John Edwards: Utah's Senile Senator Bennett and his favorite penny stock fraud constituent

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' I said that simply so that if someone does find a body or a bag of heroin in my car, or some variant thereon, I will have been on record that it was going to happen.' - Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne, Senator Bennett's favorite constituent who funded the Swift Boat Captains Against Kerry and,along with his insurance billionaire daddy Jack, donated $1,000,000 !! in a smear campaign against Democratic VP candidate John Edwards.

Utah's Senile Senator Bob Bennett and his favorite penny stock fraud constituent,again..

While some might claim I am being cynical in refering to Utah Senator Bob Bennett as senile, I maintain I am being optimistic.If he does not know by now that his favorite constituent and the anonymous 'Bob O'Brien' have made a complete fool of him to promote penny stock scams and illegal pump and dump activities and perhaps money laundering activities he may as well be senile as the results are the same.Today's article and post is in response to his favorite constituent , Patrick Byrne's, post on The Motely Fool message board yesterday December 24,2005 that I quoted from above.

I include that post or posts here in its entirety to educate or wake up the voters of Utah and make them aware of what appears to me as a victim of it,of a massive penny stock fraud fraudulently blamed on and covered up wth the fraudulent claim of 'naked shorting'.As it turns out and as I have discovered it
appears to be a far right wing Beltway fraud,certainly
begun by the far right wing James Dale Davidson of 'Clinton killed Vince Foster' fame and founder of both the National Taxpayers Union and the Baltimore
Agora Inc.with its international and internet tentacles that may even have touted stocks for the CIA's In-Q-Tel.

In an honest or non-corrupt country this would have never have happened and although due to Securities Exchange Commission's laxness or corruption the fraudulent 'naked short' claim has aided international
crime using U.S.penny stocks for illegal 'pump and dump' activities and probably money laundering that defrauds Americans in the end when those penny stock shares are in the end dumped back in the U.S.market on naive investors,(such as myself),NO OTHER COUNTRY'S SECURITIES EXCHANGE COMMISSION,TO MY KNOWLEDGE HAS ALLOWED A FRAUDULENT NAKED SHORTING CLAIM TO BE MADE TO DEFRAUD THEIR CITIZENS - ONLY IN AMERICA !!

Yes even the Bellador Group of Kuala Lumpur and its Arizona attorney Ron Logan has fraudulently claimed the penny stock Endovasc that they have promoted and dumped possibly even in Dubai was really 'naked shorted' to cover their tracks.But they made the claim to defraud Americans on the U.S.market , not in Dubai and not in Kuala Lumpur, where those exchanges would not tolerate such fraud against their own people.Only the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission would so cynically allow such fraud on their own people and markets !!

Shortly after the appearance of a $100,000 + ad - letter was placed in the Washington Post on February 8 by a group called ' NCANS ' or ' National Coalition Against Naked Short Selling' addressed to W.Bush, et.al. warning of the dangers of 'naked shorting' to SS investments in markets,Senator Bob Bennett of Utah told outgoing SEC Chairman William Donaldson that he must begin a campaign against 'naked short selling' and that a scammy penny stock called Global Links was a victim of 'naked shorting'.At the hearing Senator Bob Bennett waved a copy of a known scam penny stock promoting internet publication called 'FinancialWire' ,(which has been promoting the fraudulent claim along with David Patch and his http://www.investigatethesec.com to cover up illegal penny stock pump and dump scams for several years), to back up his absurd claim.Before that James Dale Davidson of Agora Inc. along Canadian securities fraudsters ran NAANSS or 'National Association Against Naked Short Selling' out of a Blaine, Washington office where their pump and dump Genemax penny stock fraud operation was located.

Global Links scammy management ,already known even in the penny stock underworld for their sleezy 'pump and dump' ways and worthless shares
and company, then used Senator Bennett's false claim as a promotion to dump even more shares on suckers or defrauded investors gullible enough to believe Utah's Senator Bob Bennett.

