Staying at a business and family favorite hotel in Midtown, with the same name as my first born child, The Barclay. Planning several New York tourist jaunts to see the massive Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree, then the nearby Radio City Music Hall Christmas Spectacular with the Rockettes and Santa Claus. With tickets for the latter exceeding the price of our airline flights, that kick line better be good. 

AAA is projecting 125-million Americans will be hitting the road or flying the not-so-friendly skies between Christmas Eve eve and New Year’s Day. The worlds’ busiest airport, Hartsfield Atlanta Jackson International is expecting nearly 4-million passengers through its seven concourses and few hundred gates during that same period. That is roughly half the population of metro New York City through one airport in just over one week.

Weather and flight delays during these jammed flight weeks are more customary than not. Tight flight connections can add another layer of anxiety. However, with the exception of the light crowds during the Covid years, I’ve not seen a holiday travel season without witnessing one or a handful of passenger meltdowns. Most of these occur in the terminal, aimed at Gate Agents, but more than a few in the air as well.

Travel delays cascade, and foul weather at one major airport or hub on the east coast can impact the entire system. Passengers grow sullen and increasingly insistent for answers on the adjusted time of departure and landing… or break out profanity and swear off an air carrier, while swearing at the agent or flight attendant NOT in charge of the proceedings at hand.

Please pack your patience and understanding. When an airline or airport is operating at capacity, impacted by foul weather or even mechanical breakdown, your foul mood will not change the weather forecast, nor expedite an answer on when your flight will make the air. And similarly, on the flight, cold air from Canada and points north can mix with warmer tropic air and hot pockets, causing turbulence or even times when the hot air moves above the cold, that the jet can make a seemingly dramatic drop. Hot air lifts and rises. Cold air, not so much.

If you think about the sheer number of passengers, packages and luggage moved from points A to B to C in such compressed time frames, it really is a marvel of logistics, until you or your flight become the cog jamming or getting caught in a sometimes overwrought system.

My three part treatment plan to reduce your agita and better prepare you for your destination: Consider train travel where Amtrak does go. Rail travel has its own logistical challenges, primarily caused by freight traffic, but I vastly prefer the slower pace, time to rest, write or converse with other passengers and see the country in a way that few now do. Olivia, like me, loves trains, so we will be returning from NYC on the Crescent, sort of the Polar Express in reverse. From the great white north, heading south into the hopefully snow-covered Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, then the Blue Ridge Mountains thereafter, later Charlotte and eventually, mid-Christmas morning, back home in Atlanta.

When traveling with children, turn the various traumas of travel into a game or competition, keep loose score and award the BEST traveler with their first choice of restaurant selection when you reach your holiday destination. You will likely be dining out anyway at some point.

And try to remember, even if the airport or weather in transit is hellish, there are plenty of people out and about with nowhere to go, no one to see, possibly with not even a home to sit in warmly but alone. You and yours are amply blessed, try and turn that frown upside down, sit back and enjoy the ride. Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah and safe holiday travels.

The post One man’s opinion: Over the river and through the woods appeared first on Rough Draft Atlanta.

Acts of violence and attacks on any seagoing vessel, more than 12-miles off of any coast or shoreline, sailing in international waters are considered acts of piracy. During 2020, in the Gulf of Guinea, near the horn of Africa, 180 crew members, seafarers and passengers were taken hostage and kidnapped for ransom, or in some cases tossed into the sea.

The pirates themselves came from a variety of African states. Though none were government or official naval sailors, they were heavily armed, often very violent. Initially after oil and other valuable cargo on board, they shifted their tactics to larger and larger ships, often staffed by small crews, to steal more and more valuable cargo, as well as often ransoming the crews back later to their shipping lines and companies.

Extreme poverty in parts of the continent of Africa, and particularly among Somalis made these crimes appear, at least to the perpetrators, as crimes of survival. Though down from the higher numbers of the 2010s, he problem still persists.

