In 1998, I’d had a pretty busy couple of decades.

I’d started in radio (koff koff) 19 years earlier, in 1979.  That lasted until about 1992, when – tired of trying to raise two kids with another one on the way on $7 an hour, I got into technical writing – mostly writing user manuals, online help, reports and fdjdjweim asklssssssssssssss….

…sorry  I fell asleep just remembering that phase of my career.  Technical writing didn’t agree with me much.   It was good for me – it got me into the software business – but a good technical writer is a stickler for details in a way that I really just don’t much care to be.

I’d been a technical writer for about a year, working at the old Cray Research facility in Eagan, when I ran into a fellow tech writer who was in charge of building a “usability lab” – a room where users could be observed doing the jobs they were supposed to be doing on Cray software, noting the problems they had, developing trends, and eventually making recommendations on how to design the software to be easier to learn, less obtuse – better.

And I thought – instead of explaining how to work with badly designed software, why not just design the software to be more self-explanatory, and make more money and get more respect in the bargain?

It wasn’t quite that easy; at the time, user interface / human factors / Human Computer Interaction design was seen rarely outside of highly regulated industries like medical devices or defense contractors.

And most of them had masters degrees in industrial, cognitive or experimental psychology.   I had a BA in English.

But I spent four years of spare time reading, practicing designing things, and learning about the trade from the few people I could find as mentors.  And twenty years ago today, I walked into my first User Experience job at StorageTek in Brooklyn Park.

And, to my amazement, succeeded.  For twenty years.

…since this article – about an obscure Congressional candidate who admits (or claims) to be a pedophile and a white supremacist – mentions no party affiliation, we’ll assume he’s a Democrat?

This past weekend was all about political conventions; for the first time in a long, long time,

The Gales Of November Came…In Spring:   When I left Saint Paul on Friday morning, it was up around 80 degrees.  When I got to Duluth two hours later, it was 47 with a wind howling off the lake.

But the cold on the first day of June was just about the only surprise.   Every one of the front runners – Jeff Johnson for Governor, Karin Housley and Jim Newberger for Senate – got the endorsement.

It wasn’t completely uneventful, of course.  All weekend, there were rumors that the Pawlenty campaign had voting shenanigans afoot – getting his delegates to vote No Endorsement, and then flip to Parrish.  There were signs early – the first ballot showed 7% “No Endorsement”.  That faded to 2% by the second ballot.

More surprising was Mary Giuliani Stevens’ showing.  The Woodbury mayor had a large, enthusiastic showing on the floor.  Scuttlebutt had it that if Johnson didn’t win on the first ballot, there’d be a huge Giuliani Stevens surge.   It didn’t pan out – Johnson won the first ballot 45/26 (with 20 going to Parrish), and extended his lead to 50/25/16 on the second ballot.  Dock a point from the rumor mill.

So given that the whole thing is going to a primary with Pawlenty, it’s probably just as well we didn’t waste a lot of effort on convention dramatics.

Especially since the other convention was providing plenty of that.

Crazy In Clinic Town:   We knew it was going to be a doozie when we read Rep. Jamie Becker Finn’s endorsement statement for Tim Walz:

With a sendoff like that, what could go wrong?

The first signs that the crazy train had pulled into the station came early in the afternoon Saturday, when the first ballot came in in the DFL Attorney General race.  Lori Swanson won the ballot – by four points, 52/48, over left-wing extremist Matt Pelikan.  Then, reportedly, Pelikan spoke to the delegates, telling them that Swanson had an “A” rating from the NRA (for all of Swanson’s liberal interventionism, she has always been solid on 2nd Amendment rights).  She reportedly dropped out of the endorsement race, leaving Pelikan to get endorsed by acclamation.

Rebecca Otto – one of the most disagreeable people in Minnesota politics – went out early, after one ballot, with 18 paltry percent.  The conversation in the press pit turned to What IT All Meant for the DFL Governor endorsement.  The conventional wisdom had been calling for a Tim Walz win, early and fast.

But after six ballots, extremist Saint Paul prog legislator Erin Murphy was pulling ahead.  After six ballots, not wanting to fight against the endorsement, Otto and Walz came out on the floor, urging a “No Endorsement” vote.  But Murphy was not to be denied.   She took the endorsement after, I forget, six or seven ballots.

And so two vital DFL seats were decided, in large part, because of current or former stances on the Second Amendment.   Let’s put a pin in that.

But we’re not done yet.

Upshot;  The DFL convention continued until Sunday – when Murphy made her big announcement; her running mate was…

…Erin Maye Quade.  A left wing extremist, whose wife is a paid organizer for Michael Bloomberg.

So the message from the DFL convention: “Don’t be silly, nobody’s coming for your guns. But we’re coming for your guns”.

DFL endorsed gubernatorial candidate Erin Murphy has never minced words about her antipathy toward civilian gun owners; her platform is a dog’s breakfast of every terrible, ineffective bit of security theater that *can not* affect crime rates *or* mass shootings. And Erin Maye Quade’s wife is a paid “Everytown” employee. Long on snark, short on reasoning, Maye Quade never saw any pointless theatrics she didn’t like.

