Revenge, it has been said, is a dish best served cold. The point is that getting back at someone is more enjoyable after a period of reflection and planning by the aggrieved party, a passage of time which also allows the offender to suspect no retribution is coming before getting the surprise of his/her/its life.

We awoke Saturday morning to word that Israel and the United States had exacted revenge on Iran by killing plenty of leaders, including Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to address ongoing wrongs which date more than four decades into the past. (Editor’s note: If you see the guy’s name spelled differently elsewhere, that’s due to a phenomenon called transliteration. When languages use different alphabets, spelling is a matter of choice as to how it sounds).

Regardless, this Ayatollah was yet another elderly guy with a scruffy beard, often seen in black garb with a towel wrapped around his head, a theocratic sort committed to keeping his country living in the dark ages and treating women like cattle. I can’t wait for the U.S. women’s hockey team to weigh in on all this.

The late Ayatollah and his ilk have been spreading terror for multiple decades and, truth be told, a lot of Iran’s neighbors are fed up with it all. Reports of cheering Muslim precincts in the aftermath of this action have been mixed with stories of protests regarding the killing and a red revenge flag being raised above at least one mosque.

With a few notable exceptions, led by Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman, response from our political left has been to side with Iran. It’s all too predictable. Remember, these people refused to stand during the State of the Union address just a few days back to demonstrate solidarity with American citizens vs. illegal immigrants.

The problem with Iran is one mainly with its ongoing leadership by Islamic madmen. Iranians in general had been moving hard to a western style of life prior to the 1979 revolution there, which removed Shah Pahlavi.

In the interest of candor, most agree Pahlavi had been installed in a 1953 coup aided and abetted by our CIA, British intelligence and some homegrown Iranians eager to see the country progress.

We’ve been riding the revenge train ever since. Iranian revolutionaries deposed the Shah, who ended up in the U.S. for medical treatment. In November 1979, protesters seized the American embassy in Tehran and took 52 hostages, demanding the Shah be extradited, and not for cancer treatments.

Those hostages were held for 444 days, through a bumbling attempt by President Jimmy Carter to rescue them. Iran gave them up only when Ronald Reagan arrived in the Oval Office and took out the big stick of sanctions to isolate Iran. Sort of sounds familiar.

We are at this point in part because in 2016 Barack Hussein Obama bribed Iran with about $2 billion in cold, hard cash to release four prisoners and because Joe Biden was a feeble caricature of a president. Understand, in the Middle East weakness is perceived as an invitation to take advantage.

For his part, President Trump has told Iran repeatedly that its bad behavior, up to and including development of nuclear weapons, would not be tolerated. Hard to believe Iran leadership missed that prior U.S.-Israel bombing run that leveled various nuclear facilities.

More recently, Trump had been very public about demanding cessation of nuclear activities, not to mention all the threatening bravado from Iran about punishing Israel and the United States.

It’s fair to ask what now? Reports of some deaths and injuries among U.S. troops have come out Sunday. Also, wild missile strikes against neighbors by the Iranians have been reported. Claims by those Iran spokesmen that their missiles had struck an American aircraft carrier have been found to be false.

Rest assured, there will be further wild retaliation by Iran. Sleeper cells of terrorists figure to be activated here and elsewhere. There will be random missile attacks and various other forms of attempts at exacting revenge on the United States and Israel.

Unfortunately, this is the cost of doing business with terrorists, or their sovereign backers.

You will hear some, particularly in our increasingly unhinged political left, decrying Trump’s actions. They will argue we should just have ignored it all rather that stir the hornet’s next.

To them I say, Iran is and has been a cancer on civilization for more than half of my life. Trump is giving that once-proud nation a hard dose of chemotherapy looking to cure the problem.

Such things are not easy, but they are necessary.

It’s time to send the U.S. women’s hockey team to the penalty box — double minor, two minutes each for hypocrisy and embellishment and a 10-minute misconduct for running their mouths interminably about it all.