I think it was no coincidence that Senator Bennett did not refer to that letter in the Washington Post ,paid in great part by his favorite constituent,' I'm not gay and don't do coke' ,Wakkky Patty Byrne,because if it were
given additional attention it would not only be brought to public awareness that 'ncans.net' was not even in the U.S. at the time the 'Washington Post ' ad-letter was printed,but instead used an address in the British Virgen Islands,famous not only for scam penny stock operations but also for money laundering !!

And the same anonymous 'Bob O'Brien' had previously given the Cheetah Club of Las Vegas,(the only lap dance club to ever be investigated under the Patriot Act and whose San Diego branch was convicted of bribing San Diego city council members), as an address in the past for his nfi-info.net website that was and is used for illegally pumping or promoting shares of NFI or Nova Star Financial and fraudulently claiming it too is a victim of 'naked short selling' !!

And it would seem that if Patrick Byrne's anonymous partner using the pseudonym 'Bob O'Brien' was not also well connected in the Beltway ,and guiding the scammy and gullible billionaire's son behind the scenes, that it is likely an FBI or CIA,or DOJ etc., investigation would have occured as quickly the anonymous post 911 letter-ad to Bush,et.al. appeared in the Washington Post from some shady group using the British VIRGEN ISLANDS TO SEND A MESSAGE TO THE PRESIDENT.

Equally strange ,with all the excitement and controversy that ensued after the letter appeared ,was why the 'Washington Post' itself took the $100,000 + for the ad-letter and never even seemed to notice or care about the controversy it generated,(even after the subtle and not so subtle death threats were made by the 'ncans mafia' on Yahoo! and their own journalistic responsibility to investigate who the anonymous ' Bob O'Brien' was who,along with the billionaire's son Patrick Byrne, placed the ad-letter in their paper in the first place !!

So below is Patrick Byrne in his own words,the largest funder of http://www.ncans.net to my knowledge,(although he at first lyed about funding coming from 'mom and pop' investors),and the anonymous penny stock tout 'Bob O'Brien'.Below that are additional links to my writing on various indymedias about this ongoing fraud and penny stock terrorism that the SECso far chooses to do nothing about and Georgetown University, where a number of SEC officials teach in their abundant spare time,seems to encourage.

Tony Ryals

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Overstock.com's CEO Patrick Byrne from The Motely Fool message board December 24,2005 :

Patrick's open letter to the SEC

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Sirs and Madams,

I am sorry I called the SEC a "lapdog" on Bloomberg yesterday. That was unkind of me.

If you check your files, you will see that whoever was the regulator who approved our S-1 (it was a woman) received a dozen roses from me after our successful Dutch auction IPO. That is because I sat around in a closing dinner with a bunch of high-priced lawyers and bankers, and realized that the real hero was some anonymous lawyer toiling away for about 1/5 of what the lowest paid guy in the room was making. I wanted to thank her, and do something to disrupt the normal antagonism that exists between business and the SEC, to show you folks that here is one businessman who understands the value you bring to society, and deeply appreciates it.

You know, most businesspeople dread the SEC. For them, getting a letter from the SEC is like getting one from the IRS: you know no good will come of it. My attitude, however, is completely different. As I have said in various interviewers, I was raised on the idea that there are three sacred things: the Church, the Constitution, and shareholders. You guys are like priests to me, or professors: your role in society is sacred. And from all I hear, the new guy at the top, Cox, is a good man (I have that on the authority of people whom I trust: however, they are all fellow libertarians, and I feel this may not be the time for a libertarian regulator). And from what I can figure out from the outside the folks in the trenches come in to work and want to do their jobs.

But something has happened in the middle and upper reaches in DC. No one on the outside understands it, but we do see it the SEC as captured. And neither you nor I want that.

I have three ways of calculating the failures to deliver in our stock(the following numbers are beyond the 7+ million legitimate shorts reported in OSTK).

1) The first and most obvious way to me tells me that we have 10 to 15 million counterfeit shares in our stock trading.

