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.

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:

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."

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.

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.

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.”

Since the Obama Administration took the offensive against Fox News - breaking the nationwide ban on telling the truth about Fox - many have vociferously complained. Ok, aside from Jake Tapper, the only ones complaining vociferously are Fox Newsians, but there has been some push back.

TUPELO, Miss. — It was a day of happiness at the Johnson household today, as youngest son Timmy, 4, was named chief operating officer of the SEC enforcement division.

“We always knew Timmy would do great things,” said his mother, Sandra Johnson. “He’s always been really good with numbers.”

OK, I know I've been a bad, bad, bad dagblogger for quite some time, but seeing as I'm getting married in less than four weeks, I'm giving myself a pass. (Today's key word: ELOPE!!!)

I'll be back more regularly by the end of the year, but for now, I just wanted to give you a ballsy prediction:

Continuing with my theme of bad journalism, I have a video that was given to me last week that will allow people to see how Rolling Stone reporter Matt Taibbi is a naked short selling dupe.

“My friends, as many of you may have noticed, there has been a huge drop off in the quality of my blog posts over the past few months. Due to this, there has also been a drop in profitability for this blog, as well.

Utah-based Internet wholesaler Overstock.com recently received a subpoena from the SEC. The SEC will be investigating “previously-announced restatements of its financial statements in 2006 and 2008 and other matters.” It is the second such investigation into Overstock.com’s finances in the last two years.

A few years ago, I met a young millionaire who had made a fortune buying life insurance policies from the elderly and reselling them to investors. He would offer policy owners cash upfront, and when they died, the companies to which he had sold the policies would receive the benefits. Of course, he earned a percentage. It struck me as a clever but shady operation.

"...it is a tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing"

I was livid when I first saw video from the health care town hall meeting that took place last week in my hometown St. Louis.  I had already seen enough similar footage from other cities, but the fact that these were in some ways 'my folk' infuriated me.

Ignorant rednecks, I thought, the whole lot of them.

So apparently, the U.S. Postal Service is in a peck of trouble. Despite raising postage fees numerous times during the past couple of years, the USPS announced earlier this week that it had lost $2.4 billion between April and June and would be $7 billion in debt by the end of September.

Are you kidding me? $2.4 billion in losses in 3 months?? Are you sure the USPS isn't making cars or selling subprime mortgages?

As devoted deadman blog readers with photographic memories know (a surprisingly slim sample size), I've never been a fan of being barefoot.