I mean, these sweet young things were traumatized by an offhand joke from President Trump, which has been lamented ad nauseam as being demeaning to them and women in general. These women hockey players blew off a State of the Union Address invitation due to their anger and are noncommittal about a future White House visit to celebrate and honor their winning of the gold medal in Italy.

Fair enough. But, if you are going to stand up for women and take major offense at a joke, then none of your squad should agree to go to a Las Vegas party hosted by rapper Flavor Flav, a guy who’s been arrested multiple times on domestic violence charges. Yet, reports are they’re going.

Let’s review the facts, the sort of perspective you won’t get from hyperventilating libtards posting on social media, or YouTube, or leftist media members always eager to stir the pot and omit perspective.

To recap, Trump, in a phone call to the American men after their gold-medal victory, invited them to the State of the Union speech and the White House, adding that they had to realize he also would be required to invite the women or he’d be impeached. Some of the guys laughed and the Trump Derangement Syndrome types rushed to their keyboards to express outrage, both at Trump and those players.

The women’s hockey team, fittingly, was passive aggressive about it all, with spokespeople citing scheduling and academics as reasons for turning down the invite to Washington, D.C. Players failed to comment directly at first, but waited eagerly for the first media toolbag to ask them about the remarks so they could spew.

Now, they can’t be shut up about it. Begin with captain Hilary Knight, who found Trump’s joke “distasteful” and “unfortunate.” She lectured how it was a teaching moment about being more respectful and celebratory about women’s achievements.

I don’t know much about women’s locker rooms, male sports writers not hanging around them back in my day for reasons that used to be apparent. But, I know from more than three decades spent covering sports, men’s locker rooms are the scene of some cutting barbs and jokes – among teammates. Thin-skinned types do not survive.

If you are a world-class athlete who can be cut to the quick by a joke, well, color me amazed.

As an aside, I knew several area coaches who at one time or another in their career, had the occasion to coach both high school boys and girls basketball teams.

Those coaches used to tell me that coaching the females was the greater challenge. The male athletes might hate each other, but they could put that aside on the court in the interest of winning. Girls, on the other hand, were cliquish and breaking that down was next to impossible.

But, let’s deal with what we can quantify.

Generally speaking, women’s sports pale in comparison with the popularity of men’s sports.

Case in point: The average viewership for the U.S. women’s gold medal win over Canada was 5.3 million, with a peak of 7.7 million. Hey, I even watched most of it.

The U.S. men’s gold medal win, also over Canada, AVERAGED 18.6 million viewers and peaked at 26 million. Incidentally, that game was an early morning start and set records for a sporting event with a pre-9 a.m. start east coast time.

Here’s the cruelest fact of all. Since populations tend to be split about evenly between men and women, those numbers suggest that even women were more interested in watching the men’s game.

You might read in some spaces that interest in women’s sports is growing faster than men’s interest. Be careful about such percentage comparisons, where starting from a large base is a disadvantage.

Consider if I had a company making $1 billion in profit a year and bumped that to $2 billion the next year. Pretty impressive stuff, a double. But, if your company made $1 and you increased that to $10 (dollars, not billions of dollars), you’ve gone up tenfold and blew me away in terms of growth rate.

Were I Trump, I’d tell the U.S. women never mind that Washington visit, no hard feelings. And enjoy partying with a guy who is reported to have pleaded guilty in 1991 in New York to assault on his then-girlfriend and mother of his three children, pleaded guilty again in 2014 in Nevada, for domestic battery and had to attend domestic violence counseling, and more recently in Nevada was arrested again for domestic battery. That charge was dropped, according to Wikipedia, when he pleaded no contest to coercion.

At least Flavor Flav didn’t tell any distasteful or unfortunate jokes; as far as we know.

Back in my days writing for what has become the Johnstown Woke Gazette, a local sporting type fibbed to me. I got the truth from someone else and put it into my column, along with the untruth that made it clear who was lying.

