The Daily Background

I just stumbled across this 2008 article by investment expert Rick Aristotle Munarriz arguing that Google should intentionally manipulate its stock price for the purpose of tricking unwitting potential employees into working for them. Excellent. Clearly ethical behavior, as evidenced by the fact that none of the commenters seem to think his suggestion is at all out of line…

The biggest case for a [2 for 1 stock] split, though, comes from the perspective of recruiting and employee retention. Code monkeys are brilliant in their niche, but they don’t necessarily know their Ps from their Es. They might see a share price in the hundreds and just assume it’s pricey. What they fail to realize is the importance of the number of shares that the stock price is being divided into, to arrive at a company’s market cap. And they might not understand the simple balance-sheet math that reveals a company’s enterprise value.

Consider this: Even though Sirius XM Radio (Nasdaq: SIRI) started the trading day at $1.38 a share, it’s not a penny stock. It’s a $4 billion company. Meanwhile, pork and transportation specialist Seaboard (AMEX: SEB) has a $1,600 stock, but its market cap is just half of what the satellite-radio provider can claim.

Why does any of this matter? Well, have you seen Google lately? Executives have been leaving in droves in recent months. Stock options are a major part of most tech-company compensation packages, so creating the psychological effect of offering employees a “cheaper” stock could help with retention efforts. Unsophisticated investors may prefer a stock meandering at $50 than one at $500, under the flawed assumption that it has a better chance to move higher.

Ha ha ha, yes those stupid, “unsophisticated” “code-monkeys.” Let’s take advantage of their dumbness. Great attitude, Rick.

For the record, I happen to think Google is a great company (or about as great as a corporation can get) and it is to their credit that they don’t follow the advice of hacks like Mr Munarriz here.

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Major hat tip to Oliver Willis.

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For an article about childhood obesity and how the first lady is stepping up to urge mayors across the country to combat it in their communities, the Huffington Post gives this us headline:

Pathetic.

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Hopefully little or nothing.

The AP just called the special election in Massachusetts about a minute ago and Coakley (D) has just conceded. Well, that was pathetic, no matter what the final tally turns out to be. Unbelievably pathetic. A Republican won Ted Kennedy’s seat in the bluest state in the country by campaigning against the president. See the Jon Stewart video I posted earlier tonight on the patheticness of this loss.

There are some reports that Coakley was an awful candidate. Whatever. Time to move on. Health care reform will pass with or without a Senator Brown being seated. The only question is now, will the House pass the Senate bill verbatim thus eschewing the need for another Senate vote, or will the two chambers conference (either regularly or ping pong), merge their bills and move through the Senate through reconciliation. Another option would be if the two chambers could pass something really quick before Brown is seated. Yet another option would be to kill the filibuster altogether through a change of Senate rules

Of course, no matter what happens, the Republicans are going to cry foul and say that the Democrats did this or that to shove health care reform down America’s throat. But they were going to say that even if Coakley had won, so this shouldn’t make anyone nervous or surprised. The truth is, it’s been Senate Republicans who have abused the system, turning what should have been an simple majority-rules vote into a drawn-out drama requiring a super-majority. Democrats need to start campaigning for the midterms starting today on a platform that outs these obstructionists as what they are– enemies of democracy who love nothing more than to preserve the status quo and bind us in a tyranny of the minority.

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Jon Stewart brings it. Nothing much more to say here.

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So, with as many as 50,000 people dead in Haiti right now due to a terrible natural disaster the scope of which is very rare, MoveOn.org sent out this very important message to its members:

To be fair, a day later they sent out another, much shorter email with links to charities to donate to. But really? Mobilizing your giant email list for ticket prices? That’s just jumping the shark.

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You would think that of all people, Rudy “a noun, a verb and 9/11” Giuliani would not make a statement as stupid as this one.

The HuffPost also helpfully recounts:

“Um, really?” wrote ABC News reporter Rick Klein on Twitter. Later he added, “even if Rudy MEANT to say post-9/11, what makes this incident different than [shoe bomber] Richard Reid, I wonder?” Of course, Giuliani could have been referring to the Fort Hood shootings rather than the botched underwear bombing.

A day earlier, Giuliani falsely claimed that the shoe bomber attack occurred before September 11th.

