base_url() wrong even when explicitly set

[eluser]madshadow[/eluser]
[quote author="Aken" date="1337108007"]Your strpos() checks in your index.php are wrong. You're checking for === 0 instead of !== false. That's why only your development mode works properly.[/quote]

Aken- Thanks for replying. As I mention above, though, 1) the demo environment is working properly and 2) even in the staging environment the ENVIRONMENT variable is correctly set to "staging." The disconnect seems to be in the base_url being set based on that staging ENVIRONMENT variable.