And long-time DFL Attorney General Lori Swanson lost the DFL’s endorsement, almost like flipping a light switch, when challenger (and extreme gun grabber) Matthew Pelikan mentioned that, as liberal as Swanson is on every other issue, she’s a solid defender of the law-abiding citizen’s right to keep and bear arms. And Tim Walz lost what had been considered a sure-fire endorsement in large part because he *used to be* a strong 2nd Amendment supporter (before throwing Minnesota’s law-abiding gun owners under the bus to unsuccessfully woo the increasingly extremist DFL delegate base; even that wasn’t enough to save the endorsement.

The DFL reflects a base that is more afraid of law-abiding citizens than they are of society’s actual problems. Don’t take my word for it; look at their endorsements.

Every last one of them.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Recently had a conversation with a guy from Great Britain.  He couldn’t figure out why Trump voters wouldn’t pay for free college, free medical care, higher minimum wage, longer paid vacations, better social security.  Why are we such haters? Tried to explain to him that the math doesn’t work but he didn’t get it.  “In my country, if an old woman has no income and can’t work, we consider it an honor to pay for her retirement.”  Yes, but that’s giving a moral answer to a mathematics question.  It’s a category error.
Consider it this way: what’s 2 + 2?  If you answer 4, you give a mathematically correct answer.  But is 4 a virtuous moral answer?  Does it reflect society’s commitment to diversity and the underprivileged?  Maybe 5 would better enhance social justice?  Maybe if we were more caring people, our politicians would pass a law making 2 + 2 = 5.
That’s pretty much the way we operate nowadays.  The poor pay no taxes.  The rich hide their money and pay no taxes.  The middle class claims to want to help everybody but that’s just a way to signal their virtue to others (any politician who ran on a platform of promising to double your taxes to support higher welfare spending would be crushed at the polls).  Politicians take in 4 but spend 5 to signal their virtue to taxpayers.  All those extra 1’s are the reason the national debt is more than $20 trillion.  Maybe it’ll never have to be repaid and there will never be any consequences because Americans are just that clever.  This is my skeptical face.

 Joe Doakes

It was about 100 years ago that Americans learned that they could get others to pay for their virtues.  It’s been downhill ever since.

Join me from 2-3PM today on a rare Sunday episode of the NARN!

Today on the show:

• The GOP convention.
• The DFL convention.

Don’t forget – King Banaian is on from 9-11AM on AM1440, and Brad Carlson is  on “The Closer” edition of the NARN Sundays from 2-3PM.

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Join us!

Berg’s Seventh Law: “When a Liberal issues a group defamation or assault on conservatives’ ethics, character, humanity or respect for liberty or the truth, they are at best projecting, and at worst drawing attention away from their own misdeeds.”

Remember during the campaign, when Donald “The Donald” Trump’s history of sexist japes, braggadocio and womanizing went from being a Hollywood inside joke to grist for a desperate Clinton campaign to dig out of a hole?

Of course you do.  You couldn’t escape it.

And as I saw that unfolding in Hillary’s attempt to claw her way into office, I kept thinking;  “Yes, it’s about drawing attention away from Bill and her history of committing and abetting unspeakable horrors upon women to the winking and chuckling of their buddies in high lefty places”.

But I  also thought “it’s gotta be more than this”.

And with the juxtaposition of Roseanne Barr (whose show was tanked within a day of her racist jape on Twitter) and Samantha Bee (who will be a cause celébre on the left, just you watch), it became clear; the borg that is Big Left just doesn’t think their own (the “elite” at the top of the prog pile – the Clintons, Emmanuels, Feinsteins, Waterses and the like) can be guilty of anything.  

Case in point:

Ivanka legitimized trump by being pretty & seeming sane, & libs created a (kinda sexist) Rapunzel narrative that she was ‘trapped’. She’s from a crime family, she married into a crime family, she’s a grown up. She will do as much damage as she can get away with. Sam was too kind.

— Joss Whedon (@joss) May 31, 201

When you have a movement whose “elite” (koff koff) takes private jets halfway around the world to conferences where they tell everyone else to move into apartments and take transit? That sends its kids to private academies but hectors you for putting yours in a charter school? That parks its money in tax shelters run by rooms full of tax lawyers and tells you you’re unpatriotic for wanting your taxes lowered?

Who tell you “Misogyny is bad” while excusing…ugly stupid misogyny (in terms so patronizing and sexist that they’d have gotten any Republican politican exiled to rural Alaska)?

I guess I can see why they deflect to “Racism” when talking about why Trump won.

A motorist who shot a man acting erratically and aggressively – with a knife – after a traffic accident in Fridley last fall won’t be charged.  

According to the attorney’s office, Schiffler got out of his vehicle, grabbed a woman and began forcefully groping and kissing her. He also, the attorney’s office said, stabbed at the window of a nearby car with a 4-inch knife.

Another motorist unholstered his gun and told Schiffler to stop. According to the attorney’s office, Schiffler then raised his knife and charged at the man with the gun. The man shot him three times, and Schiffler died from his injuries.

“The evidence demonstrates the shooter had no reasonable ability to further retreat, given the physical surroundings, proximity of other people and the actions of Schiffler,” the attorney’s office said in a press release.

Gun-grabbers might say that’s not the same as “justifiable” homicide.  They’re right.  It’s better.  The cops and the county attorney believe there was no point in taking the case to court; nobody needs to prove it was justified.

I’d say “I love a happy ending” – but of course it’s not a happy ending; even insane and impaired people are human beings, usually with some sort of parents or sibling out there.

But then, so were the people that Mr. Schiffer threatended with a knife.

…should be a pretty terrifying verdict on the state of our republic – or at least of the “elites” that infest half of it.