The Daily Background

Not that anyone needed more proof that Glenn Beck is a terrible, terrible person, but…

On his daily radio and television shows last week, Fox News personality Glenn Beck set out to convince his audience that “social justice,” the term many Christian churches use to describe their efforts to address poverty and human rights, is a “code word” for communism and Nazism. Beck urged Christians to discuss the term with their priests and to leave their churches if leaders would not reconsider their emphasis on social justice.

“I’m begging you, your right to religion and freedom to exercise religion and read all of the passages of the Bible as you want to read them and as your church wants to preach them . . . are going to come under the ropes in the next year. If it lasts that long it will be the next year. I beg you, look for the words ’social justice’ or ‘economic justice’ on your church Web site. If you find it, run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words. Now, am I advising people to leave their church? Yes!”

He later concluded by comparing churches that preach social justice to (you guessed it) Nazis. Not that that should be surprising to anyone.

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What an excellent, cogent comment on this post, sir or madam. I had no idea that abortion had such uplifting opinions.

Installment 2. Previously…

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I’m with Oliver and Paddy. This is so freaking awesome.

I cannot wait for him to unveil his evidence.

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Our American media’s reporting on Iran’s nuclear program is dangerously bad quality– to the point where 71% of Americans mistakenly believe that Iran currently has nuclear weapons.

Meanwhile– and you would never hear this repeated in American news– Ayatollah Khamene’i once again proclaims that nuclear weapons are contrary to Islam.

Earlier
Our press is stupid, stupid, stupid when it comes to reporting on Iran

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Oh boy, look at this:

Jon Ralston reports the Tea Party has qualified as a third party in Nevada and will have a candidate in the U.S. Senate race.

Assuming the Tea Party candidate would draw votes away from the Republican candidates, it may be just the thing Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) needs to win in a race where he’s run behind in polls for months.

Now I’m not sure that this dramatically changes Harry Reid’s dismal chances of re-election in his home state of Nevada (and of course the tea partiers don’t have a chance in this race), but what’s awesome here is that this seems like a clear sign that these idiots will help to fracture the Republican party, which is always a good thing, especially in an election year. Of course, the caveat is that the tea party folks have shown to be quite fracturous themselves, with no central national leadership or national organization, so this could just be a Nevada thing. But at least this shows that them entering the calculation as 3rd party candidates is possible.

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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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