Which brings us to today and half a world away, and long troubled relations between the United States and Venezuela, and primarily its current leader, Nicolas Maduro. During a phone call from U.S. President Donald J. Trump on November 30, our U.S. President called on Maduro to immediately resign, guaranteeing him and his family safe passage out of the country, but only if he immediately agreed to leave office and the country. Maduro countered, seeking a global pardon for any crimes he and his associates might later be charged with. President Trump declined that request, the talk reached an impasse.

Within hours, the President announced closure of Venezuela’s airspace and notified private pilots through the FAA, not to fly over or into Venezuela and that the nation’s airspace is closed.

In addition to moving an aircraft carrier into the region, since early September our U.S. Navy has been ordered, on several occasions, to blow Venezuelan ships out of the waters of the North Atlantic and Caribbean seas suspected of being drug traffickers. Yes, you read that correctly. If those ships were in U.S. Coastal Waters, our U.S. Coast Guards, at times backed up by our Navy or Naval Reserves, come aboard, commandeer and occasionally seize vessels suspected of drug trafficking. The sailors and crews of those boats are taken into custody, charged with appropriate crimes or in some cases immediately deported back to their nation of origin to a potentially more dangerous fate.

We are however not in any declared state of military conflict with the nation of Venezuela, with the exception of their recently closed airspace. The President has defended these actions, and the decisions of his Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, as likely saving the lives of thousands of Americans from ingesting illegal and dangerous Fentanyl. Yet without boarding any of these ships, we have doomed dozens to death, with evidence only gathered by drone or intelligence sources. We know of many other countries which produce and smuggle in larger sources of Fentanyl, and I was even surprised to learn during one of my own recent surgeries, that Fentanyl is also used in very small doses as a surgical anesthetic, as it is 50 times more powerful than morphine.

Leading Democrats and Republicans on the two committees in both chambers of Congress overseeing the Pentagon have begun raising questions about the manner and force used by our U.S. Navy on these alleged drug boats. Operating under verbal commands alleged to have been given by Defense Secretary Hegseth, the use of lethal force has been authorized for all ships and crew members suspected of drug smuggling at sea. International maritime law provides no nation with such authority. Interdict a ship, move on board, seek out smuggling activity, gun or drug running, etc, make arrests and later hold trials, but not execution without proof of illegal actions.

As we stand often atop a small mountain of our own piety to justify our military actions and foreign policy choices, before this goes much further, let’s take a good hard look in the mirror. Are we directing and making our own long and justifiably proud U.S. Navy into PIRATES?

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There are times in life when a moment crystallizes in your mind, and increasingly, at least for me, when you can anticipate when that latest ‘hot topic,’ is about to jump the shark.

My father is an astute businessman and longtime savvy investor in many things, however, he is not the guy up to speed on all things new and different. A few months back, he pulled me aside to apparently share something of great value in confidence. In a near whisper, he offered, “They are going to stop using paper currency sometime soon, probably time to start moving some dollars into that crypto-currency stuff.”

At that precise moment, I knew that if dad was even aware that cryptocurrency existed, that investment bubble was about to burst. Thanks for the tip, dad. Using reverse logic, you were on the money. I am admittedly not a savvy investor. I am a steady saver, and my investing leans hard to the more conservative side of the ledger in money market CDs, municipal bonds, blue chip stocks, and even real estate. The risks of electronic cryptocurrency have largely kept me away, but I can also admit that I don’t entirely get the concept.

An endless string of coding, mostly zeroes and ones, moving towards infinity. In supposedly limited supply, while still being mined and manufactured daily in data centers across the globe. International regulation is all but non-existent, the market is new enough that the federal government is still figuring it out, and extensive passcodes, which can get lost, create intricate access to even your own crypto holdings. Yet, this is a strong enough ‘free market’ that the Trump sons have created a new crypto that has already increased the family fortunes by a few billion.

Cryptocurrency miners run computers in large warehouses on racks at top speed 24/7, which consume huge amounts of electricity as well as water to keep those computers running cool. Those collective data farms are currently comparable to the domestic energy consumption of Norway. A single data center has roughly the same energy footprint as 250,000 American homes.

