So, I’ve been wanting to change my website for some time, but haven’t had time to do it. I worked with Ali Akbar for months on and off when we had a chance to chat talking colors and ideas to make my blog look more like “me”. Turns out, I’m rather difficult to pin down.

Finally, though, with the push of another designer, we got here. The guts of the website design are the same and we’re going to add a few things here and there in a bit.

Still, I’m very curious about what you guys think. The colors are very daring. Well, as daring as a website can be. But let’s just say that according this Gender Color Theory, the colors are all wrong. And yet, when I asked people what colors they thought of when they thought of me, they said orange (go figure) and a golden yellow. Many also said pink. These colors are not traditional political colors. They’re not traditional anything colors.

We’ll see.

Also, I’ve been rather quiet here mostly because I’m blogging all over the place and don’t like duplicating content. I’ve decided to make this site more personal and kind of a page where you can see everything I’m up to lately and then go to the links if you’re interested.

Many thanks to Ali Akbar and the designers at Vice & Victory. They do great work. Check them out for political consulting, online stuff and online fundraising.

Thanks also to Daniel J. Summers my long-suffering tech guy. He has been a constant help for two years. I am extraordinarily blessed by the people I’ve met online. Daniel and I have never met in person and yet I trust him completely. New media world, baby! If you need work on your site, you won’t find anyone more knowledgeable, resourceful and reliable.

Your feedback is welcome! Please share your thoughts on the New Look. It was time for some spring cleaning around here.

More than half of office workers use sites like Twitter and Facebook for personal use during the working day, and admit wasting an average of 40 minutes a week each.

One in three of the 1,460 office workers surveyed also said they had seen sensitive company information posted on social networking sites, leading to fears about how workers use the internet.

Philip Wicks, consultant at Morse, the IT services and technology company who commissioned the survey, said the true cost to the economy could be substantially higher than the £1.38bn estimate.

Oh bah. Twitter and Facebook are social. Like the coffee station at work is social. Like the water cooler is social. Like the printer is social. They are gathering places for where people already talk. And everyone talks at work.

The concern with social media isn’t the time, it’s the ability to spread a message. Where office conversations can be like the game Telephone–one message to one person, one by one, and by the end, it’s distorted–social media can multiply a message exponentially. I tell my 10,000 “friends” on Twitter and they tell thousands more of their friends.

Even with this, though, there is a feedback loop. Often, when a message is spread via Social Media, a link goes with the “gossip”. A person who lies, distorts and spreads disinformation can achieve social pariah status pretty quickly. [Exception: Andrew Sullivan] Not so, in an office. The office gossip can be annoying, but most people deal with him or her because the information can be useful and powerful. And even still, these dynamics play out online and offline.

People are people. Work gets mental interruptions almost all of the time. That people take a few minutes for Twitter or Facebook is just another version of the same. Listen, the day that social media loving workers take as much time as those who take smoking breaks, there can be a conversation. In the meantime, bashing social media is just the latest way for bosses to obsess about their worker production.

P.S. There’s a recession. Most people are working very hard to keep their job. The bigger concern these days, I’m guessing, is burnout, not lost productivity. If anything, there isn’t enough play and too much work at work.

H/T TechCrunch

And then there is the internet. I have passed along “adult” language tweets. When I write on Twitter, I assume a more adult audience. That is, while I don’t want to be foul, sometimes language can be…flowery. That has lost me followers here and there who are averse to a little salt. One expressed shock and said that I wasn’t kid-friendly. Why are kids following my Twitter stream? Personally, I don’t think kids should watch the nightly news. It gives such a false and skewed perspective on the world…no bad words necessary.

This is what one blogger at Suburban Oblivion said about a chiding mom:

I received a message on a social media site recently asking that I tone down the language on my blog. Seems she feels what I write is not fit for young eyes.

Hey please watch the profanity i have young kids in my family that are on facebook and are on my page and i dislike being chewed out by there mothers and fathers for profanity on my page.

thanks for understanding, B

First I started to laugh. I have NEVER claimed what I write is child-friendly. Given the number of times a day I use the word ‘fuck’ on Twitter alone, I think it’s pretty clear I will never hit less than an ‘R’ rating. My humor is for adults, not children, clearly.

Then she follows with this:

As a parent, it is your job to keep your children from reading adult content on the internet.

As a parent, it is your job to not visit sites containing said adult content if you cannot keep those children from hanging over your shoulder and reading.

As a writer, it is not my job to censor myself so you don’t have to do your job (see above).

Seriously people..grow the fuck up and parent your kids, and quit expecting everyone on the internet to change their way of doing things just so you don’t have to.

So, I’m wondering. Is there two different standards? I’m pretty much the same in the real world as I am online. Every once in a while I’ll say ass or shit at home and get a scolding from my kids. Same thing happens online.

And while everyone is kvetching about naughty words, I think it’s important to have some perspective. This is an example of real nasty language. Bad words might be offensive to some, but what should really bother people is disgusting lies, obfuscation, and purposeful disseminating of disinformation.

