OK, there's this nagging problem I have. Sort of an obsession. I push it to the back of my mind, where it stays quiescent for months, causing me no grief. Then it re-emerges, always re-emerges. Help me, dagblog community. HELP ME!

I blame Genghis for this latest relapse. In a comment to a post by Orlando (below), he wrote:

"A lying Mrs. Tebow would have no significance on the abortion debate. But nor would an honest Mrs. Tebow." [Read more]

During last night’s Grammy Awards, Michael Jackson’s children Paris and Prince Jackson accepted a Lifetime Achievement Award on behalf of their late father, in what was easily the most moving moment of the show.

“We are proud to be here to accept this award on behalf of our father, Michael Jackson,” said Prince. “First of all, we’d like to thank God for watching over us for the past seven months. And our grandmother and grandfather for their love and support. We would also like to thank the fans. Our father loved you so much because you were always there for him.” [Read more]

Just read that Amazon has decided to give in to publisher Macmillan's demand that the online bookseller sell its books under an agency model for the price the publisher sets (which for the new books that make up most of the market will be 30-50 percent higher than the $10 Amazon currently charges). [Read more]

BRAZIL – Blogger William K. Wolfrum stared off into the distance, desperately trying to come up with an idea worth writing about. Looking forlorn, he finally gave up the chase and went to bed. It was 3 p.m.

“There’s nothing, just nothing,” said Wolfrum. “Not anymore.”

The reason behind Wolfrum’s malaise was simple – soon, he’d no longer have Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne to write about. And after spending the majority of the past two years writing about him, he was deflated, if not defeated. [Read more]

Before the State of the Union address, I'd like to talk about the central issue of the Obama Presidency, which of course none of the talking heads will really get to. Obama's Presidency will hinge on how he handles the economy. More even than the wars, more than health care, more than the political sclerosis of the Senate, it's the economy. The bad news about that?

Barack Obama hasn't thought about the economy.
 [Read more]

The dustup between Conan O'Brien, Jay Leno, and their corporate masters is mainly an entertaining sideshow, and nothing could make the triviality of these millionaires' personal grievances clearer than the simultaneous disaster in Haiti. O'Brien might have hurt feelings but he also has tens of millions of dollars, all the clean drinking water he needs, and his children safe in his home. Still, the behavior of the NBC executives reveals a lot about how big business thinks in modern America, and it's not pretty. Because it's not just corporations' management blunders that damage the overall economy; the conventional business wisdom of the last two or three decades has become, in itself, pro-recessionary.
 [Read more]

Just thinking … [Read more]

For those of you that enjoy a good serial, I whole-heartedly advise you to spend a little time paying attention to Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne. Because, day-in, day-out, Byrne delivers the goods. [Read more]

Sometimes, as a journalist, blogger, or what have you, you come across a story you think has real meat on the bone. Such was my thinking when I saw that Patrick Byrne, CEO of Overstock.com, had been mining Facebook to create some type of “enemies list.” The list included business writers, bloggers, as well as the children and families of said writers and bloggers. [Read more]

ITALY – In a land known for sordid romances, the latest romantic drama has people around the globe transfixed, as two great mythical characters have been linked together by noted blogger William K. Wolfrum.

“I have learned from my sources that Larry Bergman – a creation of Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne – and infamous Hoax pundit Martin Eisenstadt have been seen canoodling in a New York bar,” said Wolfrum. “This would mark the first time in known history that two invented personages have had an illicit relationship.” [Read more]

When the business you run can't make a profit, you fire auditors at a whim and the SEC just won't get off your ass, you might make some enemies. Such is the case of Overstock.com (OSTK) CEO Patrick Byrne. Byrne, however, is proactive about these types of things.

So he made himself an enemies list. From Barry Ritholtz:

Here is something weird, and a little creepy: [Read more]

Something just happened in Dallas that hit me in the gut. Forty-six years ago, it was (as Noam Chomsky is quoted as dismissively saying) "a man in a building shooting a man in a car." For most people, however, the JFK assassination significantly changed how they viewed the world. This week, hardly anybody noticed when management of the Dallas Morning News sent out an internal memo announcing a structural reorganization. Huffington Post ran an article about it, as did Editor & Publisher, but for most of the public it was all "inside baseball." [Read more]

It's been another busy week for perennial Fox News guest Patrick Byrne. The Overstock CEO has appeared with Neil Cavuto, bewailing potential CEO pay caps. And in a move that was more Martin Prince than Martin Eisenstadt, Byrne stood tall recently and admitted that it was he who gave Daily Show host Jon Stewart a controversial tape of CNBC's Jim Cramer. [Read more]

When I worked for a software company, a fellow computer programmer once lamented that the salespeople earned so much more than the coders, despite the fact that the coders were generally better educated, more intelligent, and more essential to the company's core value: its products. The reason for the disparity is straightforward. Salespeople are closer to the money. It is very difficult for executives to perceive the value good programmers, who represent cogs somewhere deep in the machine, but the value of good salespeople is obvious from their sales numbers. For instance, it is easy to justify paying $200,000 in salary and bonus to a salesperson who makes sales worth $500,000 in annual profits. [Read more]

Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne has been spending a lot of time on the Fox Business Network. A couple days ago, Byrne was on FBN’s Happy Hour, refusing to disclose that his company is being investigated by the SEC. But a few days before that, Byrne was on FBN’s “Scoreboard,” where host David Asman gushingly referred to Byrne as a “Swashbuckling Captain of Capitalism.” [Read more]