The epic proxy fight for Yahoo may soon be wrapping up. This morning the New York Post reports that Yahoo executives are scrambling to do a deal, although perhaps not the one that Carl Icahn and his friends are calling for. Apparently Yahoo is scrambling to ink something with Google to improve search.

But why has Carl Icahn, who owns 59 million Yahoo shares or 4% of the company, set off the deal panic at Yahoo? Well, he’s got some powerful allies. John Paulson, the legendary head of Paulson & Co (who reportedly made $3 billion by shorting subprime mortgages) made owns an additional 5% of the company. He’s reportedly on board with Icahn. And Icahn is set to buy another 4%, upping the dissident shareholder percentage to 12%. But that not the end of it, according to Henry Blodget.

No question how those shares will vote in a proxy fight. Then there’s the 16% owned by Capital Research, whose Gordon Crawford was “extremely angry” with Jerry Yang for blowing the original Microsoft (MSFT) deal. And the 7% or so owned by Legg Mason’s Bill Miller, who as much as said he’d be happy with $34 a share.

Add all of them together and you’re at about 30%-35% of Yahoo’s stock. Bill Miller won’t vote to sack Yahoo’s board unless he knows Microsoft will play ball, but let’s assume Carl can at least create the impression that Microsoft’s on board. Then Icahn, Paulson, & Co. only need to make it clear that they can scrape together another 15%-20% of the votes…and Jerry Yang and Roy Bostock will be on the next Seattle plane.

Finally, someone has gotten to the bottom of the most pressing question of our age: why isn’t Carl Icahn blogging? Last month he announced that he was starting a blog at The Icahn Report. But so far it’s been a disapointment. There are no posts and repeated trips to the blog reveal just a dour picture of Icahn and the promise: “blog coming soon.”

Fortunately, Dane Hamilton and Megan Davies at Reuters have uncovered what’s delaying Icahn’s blogging.

At a meeting last night, Icahn explained that he’s not suffering from writers’ block, but said his lawyers are stopping him. ”Every night, I write for an hour and they tear it up,” said Icahn with a sardonic laugh.

Icahn, who has a history of hiring lawyers away from top-notch firms so he doesn’t have to pay astronomical New York law firm fees, might want to consider hiring new lawyers?

Icahn loses battle to his own lawyers [Reuters]

‘Portfolio’ shares the Ichan theory, which he shared yesterday at the World Business Forum, to a room of 750 CEOs. Brilliant and ballsy!

Many college kids seek refuge in their fraternities or clubs (when Icahn tells it, “sorority” is conspicuously omitted) for a friendly face. Without fail, the president of the club, who never seems to open a book, is there to cheer them up. He’s a nice and friendly guy, the kind of guy you want around to make you feel better with a beer or a game of pool.

Not surprisingly, that guy goes into business. He’s never the smartest guy in the room, but he’s likable and he’s a survivor. He moves up the corporate ladder, without a single original idea that might make his boss feel threatened by his potential.

Eventually, he gets to be the #2 guy at the company. He’s a little dumber than the C.E.O., but the board likes him, so he eventually gets to be C.E.O.

Of course, he assigns a #2 who is a little dumber than he is. “And eventually, we’re going to have all morons running our companies,” Icahn concluded. “We might not be that far off from that right now.”

How Did THIS Guy Get in Charge? [Portfolio]

Carl Icahn and Hank Greenberg don’t play golf. And they don’t like executives who do. On Wednesday we went to the Wall Street Journal’s Deals and Dealmakers conference, and while everyone else was frantically scribbling down what Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson said about globalization—hint: he’s for it—we found ourselves more interested in the slightly less, well, earth moving details.

Golf—arguably the most popular pastime in America—didn’t score well with two headliners.

“I hate golf,” former AIG chairman Greenberg told the assembled crowd of investment bankers. “I play tennis. It doesn’t take long. Then I get back to work.”

After his talk we asked Greenberg about the popularity of golf among corporate executive.

“A lot of people like to get away from their work,” he said. “You have to wonder about whether they like what they’re doing.”

Icahn, the legendary corporate raider turned shareholder activist, was even more dismissive of golf. For him golf players symbolized the kind of clubby, chummy corporate executive he thinks is dragging down American business.

“These guys would rather play golf, slap each other on the back,” he said. “I want a guy running a company who sits in his tub at night thinking about the challenges he faces. The guy who can’t let it go. The focused guy.”

Yesterday we noted that Carl Icahn is not just short golf. He also tried to short Blackstone just after it’s IPO.

Carl Icahn tried to short the stock of the Blackstone group immediately after its IPO, the billionaire “corporate raider” told an audience at a conference sponsored by the Wall Street Journal.

“I tried to borrow the stock but I couldn’t do it in time,” Icahn said.