That electricity can’t all come from sustainable sources, meaning that the industry is also a net polluter. And whether your cryptocurrency of choice is Bitcoin, Luna, Ethereum, or some lesser-known e-currency, they all share one thing in common at present. After hitting peak prices in 2021, their values are all down substantially. Several smaller Crypto currencies have ceased operations, leaving their investors holding the bag. In fact, the only part of the e-currency industry operating solidly in the black are the e-currency exchanges. They each make a small commission whether prices are going up or down.

The Federal Trade Commissioner (FTC) also reports that more than 46,000 Americans have been stung by Crypto scams since January 2021, as many still believe the myths of rapid wealth, much more than current market dynamics. And of course, crypto boosters will tell you that all markets are cyclic and that their pricing and value will recover. For those crypto cheerleaders, I have five words for you to ponder: electro-magnetic pulse and black-outs.

Domestically, the most recent green energy bill signed into law was during the Biden Administration, and intended to expedite huge market shifts (while now being dismantled by the Trump Administration) pushed aggressively towards more electric vehicles and the use of more sustainable energy sources. Those are worthy goals, but as we are seeing globally as well as domestically with brown-outs and black-outs during this summer of record heat, those ‘green’ energy sources typically cannot provide high-demand baseload, in the same fashion as coal, natural gas or nuclear generated electrical power. Our grid is also not designed for the increasing pull of E-vehicles in every home garage, and unless we commit soon to a much larger new nuclear energy reactor fleet, we will not be able to meet base power production demand in many urban areas during the summertime. And our home state of Georgia has also become ‘project site central’ for new data centers.

Yes, the more reliable cryptocurrencies and data mining farms do have onsite backup generator, but even fail-safes can fail. Who knew that the Kryptonite for high-flying cryptocurrencies might be a combination of green energy policy and sporadic and unpredictable power outages? Innovation can still save or turn any industry apparently heading for a quick exit or downturn. And again, I am no expert, but perhaps add an endless string of XXX’s to all of those zeroes and ones… those certainly seemed to have worked out quite well for the porn industry.

The post One man’s opinion: Cryptocurrency’s Kryptonite appeared first on Rough Draft Atlanta.

Major Cox clients and advertisers mixed and mingled with WSB-TV and Radio management, sales team members and news talent. MTG was articulate, poised and professional, and though I had been the radio and TV station’s political analyst for several years at that point, she made no comments, nor asked any questions of a public policy or political nature.

Years later, Taylor Construction would become a substantial donor to the annual WSB Radio Care-athon, benefitting the AFLAC Cancer & Blood Disorders Services Center at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. Leading advertisers and corporate citizens like Taylor help WSB listeners raise $1-2 million per year, and to date more than $30-million towards pediatric cancer research, treatments, cures and support for family members with children going through often extensive and expensive treatment.

During 2020, When Congressman Tom Graves (R-Ranger) retired from Georgia’s 14^th Congressional District, one of the state’s most reliably conservative, to become a lobbyist and spend more time with his family. Then political neophyte, MTG would seek and win that seat, in the process also becoming among the most ardent and visible supporters of President Donald J. Trump during the 2020 contests. As we know the outcomes that fall, MTG’s stocks were on the rise, while Mr. Trump’s were on the decline.

Having previously experienced the business face first and more polished, MTG, I admit it was challenging reconciling this with the later more ‘clown car’ version of her, so inexplicably and blindly loyal to DJT. Though frequently critical of House Speakers and the architect of the fall of prior Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), until quite recently, in MTG’s eyes, DJT could do no wrong.

The shift started to become visible during the most recent government shutdown, which would also become the country’s longest. Congress was in recess, and as MTG spent more time at home in her district, she became more vocal over concerns of inflation, price cuts never materializing, the rear end impact of tariff costs and most significantly the spiraling costs of health care. MTG began to loudly criticize the current Speaker, Mike Johnson as well as the leadership of the Georgia GOP and RNC as rudderless Boys’ Clubs.

MTG’s ‘space’ between her own views and party leadership began to grow as did questions of whether or not these changes were real or simply a new positioning for MTG 2.0.