2) The second way to calculate it tells me there are 30 to 35 million counterfeit shares.

3) The third and not very credible source of information I have on the subject tells me there are 3.8 million counterfeit shares.

I have duties to shareholders. Do I have a duty to people who think they are shareholders but who have only counterfeit shares? Is it even the case that some people are real shareholders and some people are not? (Well, I suppose the people who hold paper are real shareholders, right? But is it the case of those who don't, that some are real and some are putative? Or is it the case that all of these non-cert-holding shareholders are equally part-legit and part-putative shareholders?)

It is kind of hard to be a CEO trying to do the right thing, but facing questions like that.

Now I know you folks have said, "This naked shorting thing isn't a problem." But you also say on your website FAQ's
(http://sec.gov/spotlight/keyregshoissues.htm ) that you had to grandfather all the failures to deliver that existed on January 3, 2005 because: "The grandfathering provisions of Regulation SHO were adopted because the Commission was concerned about creating volatility where there were large pre-existing open positions."

As far as what that means for Overstock, I think it means, "If we the SEC had not grandfathered the fails, then OSTK might have gone up."

Well, OK, I'll drop the grandfathering thing. Just tell us how many fails-to-deliver there are, then. To that your website says, "The fails statistics of individual firms and customers is proprietary information and may reflect firms' trading strategies. The release of this information could be used to engage in unlawful upward manipulation of the price of the securities in order to 'squeeze' the firms improperly."

Do you realize that you are saying of the people who are breaking the law, that if you simply told the world how much the law had been broken you would be revealing the strategies of.... the people who are breaking the law? And that letting the world know the truth might result in those people who had been breaking the law... losing money?

Do you understand the consequences of this for our economy? Take Overstock. Let me assume that OSTK is at least as bad as the median of your cases that made you say, "... the Commission was concerned about creating volatility where there were large pre-existing open positions." Since we have been on the Reg SHO Threshold list for 11 months, I think that is a safe bet.

Suppose you made the people who had failed-to-deliver, well, deliver. If I am right and there are 10 million FTD's, or even 4 million, then it is likely that in the process of covering our stock might experience some of the "volatility" to which you refer. Let us say that means.... it goes up. Let us say it went up to, for example, $75 (about where it was, I think, when the clock started ticking on the Reg SHO Threshold list). Then it is likely that the company might sell a million shares, put the money in the bank, and continue in our quest to catch Amazon North America in a couple-few years. To do that, we'd start by doubling the size of our warehouses, hire another 1,000 - 2,000 people in Utah and Indiana, buy more inventory, employ more people making the inventory, employ (at a distance) more UPS truck drivers to deliver it, and so on and so forth. Sounds good, right? Good for America? Multiply that somewhere between a few dozen and a couple of hundred times to imagine the effect forcing all firms' FTD's to settle might have on America (and many of the other companies would use the capital to fund research for drugs, or write software, or something more useful to the world even than selling toasters).

And no response from you guys.

I am doing it because I think this is having an extraordinarily pernicious effect on American entrepreneurship. I have been willing to subject myself to a ridiculous amount of public ridicule ("He's just mad his stock went down!" "Stick to your business Byrne!") in order to fight this issue.

Other than the fact that in recent weeks the SEC is taking steps to smear the name of my Utah lawyer and friend who gave you 14 years of service, I have no evidence that anyone at the SEC notices that I have been somewhat public on this issue.

The world says I am crazy. OK, SEC, most respectfully, tell them how crazy I am. Tell them how crazy I am by telling them how many FTD's there are in OSTK, every day back to the time this began sometime in 2003. My hunch is you won't do it. Because you fear "volatility."

So who is crazy?

Most respectfully, when you did folks start thinking you were in the business of deciding the price for which stock should sell? Refereeing the bulls and bears, but deciding it is OK for bears to print millions of counterfeit shares?

