This Olympic moment

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OK. OK… we get it. It’s the Olympics and not only is it presentation of the Olympics, it is the presentation of the Olympics in a country like Russia where the major western broadcasting network, NBC, is going to do its best to dress up the more unsavory aspects of its host nation’s history.


However, tens of millions of Kulaks and other citizenry slaughtered willfully or left to starve because of horrible governing policy and countless other dissidents and “counter-revolutionaries” shipped off to the Gulags to rot for eternity might have a different term for the period between 1917 and 1989 than a “pivotal experiment”.



From the opening ceremonies as narrated by NBC:









What was the 20th century but a case study in the evils of collectivism in whatever permutation or terminology be it Marxism, Stalinism, Communism, Fascism or Maoism…?


From apologies to white-washing, the anti-anti-communists of this country and of the west continue to beclown themselves a quarter century after the true believers, themselves, pulled the plug on their wretched, de-humanizing and deadly “experiment”.

About last night

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We apparently just missed it as we were getting in the door when last night's half-time show on NBC during the Cowboys-Eagles was just wrapping up, but here's Bob Costas's little anti-gun rant we're sure you've either seen or heard about in the context of the Kansas City Chief's Jovon Belcher's murder-suicide:







Don't know if the nation could've soldiered on last night without Costas unburdening himself Whitlock's half-baked pieties and pronouncements.

And we most definitely do not know for sure if both Belcher and his girlfriend would be alive if Belcher did not have a gun.



But Costas was certainly within his right to say what he did and we are perfectly within our right to post the following:

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The sadly obligatory NBC omits "under God" from the Pledge post

Here's the full advert that was run during the U.S. Open yesterday.




And here's NBC's explanation for what happened:

NBC issued an on-air apology Sunday for omitting the words "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance during its coverage of golf's U.S. Open.

The words were edited out of a clip of children reciting the oath -- a move immediately noted by viewers, who took to Twitter and various blogs to voice their anger, the Huffington Post reported.

In a statement during the broadcast, NBC commentator Dan Hicks said, "We began our coverage of this final round just about three hours ago and when we did it was our intent to begin the coverage of this U.S. Open Championship with a feature that captured the patriotism of our national championship being held in our nation's capital for the third time.

"Regrettably, a portion of the Pledge of Allegiance that was in that feature was edited out. It was not done to upset anyone and we'd like to apologize to those of you who were offended by it."

Ah yes, the old "we're sorry if our 'editing' cheezed off anyone" defense.


How out of touch are these people that they thought this would be a good idea? For a modest fee, we would sit in on production meetings and earn more than our keep by warning off the suits from idiotic ideas like this.

The (il)logic that was employed seems to be along the lines of not wanting to offend the sensibilities of a few cranks in exchange for offending the sensibilities of a far, far greater number of people plus insulting the intelligence of everybody by thinking we all wouldn't notice and we wouldn't care. That's apparently what passed for a reasonable approach on how to handle that politically-explosive and divisive hot potato, The Pledge of Allegiance.

Memo to the brain surgeons at NBC: Next time you are considering how to finesse your way around what you believe to be culturally and politically-sensitive matters like, you know, the Pledge of Allegiance, either recite the thing in its entirety, or don't recite it at all.

"Who, Jarrett? Yeah, get used to it. Even I can't shake her"

Quote and working definition of the day.



When you lose GE CEO and Obama jobs task force chair, Jeff Immelt:

"If I had one thing to do over again, I would not have talked so much about green," he told a Massachusetts Institute of Technology audience.

"Even though I believe in global warming and I believe in the science ... it just took on a connotation that was too elitist.

"It was too precious, and it let opponents think that if you had a green initiative, you didn't care about jobs. I'm a businessman. That's all I care about, is jobs ... I'm kind of over the stage of arguing for a comprehensive energy policy. I'm back to keeping my head down and working."

The quote above comes just six years after GE began a concerted effort to get into the green energy business with wind turbines, solar panels and other politically correct technology. For football fans, this push was probably most evident when for one Sunday Night Football telecast a year (GE owns NBC), they would dim the house lights in the studio and replace it with this eery green lighting.

Look, were saving energy and were greeeeeen!

Smug, sanctimonious and stupid. Immelt was spot on about that. However, if Immelt can't make green pay with the access he has, he is either the worst crony capitalist on the face of the planet or even he realizes that a head-long rush into green technology to the exclusion of traditional energy sources that are currently cheaper, more efficient and yes, more environmentally-friendly is pure folly.



And now about that working definition. We've given you the stock definition for the term regulatory capture, crony capitalism's close friend, but now you get to see it in action. This, from a memo penned by a GE exec to GE employees after the House passage of cap and trade in June of 2009:

"The intersection between GE's interests and government action is clearer than ever ... We must also make sure that candidates who share GE's values and goals get elected to office ...

"On climate change, we were able to work closely with key authors of the Waxman-Markey climate and energy bill, recently passed by the House of Representatives. If this bill is enacted into law it would benefit many GE businesses."

Vote for who we tell you to. Send those people to Washington to write laws which will result in regulations with which only GE has the technology to comply. We crush the competition.


Pretty sweet, huh? That's how it works.


Picking winners and losers, baby!

Video clip of the day

Inevitable.

It's almost as if Keith Olbermann has been banished from the airwaves altogether

If you watched the studio portion of last night's Football Night in America perhaps you were missing a familiar face that had been on the set since 2007. Or perhaps you didn't. Either way, Keith Olbermann is no longer part of that in-studio cast of thousands as his bosses at NBC want him to focus more on his job as the host of Countdown over on MSNBC. Insert wise-crack about needing to focus and his show's anemic ratings, here.

But perhaps there was another reason why Olbermann was dismissed from the show.

