What's amazing is that Patrick passes on opportunities to bow out of conflicts with potential customers, and instead escalates the hostility level. Any freshman English major should have been able to construct a note about how Patrick really meant only to make an analogy about Tom Friedman's writing style, and that Patrick really doesn't want to get involved in an Israel-Palestine discussion. But no. Instead he goes on to call come political blog moderator who has a donation can on his blog the chief council for Bloomberg (Bloomberg, another one!).
This is not the only political issue where the man who should be spreading the good news about memory foam is instead making enemies with political activity. He's also involved in an education reform effort some consider misguided. Of course, there is always the jihad to keep the world safe for pump and dump artists.
This stuff even makes it into 8-Ks on Edgar. From one of the January 138-Ks.
"""
I don’t recall saying that I am “afraid of the Israeli mafia” and in fact, believe myself to be on relatively good terms with them.
"""
Woo! Tell them my macaroons are in the mail OK Patrick?
John, I've dealt with CEOs for over twenty years, and I have never run into one who goes out of his way to make enemies.
Putting the side the merits -- or in this case, absence of merits -- of his "cause," that is really remarkable.
I'm reminded a little bit of the candy bar magnate, Robert Welch, who was a founder of the John Birch Society. I still remember my mother telling me when I was a kid, "We don't buy these candy bars."
You can check out many of Byrne's bizarre posts on The Motley Fool and elsewhere in his blog:
http://forums.auctions.overstock...wforum.php?
f=98
Of course, all of the context of discussion is gone because posting the comments of others wouldn't serve to feed the great ego.
Interesting how he creates imaginary villians. In his "Laying Waste to a Fool of a Shill 2/21/06" post he states a "shill appeared many months ago". That "shill" is an OSTK shaeholder and a regular and respected poster on TMF for 7 years. If you were privy to the entire discussion, you would title the thread "TMF poster lays waste to under-performing Byrne".
Apple Computer just won their third lawsuit with Apple (The Beatlesrecord company) after losing two other lawsuits to them and paying them $100 million. What does Jobs do? Talk about how he loves the Beatles and can't wait to get their catalog on iTunes. That's what I pay him to say. (Good boy!) And Jobs is a notorious hothead. Still, he gave us the exact opposite of an effort to make enemies.
Byrne could have gone over to the Israel politics board, apologized for making what turns out to have been a bad analogy about Tom Friedman being overly pro-Israel, explaining that he has to bow out of any arguments about Israeli politics, restated his case (whatever that was), and handed out a few coupons. That's what people pay him to do.
happy noow? Scumbbbbaaagggg
So .... let me guess... is it Second Platoon, Fifth Battallion or Third Platoon, Seventh Battallion of the Baloney Brigade?
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