If you have noticed my public crusade, you may wonder, like many others, just how crazy I am, for it is widely thought that the SEC is a thin-skinned and vindictive organization, and publicly attacking the SEC is generally thought to be business suicide. Let me explain it this way: I have a good friend, Gary Kennedy (one of the original board members of OSTK), who just fought a five year fight $30 million fight with the SEC rather than sign a piece of paper that would have implied to the world he was guilty. Gary told me at the start that on principle he would never, ever concede by signing that paper, because he knew he was not guilty. A couple weeks ago, the SEC dropped the whole case and walked away. Gary spent $30 million and five years standing his ground. Some think that crazy. So let me put it this way: I'm so fanatic, Gary Kennedy thinks I'm crazy.

So let's settle the trades, or just tell the world how big the FTD's are, and we'll find out who was crazy.

I know there are smart people there who have probably guessed my strategy. I have been criticizing you and, admittedly, flouting some CEO-conventions (though not, I believe, any laws) hoping you would respond as is your custom. And then we could end up in court, and I would be able to get to the truth through discovery. I seem unable to get you to respond and, alas, I am not willing actually to break the law in order to get you to come after me.

However, the guys I am fighting are now bragging around Wall Street that they are prodding you into an investigation of Overstock. That is, of course, their modus operandus, (I wonder, do you know how short sellers often brag about having the SEC under their thumb, and their ability to spur you guys to do investigations of companies when they need it?) Incidentally, they also are bragging around Wall Street that they are going to get the DOJ to come after me. That was the source off my comment on Bloomberg about someone finding heroin or a body in my trunk (Mark Cuban now flatters himself, I hear, by pretending that I implied he is somehow involved: Cuban is a wannabee hedgie, and the hedgies he wannabees with are krill many steps removed from the mobsters who are, I think, the deepest stratum of this game). I said that simply so that if someone does find a body or a bag of heroin in my car, or some variant thereon, I will have been on record that it was going to happen.

Anyway, as you will see in my next post, I am tossing in the towel on this message board thing. It is not going where I hoped it might. But anytime you folks want to talk to me, or have suspicions about anything I have done, feel free to call collect. I am an open book, and would be most happy to let you examine anything you wish.

Please feel free to bring OSTK fails information when you come, too. Let's show the world who's crazy.

Until then, I do remain,

Most respectfully, and appreciative of the work you do,

Patrick M. Byrne
CEO, Overstock.com

Patrick's last message on TMF

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"There is iron in your words of war. And there is iron in your words of peace. It shall be.... peace."

- The only bad, corny line in The Outlaw Josey Wales

(Do you Fools know this movie? Clint Eastwood made it before his talent was recognized. Orson Wells said of this movie something like, "If it had not been made by Clint Eastwood, it would have been recognized as the greatest movie in American history.)

Dear Fools ET, Retieff, UR, and all the rest of Fooldom,,

Many are asking me why I have taken the time to get in these debates on this board with some Fools who have an obvious agenda (and guys like Jeff) who want only to ensnare me in meaningless arguments. To them I say: you all have a point. In fact, I have been thinking for a month or two about hanging up my Fool credentials. Not in any protest, but just because I sense this experiment is a failure. At least, it has run its course. I'll get to that in a moment.

First, I have wondered for a long time whether I should debate these guys or just ignore them. The problem with debating them is that it becomes like that old saw about not wrestling in the mud with a pig: "You get muddy and the pig enjoys it" (note I am not alluding to O'Brien's twist on it, which was something like "Byrne should wrestle in the mud with Carol Remond and a pig: first he'll beat the vicious filthy swine... and next he'll beat the pig!")

The problem with ignoring them is that they can convince the gullible that this is a sign of the rightness of their cause.

I thought I was threading the needle by letting them go on just long enough, before occasionally answering them. Evidently I have failed, and these conversations have turned away from what I had originally intended, which was a collective colloquium where different folks would take the lead on different subjects, and matters of business could be discussed and developed. Instead, while some have been informative for me and I have even garnered some good ideas to take back to the executive council, often these threads have degenerated into bear-baiting and, alas, bear-bait-taking.