The next day, I arrived at work to a message on one of those pink, while you were out sheets. Said liar’s message for me: Thanks for making me look like an asshole.

I called him up and pointed out he’d made himself look like an asshole by lying to me and I’d just spread the word in my column. I told him it would keep happening if he didn’t clean up his act. As far as I know, he never again lied to me.

I thought of this while watching the State of the Union speech Tuesday night, during which President Trump gave Democrats multiple opportunities to make themselves look like assholes and more often than not, they eagerly did just that.

Most notable was when Trump challenged anyone present who thinks the first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal immigrants, to stand. The Republicans leapt to their feet. The Democrats? Maybe some stood, but it was not evident.

No, mostly the Democrats were glued to their seats as the Republicans stood and cheered for what must have seemed like an interminable stretch for those hate-America leftists.

Imagine, given the chance to pick a side, either their fellow citizens or illegal invaders who too often commit crimes and live on the public dole, Democrats virtually unanimously, if not entirely unanimously, sided with the illegals.

It’s not clear if Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman, uncharacteristically actually wearing a suit instead of shorts and a hoodie, stood. If he did, he was a lonely man.

But, consider the temerity of Democrats, giving a middle finger to the U.S. citizenry during a nationally televised address and then expecting you to vote for them. If you still vote for Democrats in the wake of this, you probably should be living in a group home, with more rational types helping manage your affairs.

Earlier in the evening, many Democrats had stood to acknowledge the presence of the U.S. men’s Olympic hockey team, which claimed gold in Italy. This surprised both Trump and me. I thought, maybe these fools are developing some perspective. I was wrong.

Later in Trump’s mammoth address, Democrats routinely refused to stand and cheer, including for the mother of a slain woman who escaped war in Ukraine only to be killed on a North Carolina train by a man with 14 prior criminal arrests. He was out due to that Democrat affinity for criminals.

Trump, in a blessed moment of brutal candor, took in the scene of Democrats refusing to commiserate and said, “These people are crazy, I’m telling you. They’re crazy.”

There was other ample evidence of this, from last year’s disruptive pimp-looking member getting thrown out again early, to a couple of Squad members shouting at Trump from their seats and coming off as petulant adolescents.

Maybe they should have gone to the protest outside, which might have swelled that turnout to triple digits.

Trump was masterful Tuesday. It was a speech of record length, but he had a lot to stay, a lot of people to honor and recognize, a lot of salient policy points to make on what separates Republicans from Democrats, which is a chasm the size of the Grand Canyon.

Trump drew a distinct contrast on that last point. If Republicans aren’t cutting campaign ads with that moment when Democrats picked illegals over citizens, they are asleep at the switch.

Trump did what he needed to do Tuesday night and the Democrats fell into the trap. Now, Trump and the Republicans need to press the issue right on through mid-term elections.

It is fitting that President Trump has invited our gold-medal winning U.S. men’s Olympic hockey team to tonight’s State of the Union address. Just like their championship hockey game, this figures to be riveting television.

Recall last year how Democrats seemed bound to plumb the depths of civil discourse during Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress, beginning with an apparent pimp impersonator waving his cane and needing to be removed, and moving on to failing to cheer a child cancer survivor who was made an honorary member of the Secret Service.

Those were just two notable lowlights. Democrats also waved ridiculous signs that looked like bidding paddles from an auction, and jeered and mocked any Trump attempt to acknowledge victims, mainly of Democrat policy.

Talk about Nazi tactics. The over-the-top rhetoric of Democrats toward Trump and his supporters has helped birth three assassination attempts on him – thankfully all unsuccessful. Charlie Kirk was not as fortunate.

There have been reports many Democrats will skip tonight’s event. Good riddance. But, being the desperate attention seekers that they are, many will show up and make asses of themselves before a national audience.

It’s what they do. Recent examples include AOC umming, and liking, and you knowing her way through an attempt to answer a foreign policy question, and California Governor Gavin Newsom telling a largely black audience he is one them because he can’t read and got a low score on his college board test.

