According to the numbers, Donald Trump received just over 56,000 votes during the primary elections. Based on the figures from the 2020 election there are now approximately 2,200,000 eligible voters in the State of Iowa. Trump won the State of Iowa in 2020 with 53.09% of the vote, whereas this primary result represents about 2.5% of the electorate in Iowa. I appreciate that the voters in this primary are meant to be registered Republicans, but that is a considerable drop from the general election of 2020, in a state that has mostly Republican voters. Indeed the entire turnout for this vote was just over 5% of the total electorate of the State, and although he may have won 51% of the vote in the primary, there were still 49% of voters who did not support him.
Unfortunately the dreadful weather must have played a part in the numbers who managed to make it to the voting booths, but nonetheless the percentages must give some sort of indication as to what can be extrapolated. I realise that what one can predict from these figures is difficult to know. I am sure there are statisticians who have formulas for judging more precisely what these figures add up to, but I rather hope that the low percentages, as against the total electorate, indicate that the Trump band wagon is more flimflam and bluster. Be that as it may, it still provides him with massive free coverage and publicity. His voice is being well and truly heard throughout America and feeds the Maga circus.
I only hope that the voices that speak of the real dangers of a Donald Trump Presidency, of his psychotic narcissism and pathological lies are heard and reported just as widely. I note, in this respect, that the Emmy’s nominations for outstanding talk shows included Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers, Trevor Noah, Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart all of whom have issues with Donald Trump. I am assuming that their combined audience is reasonably large, or is it just that the people deciding on the nominations have a particular bias and the actual numbers are quite low.
There are also a number of politicians who do have a following and who do have a reasonably wide platform. This includes Democratic Congresswoman Katie Porter from the 47th District in California, which contains, Irvine, Huntington Beach, Costa Mesa, Newport Beach and Seal Beach. Oddly enough, she was born in Fort Dodge, Iowa and grew up on a farm in southern Iowa. She graduated from Yale and Harvard. I am assuming that there may be other folk in Iowa who are not part of the Republican majority. Ms Porter may well have friends in Iowa who are as anti-Trump as she is. So one lives in hope that throughout the country there are more voters opposed to a Trump revival and that the effect of that number will see him sent off the political scene.
In the meantime in the United(?) Kingdom there are specific problems relating to language and interpretation of legislation. The current government seeks to deport illegal aliens (refugees) to Rwanda and in order to do so has proposed a bill that will allow government ministers to disregard any and all judicial rulings that might prevent the deportation of an individual claimant for asylum. They will be, by an English act of parliament, enabled to ignore the law. There is a group within the conservative party government who want the legislation to specifically say that no law or international agreement currently in existence will be able to prevent a minister for immigration from issuing a deportation order against any potential immigrant. There is to be no right of appeal or access to a court of law in any circumstances.
The current Prime Minister and his supporters claim that the legislation does in fact imply that that is the case. A number of his colleagues disagree. They do not want any exceptions, no matter how limited, that would give any individual rights of access to a court. The government also insists that the reason for the legislation is to deter people from trying to get to the United Kingdom across the channel in small boats. They say, the fact that they will be immediately carted off to Rwanda on arrival, will deter them from even contemplating the journey, thus ending the traffic across the channel. The boats will stop. Their firm belief in the deterrent effect is remarkable given the failure of harsh punishments imposed for certain criminal offences which have not stopped the commission of crimes. The 30 year sentences of imprisonment for the notorious train robbers have not stopped robberies of all kinds. Tough sentencing and punishment has nothing to do with deterrence. If that were the case then criminal activity would have ceased 5000 years ago.
What this legislation is about has nothing to do with stopping the boats. It is merely a subterfuge to get rid of the immigrants and refugees who are already here, thereby getting rid of the backlog of applications and removing people without any scrutiny at the stoke of a minister’s pen. It seeks to bypass any judicial sanction and is in complete contradiction of any adherence to national or international law. It is entirely at odds with the very basics of the British constitution.
The protestations of the mealy mouthed Michael Tomlinson MP Minister of State for Countering Illegal Migration, as expressed in an interview on the Today Programme this morning, are sad and disingenuous. If ever there was a conservative party junior apparatchik he is one. That he pretends to believe the guff he spouts would be laughable if it weren’t so serious.
This government has brought the entire country into disrepute. On top of which the pretence at being a world power by once again aligning itself with the United States in its attempt to police the world is pathetic. It was pointed out to me today what determination, character and leadership it took for Harold Wilson to keep the United Kingdom out of the Vietnam war despite American entreaties. He may have allowed the United Kingdom to be used as an extended US Air Force and Munitions base, but he was not drawn into the fray and thereby saved many British lives. I am not suggesting that the attempt to deal with the current piracy in the Gulf of Aden and Bab al-Mandab Strait is anything like Vietnam. It is clearly something that needs global attention, but the picture of Rishi Sunak clothing himself with a sword of honour and military prime ministerial bravado is ridiculous. It just hasn’t worked.
And so we trundle on. I was hoping for a healing start to the new year, but the fissures and cracks appear to be widening. I wish all good things to my American friends and hope that their collective will and determination will see the end of the likes of Donald Trump, his most violent supporters and the crass and hypocritical republican party congressional representatives and members of the senate. Never in the history of the United States have so many been two faced and willingly submissive and supportive of a psychopathic narcissist. What’s the deterrent procedure and sentence for that?
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