Like the proverbial bad penny, Ted Byfield is back.

It should come as no surprise that Byfield, now 87 and still apparently furious the world has changed, is once again hoping to influence Alberta's political course.

It would be an irony if the troubles the United States has visited on much of the earth were now visited upon the United States -- and, lest you’re feeling smug about that possibility, it's not likely to be a happy irony if you happen to be a citizen of that country's next-door neighbour.

Still, filmmaker Michael Moore probably has it right when he predicts Donald Trump will not serve out his full term as president.

Jason Kenney is the Hillary Clinton of Alberta politics!

Before you all start screaming, or convulsing with laughter, let me explain.

I do not mean that Kenney, the front-running social conservative candidate to lead the Progressive Conservative Party and thereafter unite Alberta's right, precisely shares the views of Clinton, the unsuccessful Democratic Party candidate in last week's U.S. presidential election. Just the same, despite big differences on issues like climate change and women's rights, their neoliberal economic positions place them closer together than might be immediately apparent.

It's not just Trump. It's the entire Republican Party. Yet, almost half of all Americans support Trump, the Republicans, or both. What does this tell us about the state of the States? If we weren't all having a conniption about a Trump presidency, we'd be worried sick about whoever the Republican nominee had been.

Remember: 17 people originally ran for the Republican nomination. And as we are not often enough reminded, while none was quite as destructive and uniquely deplorable as Trump, all could boast peddling truly extreme and often ludicrous ideas. With only a few anxious days to go before the election, it's useful if we frighten ourselves even more with reminders of one of the reasons Trump won -- his opponents.