I have learned that there is generally no graceful way for the bear to respond when the hounds come. Either he fights (which observers think violent) or he gets shredded.

I do not say that to be disrespectful to those with whom I have debated. I believe that most of them have been reasonable, well-intentioned folks, and I hardly think I am beyond criticism (Lord knows). It feels like the debate on global warming: one side keeps saying, "Where's the proof?" to the point that the other side is convinced that their's is simply an agenda to muddle things (leaving the first side convinced the others are wooly-minded). Having been on both sides of that particular debate over the last 15 years or so, I recognize the sentiments.

There is also, of course, the Reg FD issue which arises every time a discussion gets meaningful here. I have in fact received complaints from people who do not want to buy Fool memberships but feel aggrieved that they have to wait for folks to repost my stuff on Yahoo.

Beyond all that, there was one other good reason for me to post here. I know people say all kinds of things about me, some dumb and some not so dumb, and I wanted to respond. I did not want to go to Yahoo to do it (that really is getting down into the muck), and certainly not Jeff's blog (which would be less like wrestling a pig in a mudpatch than it would be wrestling a turd in its own cesspool). So it has been nice to have a place to respond, knowing my posts would get replicated elsewhere.

That said, I take your points, Fools. If the argument is, "You should be running your business and not wrestling with these guys!" the same logic says I should not be here at all.

You know, it is not as though when I set out on this jihad I did not know what was going to happen. I knew that I was in for a tremendous amount of vilification. Fully expected. I could pretend that I agonized about it, but I really didn't. I have never really cared too much what people think of me.

That said, I know it would be easier to lay off, if only because it would shut up a lot of folks. It would make my life a lot easier with some around me, as well. Believe me, the last thing I need is more people telling me to lay off. I even consider it once in a while. In fact, some days I would love to!

Here is the problem:

* I am working with a former director of North American Securities Administrators Association (every state has a mini-SEC with its own boss: this is their association). He tells me he has watched small companies be destroyed for 20 years by this system I am fighting.

* I know a former SEC guy who says that he quit because he could no longer take watching hedge funds destroy small companies while the SEC stood by (he confirms the SEC institutional mind-set is heavily slanted in favor of the hedgies).

* One of my lawyer-friends is now gets a string of calls from small companies saying, "We are being destroyed by exactly the same thing Byrne is talking about. We see the same patterns. We are almost out of capital. What can we do? Can you help us?" He has to tell them there is nothing he can do. Maybe nothing they can do. He says it is like watching someone drown every day of the week.

* I get similar "Help us Obi-won Kenobi, you are our only hope!" messages all the time. Recently I spoke to a group of companies who are near-IPO stage. Folks came up and told me afterwards that their own lawyers, in places like San Diego, Houston, Chicago etc., are advising them against going public because of the risk of coming under a naked short attack and losing control of their destiny. (If this problem is now widely understood to the point that lawyers in the hinterland are advising their clients about it, how come Washington is standing by? How come New York financial journalists are all standing around pretending this is some crazy theory of Whacky Patrick?)

* I have friends, as folks here know, far, far up the Wall Street food chain (I am not referring to that Midwestern fellow I know, who is out of bounds in all discussions). I sent a message to one recently, saying in effect, "Hey, I'm sorry if I am embarrassing you with this fight. I did not mean it to get like this." The word I got back was, "Don't apologize. I have been watching these a******s do this for thirty years. It is about time someone stood up to them. I should have known it would be you, Byrne."

Does that give you guys a better sense of why I am standing my ground? Maybe I am crzy, but my worldview is that there are a lot of companies being destroyed by a trick of Wall Street. I didn't ride into town spoiling for a fight and in fact I know this fight is not my own. I'd love nothing more than to ride on. But there are a lot of folks counting on someone to do something. But the constable has been sitting on his ass and the most that comes out of him (when he pays attention at all) are some apologetics for the ruffians. So, I will get out of town as soon as I get a chance, as was my plan, but not until I see the sheriff show up, or some marshalls, or something.

