Out here, you’re tested. You face an opponent experts say can’t be beat. You fight. You bleed. You prevail. Our country’s down, but we’re not out. To come back, we need a leader with a proven record, not just rhetoric. Tim Pawlenty took on The Unions and won. He shut down a government and won. He took “Miracle on Ice” footage from the 1980 Winter Olympics and added it to his Presidential campaign ads without asking anyone’s permission and … well, okay, so that didn’t turn out so great.

From the Des Moines Register:

ABC Sports may slap presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty with a cease-and-desist letter for improperly using its footage in a political advertisement, a company official told The Des Moines Register today.

“It’s a violation of our copyright and exclusive proprietary rights,” said Louise Argianas, director of rights and clearances for ABC Sports.

The struggling Pawlenty campaign launched “The American Comeback,” a television commercial with a down-but-not-out theme, in Iowa on Wednesday.

America needs a leader who doesn’t understand basic laws. You’ve got to love that we’ve come so far with the “Obama is a socialist” thing that now he’s just blatantly being called an evil Russian from the 80s. Brigitte Nielsen should start following him around. Pawlenty’s big comeback doesn’t look like it’s going to work, so maybe next time politicians will stick to depicting children being murdered by nuclear holocaust and leave our precious sports history alone. I hope this ad was taped on the same VHS Pawlenty used to record himself pulling sweet lightsaber moves.

In a related story, President Barack Obama is prepping a campaign ad using footage of the O.J. Simpson Bronco chase. Hundreds of white guys relentlessly chase a black guy, and by the time they catch him nothing has been accomplished.

[h/t Puck Daddy]

Yesterday’s video of a 7-foot bear learning the coldness of the human heart was pretty funny, but today’s video amps up the hilarity by making every possible aspect of a mascot’s missed high-five sadder. Watch as a mascot from the United Way (aw) tries to get a high-five from a person carrying the Olympic Torch (aw) while wearing a MITTEN (AWW) and gets it, only to be denied by a security guard who allows the hands to get SUPER CLOSE but stops it, because there is no time for them to actually touch. “No, you need to go!”

I didn’t think this kind of thing happened in Canada. YOU JERK, THAT POLYWHIRL-LOOKING THING WAS WEARING A MITTEN. The only way it could be sadder is if a puppy was about to die and the mitten-to-mitten interspecies high-five would’ve saved it. This is why your opening ceremony pillar contraption didn’t work, Vancouver. Because of this guy.

Tristan Gale Geisler won a gold medal in skeleton in 2002. That medal was stolen from her on Wednesday when her house was burglarized while she was out walking her dog with her husband. But adding to the holysh:ttedness of the situation is the fact that she may have actually confronted the burglars in her home last week.

It’s odd because most Americans usually get robbed during the Olympics. Looking at you, French judge.

Geisler told police that three men knocked on her door about a week ago when she was cooking dinner one evening. She saw them, and because she didn’t recognize them, she didn’t answer the door.

They walked inside the house, and Geisler went downstairs to confront them.

“I wanted to believe they were lost,” she said, acknowledging that in hindsight, they were likely casing her house.

She told her husband about it and a neighbor actually called police. But when the three young men left without incident, Geisler thought the situation, while unsettling, was harmless.

–Deseret News.

The burglars also made off with Geisler’s computers and hard drives, which as all of us know contain irreplaceable images from weddings and whatever. It’s unlikely that the medal would be replaced, either. The best we can hope for is for all three of these guys to get hit by a bus.

Even though the opening ceremonies for the Winter Games were Friday, the NHL played games throughout the weekend, only breaking today to allow its players to leave for Vancouver to chase down a gold medal for their respective nations. It’s the fourth time, beginning in 1998, the league has done so, its prime motivation being to capitalize on the Olympic fever and sell its players–if not its product–to new fans. With the league’s recent labor strife and its unstable television presence during that 12-year period, it’s difficult to guage whether or not the NHL has been successful. But one sports columnist out there has seen enough.

The 1980 USA “Miracle on Ice” team is memorable because they were dragon slayers. A bunch of college kids, most of them unwanted by the NHL, beat a team of Soviet pros.

That kind of storyline can’t happen in this Olympics. One team of NHL players will beat another team of NHL players. That isn’t good for the Olympics, and it really doesn’t do the NHL much good, either.–John Mehno/Beaver County Times.

Haha, “Beaver.”

Sure, the Games make for better press when the athletes are starving to death or maxing out all their credit cards for their one shot at Olympic gold, a la figure skating’s Mark Ladwig, but it’s not hockey’s fault that the sport actually has a functioning professional league (for now, anyway…zing?), one that cultivates and promotes talent better than other winter sports. I’d rather see USA Hockey do what soccer does: maintain a single, actual team and schedule exhibition games throughout the year. If being on Team USA was more of a responsibility and less of a vacation from one’s regular job, we’d certainly have more hockey players that we could gush over like we do in the other winter sports. And less property damage, too.

Olympic snowboarder and Ohio native Gretchen Blieler was on the Tonight Show the night before Thanksgiving, which makes a lot of sense because attractive women don’t have families to visit, since they’re not real people anyway. I’m sure she had lots of stuff to talk about, because there’s no better conversationalist than a female athlete that does modeling for side work. I’m sure she has lots to say about the current Congressional plan for health care reform. Not that I’d ever listen to somebody that wore shoes like that. Thanks to Jon at Sports Babe Examiner, who posted the video early this morning. Apparently he has no family, either.

The United States Speedskating team lost a sizable chunk of its funding when the team’s biggest sponsor, DSB Bank NV, declared bankruptcy last month. But an unlikely hero has stepped up to offer the team its support, and America’s speedskaters will find themselves in Vancouver skating for another nation–Colbert Nation.

“On their enormous, billboard thighs, it will say, ‘Colbert Nation,”‘ Colbert said in an interview before Monday evening’s taping. “Be looking for that logo as it comes around the final turn. It will be easy to see because it will be in first place.”[..]

The show isn’t paying the team any money directly. Instead, Colbert is calling on his fans to donate to the team via www.colbertnation.com and www.usspeedskating.org. In the past, Colbert has had a great deal of success raising money this way. He has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for the Yellow Ribbon Fund, a charity that assists injured service members and their families. –SI.com.

Even if “The Colbert Report” itself doesn’t give the team a dime, they’re getting tremendous exposure that will bring other potential sponsors to the team and the athletes themselves. And with Apolo Anton Ohno being favored in nearly all of his events, the show should be rewarded as well. Usually both parties don’t stand to benefit like this unless one’s a Japanese businessman and the other’s a blonde prostitute. I think the speedskaters are the prostitute here. They have better legs.