Curiously, the Associated Press did a long write-up of Giuliani’s Obama criticisms but omitted the startling mistake. George Stephanopoulos, who conducted the ABC interview, included the quote in a blog post but did not question it.

Shortly after this interview, Rudy appeared on CNN to explain his mis-statement:

Unfortunately (but not unsurprisingly), Rudy’s still not being truthful. No major terrorist attack has happened in the United States during President Obama’s term. One failed terrorist attempt does not a major terrorist attack make. And, as was noted by the ABC reporter earlier, Richard Reid’s failed shoebomb attempt happened after 9/11 and was very similar to the attempt that just occurred on Christmas. There were of course more deadly domestic terrorist attacks during Bush’s term after 9/11, such as the anthrax mailing scare, which caused the death or injury of about two dozen people.

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Unfortunately, bad reporting doesn’t take a vacation even when most people do. The Wall Street Journal reports:

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry has filed a formal request to visit Iran, according to the Iranian-based Fars News Agency.

A spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry confirmed the request today. “Since it [the request] is for a parliamentary visit, the issue has been referred to the parliament. The legislative officials are studying the case and they are in charge for providing a response,” Ramin Mehman-Parast said at a weekly press conference.

Okay, maybe I’m nitpicking grammar but, really, WSJ? Fars News Agency is “Iranian-based”? What does that even mean? Anyway, that’s nothing compared to this idiotic conclusion:

Last week a Kerry spokesman said the senator had no imminent plans to go to Iran. A spokesman did not immediately return a request for comment today.

If Kerry moves forward with his Iranian visit it won’t be without controversy. Many Iranian dissidents fear that such a high-level visit would serve as propaganda to legitimize President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, particularly amid recent crackdowns in Tehran that have left several political [sic] protestors dead.

Okay, first of all, a visit by Kerry would do nothing to hand Ahmadinejad any type of victory, propaganda or otherwise. As you just reported, my dear Journal, Kerry would be meeting with members of Iran’s parliament, not its president.

Second of all, the Iranian government is using the United States as a straw man in order to desperately hold on to the support of the 5% of the population that still supports them. A diplomatic meeting with the United States would in fact undermine the hardliner’s constant proclamations that the US government is meddling in Iran and should be avoided at all costs.

Incidentally, I was recently going through some of the CIA documents leaked by the Iranian student group that took over the US Embassy in Tehran in 1979. The CIA apparently made a pretty interesting conclusion about the American media when it came to reporting on the then-recent revolution in Iran. They wrote:

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I think I’ve finally figured out how Republicans think. It’s a little complicated, but bear with me:

1. When a terrorist attack that kills almost 3,000 Americans occurs on the watch of a Republican president, 8 months into his term, it’s an inherited and unavoidable tragedy.

Whereas…

When a terrorist attack which kills no one is foiled on the watch of a Democratic president, 11 months into his term, it’s a clear sign that he’s failing to keep the country safe.

2. When a Republican president’s administration fails to make good on their promise to capture or kill all the perpetrators of the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil, it’s just not that important.

Whereas…

When a terrorist is caught in the act during the administration of a Democrat and nobody is hurt except for a self-inflicted wound on the terrorist himself, it’s a symbol of the failings of his administration to keep us safe.

3. When 19 hijackers board American airplanes from within the United States, many of them with student visas that had expired, it’s not a problem worth fixing.

Whereas…

When one lone wannabe hijacker boards a plane thousands of miles away in Yemen without a passport, it’s infuriating and something that needs to be fixed right away.

4. When a Republican president violates both the spirit and the letter of numerous international laws as well as the US Constitution by storing terror suspects in an off-shore prison camp, he’s merely protecting us from them.

Whereas…

When a Democratic president moves towards reinstating the rule of law by pressing forward with fair trials and the relocation of said terror suspects to a town which is begging for decent-paying prison jobs, he’s practically letting terrorists out onto the streets.

See? It all makes perfect sense.

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Especially thank you to the 92 year old Robert Byrd, who has been attending roll calls in a wheelchair (and whose death was seemingly hoped for by a Republican Senator trying to stall the bill).

Now let’s move on, merge the bills, make it better, and pass it already. Supposedly the White House will be “involved” in the merging, whatever that means.

