Posted on by Californiacontrarian

B.O. 1 or B.O. 2

On 7/18/18 the House overwhelmingly passed a resolution in favor of backing the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.). Is this a surprise? Well the “overwhelmingly” is a surprise. However, I am a bit confused, as in the prior week some Democrats introduced a bill that would abolish I.C.E. within  a year.(However, they subsequently backed off and said that they would vote against it! . . . vote against their own bill?? Even for the Democrats in Congress this is bizarre behavior!)
Anyway this resolution in favor of I.C.E. passed by quite a large margin, 244-35. For those of you in the know, these numbers just don’t add up. The number of members  in the House of Representatives is much greater than 279 (244+35=279). So what happened?
I’ll give you a hint . . . the Dems pulled a “B.O.”
Again for those in the know, this could mean either one of two things.
B.O. 1
They could have merely skipped the vote, and thus they would not be on record of either supporting I.C.E. or not supporting I.C.E. One way of “Backing Out” is to just not show up for the vote. In this way one can avoid going on record for just about anything!
From Jan.,2005 to Oct.,2008 then U.S. Senator Barack Obama missed 24.2% of roll-call votes. For comparison the median of missed votes for those in the Senate at that time was 2.2%!
B.O. 2
But even though the Dems did show up, they chose to embrace the other  “Backing Out”  avoidance tactic . . .  just vote “present.” By voting “present,” one can avoid going on record for just about anything.
According to the New York Times (12/20/2007) while a State Senator in Illinois, Barack Obama voted “present” 129 Times! Again according to the NYT at least 36 of these times, B.O. was the only State Senator to vote “present” or was one of a group of six to vote that way. On 5/6/99 he was the only one to vote “present” on HB 1298 , an adoption bill that imposed stricter requirements for parental fitness . . . the vote was 57-0-1!! On 5/11/99 he was the only one to vote “present” on HB 854, a bill that sought to protect the privacy of sex-abuse victims . . . the vote was 58-0-1!!
When voting on bills in Illinois, in front of each State Senator there is a red button (“no”), a green button (“yes”), and a yellow button (“present”). As one would expect in Springfield, Illinois there is a famous saying about the real meaning of the yellow button, since voting “present” is an obvious way to duck a difficult issue, or to back out of having to make a decision. B.O. was good at backing out (e.g. enforcing his “red-line” statement in Syria).
BTW, the final vote on the I.C.E. resolution was 244-35-133, with 133 Democrats voting “present”! I predict that before the midterm elections, this won’t be the last time that the Democrats sink to use one of these infamous  B.O. strategies!

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