Incidentally, since the new mantra of the shorts has become, "Byrne should resign" (what does it say that the shorts want me to resign? Are they getting desparate for ways out of this cul-de-sac?), and now that what I am about to tell you is not going to happen (and hence, is not material), I will mention something. Since July my hope has been to resign and take a different job at the end of January. It is a job I would far prefer, actually. It is one of the reasons I raised the stakes in August when I did: I did not want to leave the company with these leeches on it, so I figured I'd burn them off before I went. I thought we'd be through by now. Alas, I did not correctly calculate the lethargy of the SEC. Since this is still a pitched battle, and because we had some operational issues that blew up on me these last five months that will take some time to resolve, I am afraid I am afraid you guys are stuck with me. Sorry, miscreants.

I will close with some parting stories and points that some might find useful in evaluating whether I have taken the right approach.

First, I will mention that I ahve felt that I faced a bit of a double standard here. You know, obviously (or I hope it is obvious) I don't think that the title "CEO" makes me a bigshot. In fact, I avoid using that title because it sounds too big-shot to me (I only use it in legal documents when I must, or in places like, well, the open letter to the SEC I just posted). But when I try to engage detractors, and use what seems to me only a mild level of jocularity and humor, even at a lighter level than they themselves employ, they react as though I am being a big-shot-CEO-bully. They direct it at me, but when even a mild version of it is returned, they cry foul.

It reminds me of how when I was a kid, and became a wrestler. I moved around schools a lot (11th grade was the first time I repeated a school since 4th grade). I'd go into new schools, and the local toughs would bully me, as kids do. I'd ignore it for as long as I could, until long past the time when even my new friends were saying I was a wimp. And then one day when I had had had enough I would start whipping people (by the way, fathers, get your kids to wrestle: wrestlers can take anybody). And what happened more often than not is that the same people who had been telling me I was a wimp started complaining that I was too aggressive.

Hmans are wired with a circuit I am missing. It is the one that says, when a predator threatens you, raise your hackles and hiss until they go away. I lack that. I prefer Kung Fu'sKwai Chang Kane approach: be pacifist, pacifist, pacifist, until the blackguards are way way way over the line, and then go thermonuclear on them.

Two of the most important books in my life were from Ken Kesey: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and his real masterpiece, Sometimes a Great Notion. Both concern men fighting social pressure, the first, pressure from authority, the second, pressure from those around him. I do not know if the theme of a man refusing to knuckle under made such a deep impression on me, or if I was already wired a bit oddly and so it just resonated more strongly with me than other things I read. But I really took it to heart, and they reinforced my typical adolescent desire to eschew conformity.

Most adolescents express this by all getting the same rebellious haircut, but mine took a different turn. By the time I got to college, I promised myself I would never step into a church, a party, or a fraternity while I was at college: the principle was that I wanted to avoid any room where all people were thinking the same thing. It is not as though I disliked people: in fact, I learned the names of a few of the guys on the football team, and they were fine guys. But I never had a beer with anyone, never stepped into a fraternity, nor a church, never had tea with anyone, nor went to a party (with the exception of one sorority party I went to, because the girl who asked me seemed shy). It would surprise me if more than 5 people from my class at Dartmouth even knew who I was. No slight on anyone there (nor on church-going, about which I changed my stance after college): it was just a phase in my life where I got comfortable with how I was wired.

Six years ago, while the dot-com boom was still on, I starting meeting reporters. Sometimes they would bring to lunch financials of Internet companies they wished to discuss. I would show them how to calculate a quick ratio and a current ratio, and show them how to predict when a firm would run out of cash. There in the winter of 2000, their reaction was, "Come on, if it were that easy, why can't everyone see it!" I would tell them, "Look, I promise this is all going to end in tears. These firms will be broke in 2-4 quarters." I do not remember any of them believing me at first. I learned then how comformist reporters are by temperament. Not bad people, but they just don't think for themselves. There is too much fear of being wrong about something.

