaigns for President of the United States (1988, 2008).

I grew up in suburban metro Atlanta, Georgia, under one party and primarily Democratic rule.

The motion picture and television production industries domestically are temporarily stalled by a Writer's strike, and though much of the industry now is distributed across many right-to-work states like Georgia, the related artistic and production unions are honoring the strike, refusing to cross picket lines and placing an indefinite pause on millions in productions by major and minor studios alike.

Spending as much time as I do in the political arena, I all too often hear friends or family members generalize, stereotype and say something akin to, "You can't trust any politician. They are all only out for themselves."

It is the world's largest outcropping of granite, and on its northeastern elevation, is the world's largest bass relief carving, nearly three football fields long and 90 feet tall, a trio of Confederate leaders, President Jefferson Davis, General Robert E. Lee, and General Stonewall Jackson, facing the eastern horizon on horseback.