The players include a supposedly anonymous blogger, a Montessori school owned by Democrats where the blogger has never been seen but is, ostensibly employed, a big Democratic donor, tax liens, stimulus funds, health care reform, and Democratic political campaigns.

UPDATED:

From Stacy McCain:

Because some liberal troll-commenters at Riehl World View have pretended not to see the dots that Dan has connected, I’ve offered a simple summary:

1. Jesse Griffin’s “employer of record” is Puffin Heights Montessori school.
2. Employees of that school told Dan that they have never seen Griffin at the school.
3. Former Alaska resident Catherine New was once listed as “primary contact” for the Puffin Heights school.
4. The Puffin Heights school was apparently bankrupted by IRS tax judgments and reorganized circa 2002, with “Yolanda Baber” listed as head of the LLC.
5. Online investigator Joseph Culligan has been unable to verify the existence of a “Yolanda Baber” in Anchorage.
6. Meanwhile, Catherine New and her husband, Eligio White, have prospered in the health-care industry and are “progressive” activists whose business recently received $4.3 million of stimulus money.

The first uploaded podcast (although, it’s really the 11th show and I need to figure out a way to get my other shows up on iTunes too) features Media Lizzy and we talk about women, beauty, cyber rape and much, much more.

Also, to listen to the show and join in the conversation, go to Radio For Conservatives tonight 10 Eastern and 9 Central. The chatroom is lots of fun. I’ll be there!

“In my book, there is no “leader” or “spokesman” for the Tea Party movement. It’s a pack, not a herd.”

Not parsing here, but he said, “leader”…”for the Tea Party movement” and that’s good enough for me.

So, why don’t the Democrats feed the legacy media’s darling, Keith Olbermann the real story..the story that hasn’t been told? Well, of course, it’s because Janeane Garofalo is involved. See, what really happened, is that Tea Party leader John Hawkins dumped Janeane Garofalo because behind her pseudo-intellectual discussions of frontal lobes and reptilian brain parts like amygdalas, she’s actually not that bright. Tea Party leader John Hawkins was disappointed. He had heard that liberal feminists were smarter and hipper. They didn’t wear lipstick or comb their hair, or even shave their armpits much, so he figured they MUST have brains. Imagine his surprise to find out that his rabid spaz of a dog Patten, hell the feral cats living beneath his house, had more executive brain function than the dour Ms. Garofalo.

Rebounding from that coupling, Tea Party leader John Hawkins heard that Maureen Dowd wore lipstick and was still single. Since she was a legacy media leader, having won a Pulitzer for her incisive writing and fierce investigative reporting, he figured they’d be a power couple. Alas, this union was doomed. Janeane Garofalo might not be that smart but her work as a CIA operative made her cagey and more than a little immune to the moral vagaries of torture. Ms. Dowd met an unfortunate end. She was found Manolo-up with some form of microcomputer sewn into the skin of her mid-back but that’s a story for another Bourne novel.

Why Keith Olbermann refuses to report Tea Party leader John Hawkin’s sordid social past is itself a murky tale. Evidently, the news would be a boost to the true media leader, Chris Matthew’s TV show Hardball because Chris Matthews and Maureen Dowd were tied together (not literally, well, not for long anyway) by a common leg shivering malady. It’s incurable.

Never mind that Tea Party leader John Hawkins gets marginalized while guys like Dick Armey, Newt Gingrich, Erik Telford, Michael P. Leahy and Eric Odom get all the credit. Lameness.

When. Will. The. Bias. End? I ask you. Really, Keith. Get it right! Your petty professional jealousy. Your not-so-secret lust for torture-loving, lipstick-averse CIA operatives. It all reeks of a complete lack of professionalism. You have a reputation to uphold. Get your stories right.

John Hawkins, leader of the Tea Party movement, a man swirling in controversy, can’t buy press because of the horrendous bias. Still, he found it better to step down than subject Patten, the cats, and, the Tea Party movement, who follows his brave lead, any more shame. Anyone else, and this is a story. Tea Party leader John Hawkins, is too big, it seems for bad press. He, like Democratic populist mansion-living, super-rich, loving husband and lawyer John Edwards and law and order focused, corruption-fighting, straight arrow Eliot Spitzer, decided to spare the Tea Party movement, his party and his dull-witted ex-girlfriend any more shame.

You heard it here first.

Tonight is the inaugural episode of my new radio show called Right Doctor for Radio For Conservatives. Listen at RFCradio.com at 10 EST or 9 CST.

There is also a chat room. I’d love your feedback! I’ll be there, please join in the conversation.

Also, in the second half of the hour (hour long show), I interview John about what he means when he says he thinks the Right should get dirty like the Left. Lots of good stuff!

Hope you’ll join me every Monday and Wednesday night at 10 Eastern for one hour….on Tuesdays and Thursdays, Tabitha Hale of Pink Elephant Pundit and Smart Girl politics will have a show. And on Fridays, Emily Zanotti will do an Indie music show in that time slot. After us, from 11-midnight is the Comedian and awesome host Stephen Kruiser of America Needs Me.