So OK, the same folks think I am a loon now. A bunch of Ivy-League-frat-boy-turned-Wharton-MBA-turned-Wall-Street-a******* now say I am an idiot or a bad guy, and a bunch of financial reporters believe them. Am I supposed to care? When I was 18 I had the intestinal fortitude to dismiss what that crowd thought.

All that said, I agree that this little hobby of mine is not serving anyone in its present incarnation. I have other plans.

I really, really wish to thank all who have engaged with me here. Even opponents, to the extent they have been sincere ones. I got a chance to check my thinking against reality, to hear what others thought. I even picked up a few new ideas for the business.

In return, I have tried to engage you as I would with the money managers I meet on the road. You know, Reg FD has done something, but still it is the case that the big shots have an advantage over you retail investors. One-on-one meetings, and even investor conferences, are conducted with a tone of, "Now that the public cannot hear, what can you tell us about this and that?" Wildly inappropriate questions are asked when they have to know my answering would violate Reg FD. The sense I get is that it is the custom for CEO's to respond in those settings, and people treat me as a bit unsporting not to do so. In this board, which I have treated as "the public" (though admittedly it is not quite that), I have tried to reverse things, and be open and forthcoming with you folks, and then expect it all to be reposted later on Yahoo so, for once, the professional money managers would find out about thigns after you, the public (I did it on weekends and after hours, however, so as to eliminate any trading advantage). I am not sure I have succeeded, or if I strayed to close to the line even by considering this "the public," or if I went astray by following too many people into too many rabbit-holes. And to the extent that this has turned from a discussion of business into less-than-civil mono-issue shooting gallery, I regret the role my own participation played in the change. But I still do hope I gave a good flavor of the decisions I struggle with in my professional life.

Well, for whatever the reasons, my sense of things is that it is time to resign my Fool credentials. You can always write me at patrick@overstock.com.

Good trades to all Fools,

Patrick

PS There has been one additional modest reason I have been coming on these boards. I feel that the Fool has been as good an antidote to the conformist and duplicitous thinking of the Wall Street elite as this society is likely to see. I hoped that by coming here I could, in my own meager way, serve as a kind of draw to the Fool. I do hope I have sold some ice cream here for Mann and the Brothers G.

PPS Here is another tidbit on that movie: Forrest Carter, the Native American who wrote the book, which was named Gone to Texas, also wrote a book called, The Education of Little Tree. It is an autobiographical work that concerns the world as viewed through the eyes of a young Cherokee. Apparently the PC crowd is big on it, and it is used in schools a lot.

It turns out, however, that Carter's real name was not "Forrest" but "Asa", he was not Cherokee but White, and in fact, was an abject racist. He was a member of the Ku Klux Klan of the Confederacy. He wrote speeches for George Wallace at the height of his reactionary "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation
forever!" period (in fact, those famous words may have been written by Carter for all I know). I recall reading somewhere that Carter abandoned Wallace when he "went soft" (which is, incidentally, quite an amazing story, and in my view illustrates the way African-American culture retains a capacity for redemption and forgiveness that has been lost in White culture), and then went on to write Gone to Texas (which, while a great work, displays his pro-Confederate sympathies,)and The Education of Little Tree, which is seeped in racist condescension.

Somehow, the crowd missed that

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Copy of letter that appeared in Wahington Post to W.Bush et.al. February 8,2005 :

http://news.com.com/5208-1024-0.html?forumID=1&threadID=8049&messageID=71882&start=-1

Senator Bennett :Is Patrick Byrne's NCANS a Fraud ?

http://utah.indymedia.org/news/2005/10/11883_comment.php

Senator Bennett,penny stock scam,Cheetah Club

http://sandiego.indymedia.org/en/2005/07/110190.shtml

Utah Senator Bennett's favorite constituent, Patrick Byrne buys Yahoo for cyberfraud

http://okimc.org/newswire.php?story_id=1303

Yahoo protects stock mafia's death threats

http://www.phillyimc.org/es/2005/10/16848.shtml