SAINTS PRESERVE US

Field Notes from a Strange Land, Strong and Free

Summer’s here, all is quiet on the western front. The political scene in Alberta is relatively dormant, the legislature is on recess until the fall session. Irregardlessly, a couple of items in last week’s news caught my eye.

The CBC reported that the Banshee of Invermectin, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, has been holding closed-door town hall meetings around the province with the United Conservative Party membership, the good folk who have paid their dues. She’s aware a leadership review is scheduled for November and she’s very aware of the fate inflicted upon her predecessor, Jason Kenney, by the UCP’s lunatic fringe which she has placated and pandered to.

I was amused to death to learn the premier, architect of an ersatz Alberta sovereignty act, deflected a question about chemtrails in Calgary. What did her government intend to do about them? Contrails occur when condensation generated by jet engines meets awfully frigid air at 30,000 feet. Chemtrails are a little more sinister. They are evidence of an ultra-secret federal government plot to sterilize the populace by spraying a sort of, I don’t know, libido retardant. Obviously, Air Canada, WestJet and Porter are onboard with the program. Why Ottawa would sterilize a populace skewing older is something of a mystery to me. On the other hand, if you’re anti-immigrant, wouldn’t it be a good thing if all the shifty foreigners in this country were unable to reproduce?

(This just in: I’ve since been informed chemtrails are an element of a grand international cabal’s mind control scheme and they’re working beyond a doubt because people like me think that’s ludicrous. It’s common knowledge the cabal is comprised of German and Jewish bankers, Bill Gates and Ernst Stavro Blofeld but not Elon Musk.)

The premier replied that aviation was a federal jurisdiction. Apparently in this particular instance, fucking Trudeau wasn’t overstepping his bounds. The premier then allowed that her pertinent minister would follow up with their federal counterpart regarding the matter.

On Saturday the Calgary Herald’s Don Braid, seemingly the last Postmedia political pundit left standing in these parts, related a chat with UCP MLA (Calgary-Lougheed) Eric Bouchard who said he was working closely with Premier Smith’s minister of health to ban covid-19 vaccinations in Alberta. Said minister has, sensibly (somewhat UCP unusually), maintained her distance. Libertarians are a curious bunch. They resent government but they like to be part of it. And individual freedom of course, so loved, so valued, is best exercised when there are no choices available to muddle your thinking.

This is hazy, summer under the radar, crazy stuff. But the calendar turns. These people will soon get back to work writing and enacting legislation. Albertans should be aware that their premier patronized a lunatic by not simply admonishing them for being batshit crazy. There are some 42,000 people in Bouchard’s urban riding, about 29,000 of whom are eligible voters. I’ve my doubts they cast their ballots in favour of a mutating virus, a legislative super-spreader and another pandemic (all in one!). Just a hunch. Fortunately, the health care system is like a Philips TV, solid state, and there’s more beds available in the ERs and ICUs than there are at the Jasper Park Lodge. Calgary-Lougheed was former premier Kenney’s seat, founder of the insane big top UCP circus tent. In retrospect, his tragic flaw was being something of a rational man, Jesuit educated and all, only to be undone by intellects that strike moderate conservative partisans as a bit backward two and a half decades into the 21st century.

Winter’s just around the corner.

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything since 2013. My companion site www.megeoff.com is slightly dusty, but up to date.