Gary Weiss, the author of Wall Street Versus America, picks some choice excerpts from Overstock.Com CEO Patrick Byrne's blog and issues a promise to be the internet's personal Patrick Byrne watchdog.

Rest assured that there is no need to actually visit Byrne's blog or stay up late to follow his fave message board (where he was still posting at 8:28 tonight) to keep up to speed on his latest thoughts.

I will personally monitor the dog food, miscreant, bimbo, conspiracy, self-immolation and unfair-press situation, and will post further excerpts as developments warrant.

The (Recent) Wit and Wisdom of Patrick Byrne [Gary-Weiss.Com]

Gary Weiss, author of Wall Street Versus America, listened to the Overstock.Com conference call so you wouldn't have to. Not surprisingly, CEO Patrick Byrne found time to talk about things other than his company's $0.78 per share net loss in the second quarter. Things like dastardly short-sellers and how shareholders might prevent them from pushing the value of their stock down even further.

We'll leave the details for you to read by clicking through to Gary's blog on the link below. But if you're as lazy as we are on Fridays, you might appreciate skipping right to the conclusion.

Byrne's gambit won't work, by the way. History has proven that the only proven method of pushing up the share prices of bad companies is that they stop being bad. And Byrne just hasn't figured out a way to do that.

Burn! (As DealBreaker cub reporter Bess Levin likes to say.)

Byrne's Latest Gambit
[Gary-Weiss.Com]

Jeff Matthews asks a completely reasonable question: what is going on with the Board of Directors of Overstock.Com? At least a few of the directors seem to be sensible, well-regarded folks. Are they celebrating yesterday's subpoena news with CEO Patrick Byrne? Or are they just bored with being directors and not really paying attention?

I cannot imagine that being a director at Overstock.Com is boring. To the contrary, shouldn't being a lightsaber wielding jedi preparing to do battle with the Sith be just about the best job ever?

I mean, what else could a director ask for? Other than a Harley, obviously.

Bored of Directors? [JeffMatthewsIsNotMakingThisUp]

A few months ago, Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne got into an exchange with Jeff Matthews about the supposed existence of an Israeli mafia. (This discussion pre-dates his defense against more recent allegations of anti-Semitism.) In a post about the exchange, Matthews points out that Byrne is on record pointing to the "Israeli mob" (presumably among others--Sith Lords, etc.) as one of the conspirators in the alleged naked shorting movement against him. Byrne responds:

Jeff omits precisely the part of the quote that makes the connection, and that is, after I mentioned the Italian, Russian, and Israeli mobs, and the discussed the Russian mob, the interviewer said/asked, "I didn't know Israel had a mob?" To which I replied that, yes it does: for example, it is widely thought to control the US ecstasy trade.

The relevant quote from the transcript of an interview Byrne did with the Christian Financial News Network:

The Israeli mob--in fact I was just reading Ha'aretz, which is an Israeli newspaper, ah, and a very good one, and you can Google this--If you Google "ectasy Israeli mafia" you'll find articles that basically the Israeli mob...is thought to control 75% of the ecstasy trade in the U.S."

Which begs the question: why would Byrne be Googling "ecstasy Israeli mafia" in the first place? Possibly because of this: [From the Salt Lake Tribune, May 26, 2002]

In another Utah case, Holly McDonald-Korth was allegedly receiving shipments of Ecstasy from Antwerp Belgium, according to a search warrant filed by Salt Lake City police investigators... On paper, McDonald-Korth appears nothing like a drug dealer. She was enrolled in private school as a teen and then attended the University of Michigan before graduating with honors from the university of Miami with a degree in finance, according to court documents. After graduation, McDonald-Korth went to work for the Federal Reserve in Washington. The 25-year-old came to Utah 18 months later after obtaining a job as an analyst for Overstock.com

The ecstasy dealer who presents the biggest threat to Overstock isn't, as it turns out an Israeli mobster. It's their current SVP in charge of Overstock Auctions.

Gary Weiss points out that Overstock's Patrick Byrne has been hanging out in the comments section of the Israpundit blog** lately defending himself against charges of anti-Semitism stemming from some commentary he made about Tom Friedman. Then he somehow laterals into a discussion of Jim Cramer and Herb Greenberg talking about him:

I do not think I have ever commented publicly on the Israel-Arab dispute. What I did in one blog was say that, regarding that dispute, Tom Friedman makes a habit of pretending to weigh the evidence, then always takes Israel's side. I have not said that he is wrong to take Israel's side, just that the "Let's see, Arabs, israel, Arabs, Israel‚... . OK, this time I gotta go with Israel!" routine gets a little old. (As a matter of fact, I think he is sometimes insufficiently pro-Israel for my taste, but that is a logically unrelated point.)

I brought this issue up in the conext of discussing Jim Cramer's and Herb Greenberg's endless discussions of me. They run more or less like this (in paraphrase):

Jim: "Byrne might be a good guy!"
Herb: "No he's a bad guy."
Jim: "Are you sure? I thought he might be a good guy."
Herb: "No he's a bad guy."
Jim: "OK, you win, he's a bad guy."

Over and over every time they discussed me. it reminded me of Friedman. That's all.

Other people discussed: The General Counsel of Bloomberg, "the guys at Bloomberg", reporter Matt Taibbi, everyone Byrne is suing, Chewbacca, Molly Bloom, James Joyce and Hannibal of Carthage.

** As opposed to the Motley Fool message boards, and the Overstock auction boards, and ... hey, why isn't he commenting here?

$$$ Credit where credit's due: we all have Overstock's Patrick Byrne to thank for making conference calls fun again. But let's face it: they're even better when you record them and have them read by monkeys in wigs and sunglasses. (See also here and here.)

$$$ What's the first result when you type "finance" into Google? Uh... Yahoo! Someone's getting fiiiiiired. [via Going Private]

$$$ The 80,000 volt electric briefcase. Where the hell was this when we were dropping off piles of cash on behalf of Equatoguinean dictators in Dupont Circle for Riggs Bank in '04? Now they tell us! [via BoingBoing]

$$$ The first rule of Hedge Fund Polo Club is that no one talks about Hedge Fund Polo Club.