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I typically get one or two spam comments per day, which I promptly delete and auto-report to Akismet, the online spam database which grows smarter at identifying spam with each comment it catches. Every now and then a comment is truly hilarious however, as with this one, left on my 2007 post, “ABC News picks up Swift Boat/SRCP story!” Here’s the comment for your amusement. They’re obviously trying very hard to sound like a real live blog commenter:

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In light of word that Senate Democrats have reached an agreement that all 60 Senators can vote for, I feel compelled to re-visit what I wrote about health care reform in late July, on the heels of what I perceived as major watering down at the time:

My general feeling about the current status of health care reform making its way through Congress right now is: let’s just pass something better than what we have now and continue to make it better later. Despite their differences and varying inadequacies, all of the proposals debated by Congressional Democrats are better than what we’ve got now, which is pathetic.

As Obama says, let’s not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. If this whole thing goes down in flames, as Republicans are whispering excitedly, it could be the end of Obama’s big initiatives, and nobody wants that (well, except for the Republicans obviously).

Yeah, that sounds about right. Let’s not forget how far government programs we take for granted today have come since their initial incorporation.

For example, Medicare has undergone over a half-dozen major expansions since its package. And let’s not forget the major expansion to SCHIP which Obama just signed into law this year. But the most compelling example is Social Security, which is today far, far better than it was when it was originally conceived of: the original Social Security bill only covered factory workers; today all working Americans are eligible for its benefits once they reach their age of retirement.

I’m confident that, like other comparable pieces of legislation, this bill will steadily get better as time goes by. And we may not have long to wait, either: it’s improvement will start just weeks from now when the bill reaches conference committee with the bill that passed the House of Representatives and both visions for health care reform will have to be merged with the other. Now, this won’t likely yield a public option, but it will improve the bill from where it stands now. And every improvement is a step forward.

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Honestly, why in the world is the California Republican Party sending me their press releases now? Have they read my blog? This is almost as weird as when the Venezuelan embassy in Washington DC started sending me their stuff.

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With Joe Lieberman seemingly hijacking the Senate health care bill and refusing that even the Medicare expansion be removed (despite having advocated the same thing in the past), the water has muddied considerably.

Up until now, I’ve been steadfast in saying that anything under consideration (strong public option, weak public option, Medicare buy-in, etc) is better than what we have now and would be a step forward. Now however, I find myself siding with (for once) Jonathan Singer of MyDD, who admits he isn’t quite sure what to think.

Howard Dean is saying the Dems should abandon the current omnibus bill and try to pass separate pieces using the parliamentary maneuver known as reconciliation. There are also serious questions about the possibility of mandates in the bill that might force low income families to pay insurance companies for coverage they can’t afford. The President meanwhile is saying that as the Senate moves forward, we’re “on the precipice” of passing signifigant health care reform.

It seems like each time I think that the Democrats can’t get any more fractured, they manage to once again splinter into a million smaller factions. Even my two (usually progressive) Illinois Senators are split on the issue: Durbin says the latest compromise will still enact meaningful reforms and insure 31 million Americans, and Burris is signaling that he may refuse to vote for a bill without at least the Medicare buy-in option.

With so little known about the current state of things (and with things changing every day), I think it’s currently impossible for me or anyone else to have an informed opinion. Things are so fluid right now, any pronunciation of how great or awful the current bill is is futile, because it’ll be null five minutes later: the dust needs to settle and Reid needs to come up with an adjusted proposal on paper.

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Warm congratulations are in order for Texan Annise Parker (D), the new mayor-elect of Houston who happens to be a lesbian:

Annise Parker made history Saturday as Houston’s first openly gay mayor.

Parker, who served five years as city controller, beat former city attorney Gene Locke with 53.6 percent of the vote in a runoff election.

Both are Democrats who faced off for the second time because neither emerged with more than 50 percent of the vote in the November 3 election.

Parker’s election also makes her the second woman to become mayor of Houston. Other cities such as Providence, Rhode Island, and Portland, Oregon, have picked openly gay mayors. Houston is the fourth-largest U.S. city.

Parker’s victory is also remarkable because a few years ago, Houston rejected a referendum to offer benefits to same-sex partners of city workers. Also, the city sits in a state where gay marriage is against the law.
[…]
Parker, 53, has never shied away from, nor made an issue of, her sexual orientation. She has been with her partner for 19 years and they have two adopted children.

It should be noted that because this was a runoff, turnout was extremely small: only 16.4% those eligible voted. But still, a victory is a victory.

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