MTG emphasized that her focus had not changed. She was still putting America and her constituents first. She also continued to vocally support the victims of sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and for the release of all documents and files to identify the other perpetrators, beyond Ghislaine Maxwell, noting that there was still NO MAN doing any kind of time for the several thousand victims of Epstein’s crimes.

The government re-opened. House Democrats and the Republicans release new Epstein documents and Emails, and then Trump releases a torrent of shots at MTG, referring to her rants and instability, and concluding that not only has “Marjorie lost her way,’ but that the President will work with the ‘good people of her district’ to find another conservative to support and run in the 2026 Primaries against her.

MTG fired back on Truth Social and elsewhere, even sharing several of her earlier private text exchanges with the President. By week’s end, MTG said, “I truly just stand with the women.” (Source: BBC).

Oddly, though not citing MTG, in roughly 48 hours, Trump reversed course on holding up the Epstein files, announcing that the U.S. Justice Department was now investigating Democrats involved with Epstein, and tranches of several more thousand pages of documents would soon be released. Can’t quite call this a win for MTG, but DJT did cave.

Have never lived in the Georgia 14^th District, nor been an MTG voter or supporter, but I have to admit I will now be watching this 2026 re-election effort with more than mild interest.

The post One man’s opinion: MTG 2.0 appeared first on Rough Draft Atlanta.

Travel abroad can also be inspiring and that was certainly the case during his first term when President Donald J. Trump was invited on a state visit to France by President Emmanuel Macron, during a time which included Bastille Day, July 14th. Each year in Paris since 1880, with only wartime exception, the French has celebrated the Bastille Day Military Parade, passing down the Avenue des Champs-Elysees tom the Palace of Charles de Gaulle, centered around the Arc de Triomphe and on to the Palace de la Concorde, where the President of France, member of government and the Mayor of Paris, along with foreign ambassadors and visiting dignitaries stand in revue. The President of France arrives via a convoy of the Republican Guard to the Arc de Triomphe, where he is greeted by the parade commander, who informs the President that the troops and armaments are now ready for inspection.

Let’s just say that Trump was impressed. President Trump has since held two grand military review parades in Washington, D.C., the first on a Fourth of July, and the more recent to celebrate the 250th birthday of the U.S. Army. Though American soldiers can and do march well, the District of Columbia and its roadways were not designed for some of the heavier tanks and military machinery on display. Trump knows that events created by Executive Order often have little lasting impact upon the departure of that particular Commander in Chief.

At a recent donor dinner hosted at the White House on October 15th, the President updated Whitehouse Ballroom donors that read like a Who’s Who of some of the nation’s wealthiest CEOs and individuals. During the gala, the President unveiled his next planned improvement for the District of Columbia, anticipating that the donors in the room might be similarly receptive, to three models of an Arc de Trump, to be built on the D.C. end of the Arlington Memorial Bridge, which crosses the Potomac and connects D.C. to Virginia at the entrance to Arlington National Cemetery.

A journalist in attendance noted the many monuments in place to war veterans along the Mall, “Who will this be for?” With little hesitation the President replied, “It’s for me.”

President Trump would like this Arch completed in time for America’s 250th birthday, July 4, 2026.

The Arc in Paris was commissioned in 1806 to honor those who fought and died for France during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, the Arc bears the names of French victories and generals engraved on its inner and outer surfaces. Following multiple construction delays, it was completed in 1836 during the reign of Louis Phillipe.

In 1994, President Bill Clinton appointed a 12- member Memorial Advisory Board to support efforts to construct a World War II Memorial on the Mall which had gotten underway in 1987. That momument was opened and dedicated on April 29, 2004 by President George W. Bush.

More than $197-million was privately raised, and the federal government contributed the prominent site and roughly $16-million to the costs of the project. The monument is staffed and maintained by the U.S. Park Service and hosts roughly 5,000,000 visitors per year.

I give the President, or any occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue reasonably broad purview to make additions/renovations or updates to the People’s House. A monument within the District of Columbia, honoring our nation, veterans and at the entrance to one of the nation’s most consecrated grounds should not be rushed, and not just a reflection of a great trip to Paris, no matter how grand. Bon voyage!

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