Alternate theory #1: Recall the dust-up last year when Rush Limbaugh was reportedly part of an ownership group that was offering to purchase the St. Louis Rams and the subsequent faux outrage firestorm ginned up by the sporting media world and from within the NFL itself to the point where people were dropping any pretext of objectivity and journalistic integrity and were just making up and/or passing along unseemly quotes to attribute to Rush? We can't have that wing-nutty and probably racist rabble-rouser associated with the prim and proper image we have crafted of the NFL.

Is it possible that NBC execs actually tuned into one or two of Olbermann's Countdown episodes and saw what he was dishing out? After all, likening conserva-babe Michelle Malkin to a "mashed-up bag of meat with lip stick" isn't just political polemics but rather the sort of family-values misogyny the NFL/NBC partnership desires for it's viewers.


Alternate theory #2: Or, possibly because Olbermann fires off inane and sophomoric tweets regarding Rush and the imminently possible Koran-burner down in Florida:

‘Rev.’ Terry Jones was classmate of none other than Rush Limbaugh (Cape Central class of ’69). Coincidence?”

None other

Coincidence?

This be the level of professionalism we've come to expect from the host of a show watched by literally hundreds of people around the country.


Yeah, he probably did need to, you know, focus more on Countdown but we're glass half full kind of people and we want to think that NBC/NFL knew they were being completely hypocritical by keeping on this miserable hack and it would be refreshing that, if true, they would come out and admit as much.

That was so 30 days ago

Almost a month ago to the day, ABCNews handed over programming for the day to the White House so the President could hard sell his health care reform. Health care reform of which he doesn’t appear to know a whole lot about.

Anyway, the next network in the Fairness Doctrine round-robin, NBC, is balking at giving him the plum 9 P.M. slot tomorrow in which to talk about…. health care reform opting instead for the 8 P.M. slot.

So, who beat out the most powerful man in the world? This woman.

As would be expected Team O isn’t taking this news very well. Dr. Dave has more on that, here.

ABC doesn't quite rhyme with TASS

...darn

What? Apparently, NBC has not been survile enough. Olby, Chris Matthews and then their own version of “Cribs” and all they have to show for it is to be shut out of the Obamacare infomercial?

Maybe this is the President’s own version of the Fairness Doctrine or spreading the wealth around...or something.

Which all means that with respect to his health care plan... he doesn't have the votes. Consider the full-court press "on".

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished (Updated)

We would scarcely have know the U.S. softball team beat Japan 4-1 in extras to play for its fourth straight gold medal had we not run across article here on yesterday's front page of the San Diego U-T detailing the vote taken by the IOC in Singapore in 2005 that gave the death sentence to softball as an event at future Olympics.

The central figure is the owner of Easton Sports which makes aluminum bats, Jim Easton who recused himself from the vote as he believed there was a conflict of interest as he and his company stood to gain from a continuation of softball as an Olympic event. It turns out that Easton’s “yea” vote would’ve broken the 52-52 deadlock providing the simple majority needed to save softball.

It was the right and honorable thing to do but Easton has been treated less than charitably by the U.S. softball community who have essentially blamed him for killing the dreams of not only American girls but those the world over who see the U.S. as the bell cow in this sport.

For their part, NBC has been shoveling dirt onto the grave as much like a Stalinesque air-brushing of photos, the network has appeared to go out of its way to disregard any scores, updates and/or highlights of the softball team. We’ve been consistent viewers of NBC’s prime-time programming and its become evident that between their non-reporting of political events outside the sporting venues and the softball team’s successes, the network is pathetically bend-over compliant to the desires of the IOC.

UPDATE #1: So much for American dominance, hegemony and its exercise of soft-imperialism... Team U.S.A. loses in gold medal game to Japan, 3-1. Given this perception, this may indeed be the game that ultimately saves softball as an Olympic sport. We'd love to know how the Japanese contingent voted 3 years ago in Singapore.

Guys, they're called swamp coolers

NBC, they of that ridiculous stunt last fall when they broadcast half-time of the Sunday night NFL game in the dark to raise awareness as to energy usage/global warming (…. and sent entire news crews to both the Arctic and Antarctic to prove their point) might reasonably be accused of cruising around Beijing in the Olympic town car with the windows down and the A/C on.

About Last Night

Pretty spectacular Opening Ceremony last night. The best ever? Probably. In fact, the awesome spectacle provided by the Chicoms and the literally, cast of (ten)thousands reminded us of the poster below from the motivational wizards at Despair.com



It was great to see Jim Lampley back in the booth for NBC. Some questionable personal behavior and wacko political views aside, he has always been, in our mind, one of the top commentators in the business and his fill-in work on Rome’s radio show has always been top-notch. One of our earliest memories of Lamps was him getting tossled-about by jubilant fans outside a bar in Lake Placid in the wake of the mens’ hockey team’s “Miracle on Ice” in the ’80 Olympics. Good stuff.

Matt Lauer on China’s massive and concerted push to win medals at these games which he likened to the programs of the Cold War-era Eastern Bloc nations… “but just the good parts.” And those would’ve been…?

And nice to see Lauer isn’t going with any ridiculous looking hair piece or weave for his obviously thinning hair. Hey Matt, just be done with it both figuratively and literally and order-up a “No. 1” next time you're at the barber... err, stylist. Works for us. And keep rockin’.

China’s program to collect all those medals is something called “Project 119” which as far as we can tell is a push to medal in sports no one cares about.

We’re locked-in for this evening which will be heavy on the swimming and which because of the time change, we aren’t quite sure that what we’ll be watching is live, tape delay from yesterday, earlier today….. The Nagano Winter Games in ’98 were dead to us because of this… hope our personal time change maladjustment doesn’t do the same to these Games.