A little piece of advice for the Mayor of Richmond, don’t use government stationary to promote a political event.

On August 26, Mayor Sally L. Hutton put out a news release saying the Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jill Long Thompson was coming to town to talk with Master Brand Employees, 275 of which are losing their jobs and some were featured in the latest JLT ad.

The release was put out on City of Richmond letter head, which meant it was taxpayer-funded.  According to state law, taxpayer dollars cannot be used for political purposes.

Now this isn’t Watergate, but if people are going to run on ethics reform, it would be nice if they would tell their friends and supporters to pay attention and do the same.

A friend of mine who is a single mom and I were chatting last night about the Palin family pregnancy situation.   She shared with me the ten life lessons she wanted her daughter to know.  She gave them to her daughter at 16.   She is now a senior in college.  I asked if I could reprint them.  She said yes…

1. Have sex only because you want to, never assume a man will love you because you have given him the one and only sacred special part of you.
2. Never get pregnant trying to trap a man into marriage and most definitely don’t get pregnant by anyone you will assume will be a professional athlete.  He may not make it to the pros and then are you are stuck with a baby you don’t want and tied to someone who can’t or won’t pay child support and a man you hate.
3. Never assume you will get married to some prince charming who will help you pay your bills first; it might not happen and it could turn into desperation.
4. Always prepare for tomorrow and manage your money because most people do not have good money management skills.  When you are tied down to the wrong person, they will pull you down.
5. Remember, you are beautiful and will attract men.  Choose wisely.  Remember, there is more than one penis in this world so don’t assume you are in love because someone makes you have an orgasm.
6. Have control in your own life and before you submit to anyone, make sure they are strong, can handle business and have control of their own life.
7. Always watch a person’s body language.  Their mouth might say I love you, but look at how they treat you; observe their actions and movements.  People tend to tell on themselves because they are not conscience of their body language.
8. Don’t have children because you want them to take care of you when you are old, have them because of joy and love.
9. Protect your credit because even if you aren’t rich, excellent credit can help you get anything you want.
10. And remember, I will always love you and be there to guide you through any situation.

While there are no guarantees in this world that your daughter won’t get pregnant, I think these guidelines can go a long way to helping avoid that situation.

Now that we all know that Vice-Presidential pick Sarah Palin’s daughter got pregnant by her  hockey player boyfriend we can take a step back and have an adult conversation.

Now for those of you who think this is a private matter and nobody’s business, I think you’re right, to a point.  Where I disagree is that when you have a policy maker whose appeals to social conservatives, in part, because of her stance on traditional family values and abstinence only-education, when one of her own children shows up pregnant,  you’re bound to raise a unibrow or two.  And I think it is worth discussing.

Secondly, I also have to ask are we glorifying teen pregnancy and now telling teenage girls that it is okay to get pregnant as long as your family supports you and you can take care of the baby?  If that is the case,  Jamie Lynn Spears is about to become a hero.

And third, if your daughter came home pregnant, what would you do?

Take a moment and pause and feel free to share your thoughts.

After a few days of pondering the nomination of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin for vice-president, that is my conclusion. She brings some big pluses to John McCain’s campaign, but she also brings some baggage as well.

As a woman, she continues to add to the history making moments of this campaign, but I also don’t think she’ll get too many Hillary Clinton supporters because of her positions on guns, abortion and the environment.

She does bring legislative experience to the table, however she was a part-time Mayor and only Governor since 2007 so that may effectively neutralize the experience argument against Barack Obama.

She has a reputation for being a reformer, a maverick and fiscal conservative, which helps John McCain’s reputation.  However, as reported in USA Today, while running for Governor in 2006 she backed the famous, or infamous,  “bridge to nowhere.”  She also spent money on DC lobbyists to get earmarks for her city.  She also raised what could be considered a “windfall” profits tax on Alaska’s oil companies.

Palin also excites the GOP base, which was at best cool to McCain’s candidacy.  But you could also argue the base was so starved for something to get excited over, that you could have throw them a cracker and they would have thought it was cake.

So in the end, I argue Palin’s candidacy is a wash.  But don’t forget, the first rule of picking a VP candidate is “do no harm” and since it’s even break, John McCain and Sarah Palin have done what they needed to do.

John McCain has picked Alaska Governor Sarah Palin to be his running mate.  She brings a number of pluses to the table.  She has a reputation for being a reformer in Alaska politics.  Alaska is the part of the debate on energy. She would be the first female to run for Vice-President on the Republican ticket and she is also socially conservative, being pro-life and a lifetime NRA member.

The only minus is that she was elected Governor in 2006 so the experience charge may be effectively neutralized by both political camps.

Let the games begin.

Give it to the Democrats.  They got their act together.  They went into a convention with questions and issues about unity, broadening their appeal, the possibility of a floor fight and whether their nominee could hit one out of the park.  Give them credit, they pulled it off.

While the GOP is still struggling to get 10,000 to John McCain’s Vice-Presidential announcement today, the Dems managed to get 80,000 people in a place built for 76,000.  Barack Obama even got praise from Conservatives like Ed Rollins and Charles Krauthammer. 

Beating Barack will not be easy.  He has a ton of cash, a heck of an organization (they got an estmiated 3 million phone numbers from last weeks text messaging efforts) and he demonstrated in his speech last night that he will take the gloves off.

To beat him,  the GOP will have to use a scalpel instead of a two by four and methodically cut away at his arguments instead of direct frontal assaults.  Regardless, Republicans underestimate them at their own risk.

So despite your politics, give the man his due.   And let’s see what things look like after the GOP convention in Minnesota.

I’m sitting down watching Barack Obama accept his party’s nomination for the Presidency of the United States.   I don’t necessarily agree with all his positions, but I am taken back by the history of the moment.  If you can’t appreciate the history in the making, it’s probably because you have never had a reason to.

Indiana Secretary of State Todd Rokita says there are 500,000 new and updated voter registrations in Indiana.   Rokita says that brings the number of voters in the state to 4.4 million and there are still six weeks to go before voter registration ends.  More than 200,000 of those registrations are new voters.  In 2004, Indiana saw 565,000 new and updates voter registrations.   A spokesman says they could get between 700,000 and 750,000 new and updated regsistered voters by the time voter registration ends in October.

As I said in my previous, I will give Hillary Clinton credit where credit is due and she gave a great political speech last night, but the true test will be whether her supporters get on board.  The problem with most of them, usually the middle-aged women who came of age in the feminist movement, is they don’t know how to act like men. 

These are the people who say women and men should be treated equally up until the point that they actually are.  Feminists will whine and complain about how Hillary Clinton was treated unfairly by the media, when she wasn’t.  She was treated just like a man.  

Men get tough questions, tough scrutiny and a tough time.  And so do female candidates who want to be taken seriously.  They don’t cry, they buck and get in and fight.

In addition, whenever feminists get into the debate and their position gets the same scrutiny as the opposing side, they quickly retreat and say they are being treated unfairly because they’re women.  No, you’re get the equal treatment that you asked for.

The middle-aged feminist supporters who think Hillary was treated unfairly by the media need to get a clue.  They need to stop being angry, bitter and clinging to their bras.  They need to buck up.  In other words, they need to act like men.

She gave a great political speech tonight at the Democratic National Convention and told her supporters to get over themselves.  If these guys actually follow through the GOP is in trouble nationally.