[Vision2020] Steven Symms (was: other stuff)

[Kenneth Marcy]

On Thursday 16 July 2009 14:08:19 Chuck Kovis wrote:
> Steve Symms used to say that this country was founded on two boxes:  the
> ballot box and the cartridge box. Nothing new here.

Unfortunately not.

Steve Symms used to say a lot of things, many of them regrettable, 
forgettable, and false. The statement above, for example, is literally false 
in that first secret ballot in the Northern Hemisphere was used to elect a 
member of Parliament 15 August 1872, after the American Civil War, and long 
after discussions regarding colonial independence were well-concluded.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballot_box 

The first firearms cartridges, as the term is understood today, were available 
to users of the British military musket (the Brown Bess) in 1842, a quarter 
of a century after the invention of percussion powder. The first integrated 
cartridge, was developed in Paris in 1808 by the Swiss gunsmith Jean Samuel 
Pauly in association with French gunsmith François Prélat. Pauly created the 
first fully self-contained cartridges: the cartridges incorporated a copper 
base with integrated mercury fulminate primer powder (the major innovation of 
Pauly), a paper casing and a round bullet.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartridge_(firearms) 

> He beat Frank Church. 

In the 1980 Federal elections in Idaho, Reagan/Bush beat Carter/Mondale by 
290,699 to 110,192, a difference of 180,507 votes. In percentage terms, 
Reagan received 66.46 percent to Carter's 25.19 percent of the popular vote.

On that same election day, Steven Symms beat Frank Church by 4,262 votes. Yes, 
Steve Symms did beat Frank Church by a miniscule percentage, riding the crest 
of Reagan's landslide deluge coattails in the Presidential race in Idaho.

> Idaho is a bell wether [sic] state.

This statement is political nonsense on the face of it, which any reasonable 
analysis will confirm. The last time Idaho voted with the nation to elect a 
Democrat as United States President was in 1964, after John F. Kennedy's 
assassination emotionally swept Lyndon Johnson into the White House.


Ken