After he spoke to the conference, Icahn asked reporters not to print the story of his attempt to short Blackstone. Although he had bashed executives and told the audience that private equity had peaked, Blackstone was one of the few companies Icahn discussed specifically.

It’s a little upsetting to find out that one’s publicly professed deity includes the bit “A thief stole my wife’s credit card, but I didn’t report it. Guess why? The thief spends less than my wife!” in his set of “favorite” jokes. The chafing is slightly salved when reminded that the fallen god has previously told adversaries, “You’ll never work on Wall Street again” and “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,” purposely “mangles” people names, and once told Ken Moelis, chief of investment banking at UBS that he was a “Mollusk.” But that’s nothing compared to the sunshine on one’s face that is this:

As those of you who read Opening Bell already know, Carl Icahn lost his bid for a seat on Motorola’s board yesterday. He’d previously written a letter to shareholders describing the current board as “passive and reactive” and detailed its failure to “steer management in the right direction.” Icahn failed to win the support of large funds, but was confident that he’d sent a “wake-up call.” One wonders if it was a RAZR phone set to ring at 6am? (Our’s never actually wakes us up because: 1. It’s not loud enough. 2. We don’t use it anymore because our fourth in a row broke).

Everyone here is a little (a lot) depressed that our favorite hybrid of Walter Matthau’s grumpiness and Philip Goldstein’s particular brand of testicularity didn’t get his way, but we’re trying to suppress our feelings of hopelessness and look on the bright side: Icahn will rise again and there’s going to be a Wall Street sequel starring Michael Douglas and (fingers crossed) Ben Affleck.

In honor of these upcoming events, we’ll be playing a round of our favorite game today: Icahn or Gekko. First person to get all correct wins a copy of Jack Welch’s Winning: The Answers signed by Johnathan Fess (the down and out broker who hangs out near our lobby begging for change).

Let’s play.

1. “I have been a professional investor for almost forty years. I seek out companies that I believe are undervalued by the market — I seek them out and I invest. ”
2. “The Carnegies, the Mellons, the man who built this industrial empire, made sure of it because it was their money at stake.”
3. “My significant stock ownership is many times that of the entire board.”
4. “Today management has no stake in the company.”
5. “Whether it’s 100 shares or 100 million — we invest in the hope and belief that the market will recognize that overlooked value and we’ll prosper.”
6. “In the last seven deals that I have been involved with there were 2.5m stockholders who have made a pre-tax profit of $12 billion.”
7. My activist investments over the past 2 years in companies […] have seen their stock prices add billions in market value for all shareholders.
8. “Over the past 6 months, on this board’s watch, almost $20 billion of market value, of stockholder value, of your money, has disappeared.”
9. Altogether these guys sitting up there own a total of less than 3%…
10. “I am convinced that significant stockholder representation in the boardroom, even by a single director, is absolutely necessary at this troubled company.”
11. “You own [the company], the stockholders, and you are being royally screwed over by these bureaucrats with their steak lunches, golf and hunting trips, corporate jets, and golden parachutes!”

Bonus: Identify the speaker: “You motherfuckers aren’t going to get away with this.”

Icahn loses bid for Motorola board seat [BusinessWeek]
Icahn Appears to Fall Short at Motorola [NYT]
Icahn Fails to Win Motorola Board Seat [WSJ]
Even for a Billionaire Like Icahn, Life Isn’t Always a Breeze [Deal Journal]

Dear Time Warner Shareholders,

I’m not going to pretend to say I’m sorry to say this—it’s so trite, so phony, so somewhat conciliatory, so just not me, Carl Icahn—so I’m just going to say it, without pretense: I told you bitches so. Yeah, that felt good.

-Carl

More Talk of a Time Warner Revamp [Dealbook]

Carl Icahn really does seem to be in full-out barbarian mode with his bid for WCI Communications. Recall that words like “corporate raider” and “barbarian” were coined, for the most part, by defenders of corporate management against outsiders like Icahn who sought to oust the managers. We have no doubt that something like these terms must have been going through the heads of WCI’s management when they “declined to comment’ after Icahn tears them a new posterior orifice.

Mr. Icahn has also signaled his unhappiness with WCI’s current management. “While clearly now is not the right time to sell, in my opinion, Mr. Starkey [WCI Chief Executive Jerry Starkey] and the current board are not qualified to navigate WCI through the difficult industry conditions that lie ahead,” Mr. Icahn said. WCI said it will review Mr. Icahn’s bid but declined to comment on his criticism.

That line about “will review Mr. Icahn’s bid but declined to comment on his criticism” is just about one of the most effective summaries of humiliation via fiduciary duty we’ve ever scene.

Is Icahn’s WCI Bid the Start Of Home-Builder Buyouts? [Wall Street Journal]