Democrats chip as many teeth by inserting their feet in their mouth as U.S. Olympic hero Jack Hughes suffered at the hands of a stick-wielding Canada player.

This would be laughable were it not for such a large slice of the populace that votes Democrat due to being too stupid to make a good choice, or too lazy to check out the distortions being spewed by their chosen representatives.

You think it gets a little dirty in those hockey scrums, that pales compared to the dirt of politics.

At least people tend to know and obey the rules in sports, other than the vanquished Canadians, who now think 3-on-3 overtime play is absurd and not really hockey because they lost to the United States. When they beat Czechia in 3-on-3 OT previously in these Olympics, it was fine. When Sidney Crosby scored an Olympic game-winning goal vs. the United States in a 4-on-4 OT years back, that was great, too.

Hope the people up in Snow Peso land enjoy their sour grapes whine.

Some have written that Democrats plan an attempt to embarrass Trump by bringing Epstein survivors to the speech tonight. Have these dolts failed to note that quite a few more prominent Democrats than Republicans hobnobbed with the perversion king, and that Trump was on the record as early as 2006 outing Epstein to the law?

Look in the mirror, Democrats, when it comes to Epstein, or being in bed with Big Pharma and Communist China, or exhibiting while in office the stock trading acumen of the world’s greatest investors, yet never showing that before, or after being in Congress. Quite the coincidence, I’d say, Nancy.

Democrats as a party stink like week-old fish and it is disheartening how many brain-dead foot soldiers they have. New York City Mayor Mamdani the Commie lost the Democrat thread this week. He required ridiculous amounts of documentation for people to shovel snow and got precious few takers. But I’m sure no such paper trail is required of the left’s rental protesters that show up on command to cash a check and foment mayhem in leftist cities.

Maybe Mamdani could advertise an ICE protest and hand them shovels when they get there. Just let some Soros-type shadow funder pick up the tab.

I would expect Trump during tonight’s address to note this dissonance of a prominent Democrat heading a sanctuary city requiring five forms of ID to shovel snow, even as Democrats say any ID requirement to vote is the depths of racism and voter suppression.

Mostly, Trump tonight should emphasize his sealed border, the record low numbers of crime, and generally strengthening economic data. Even despite the Supreme Court having jumped into the fray in an attempt to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory regarding tariffs, Trump will get it done economically given the chance.

His problem is the clock is ticking and the electorate, with an attention span of nanoseconds, and precious little intellectual curiosity to question absurd claims made by leftists, could grind Trump’s agenda to a halt with Democrat wins in this fall’s mid-term elections.

Trump needs to be on the offensive tonight, touting accomplishments and outlining what he still has on his plate to benefit taxpayers.

Democrats, you see, don’t really have a plan, beyond being pro-illegal immigrant, pro-socialism, pro-criminals and anti-traditional American values.

That point cannot be made too often. This is Trump’s night to do just that.

It was a bad day for the hate America crowd, both foreign and domestic, what with the U.S. men’s hockey team taking down Canada in overtime to win the Olympic gold medals.

Imagine the angst among the sexually confused, blue haired, rings in nose types when Jack Hughes connected on the game-winning goal and shortly thereafter told an interviewer, “This is all about our country right now. I love the USA. I love my teammates. I’m so proud to be American today.”

Unlike the soy boy stoners who opened these Olympic Games emphasizing they weren’t onboard with their home country on many fronts, or the various other leftist morons who for some reason landed spots on our Olympic team, the men hockey players, and presumably our women, don’t feel the need to apologize for being American, or for what we do as a nation.

This is why I love the game of hockey. It is filled with mentally and physically tough types who represent the traditional values we used to hold dear.

Hughes typified that. Earlier in the game he had some teeth knocked from his mouth by an errant stick wielded by a Canada player. Instead of whining for his mother, as so many of those paid protesters seem to do when the police actually arrest them for their misdeeds, Hughes soldiered on and, in the end, was triumphant.

Photos of Hughes skating after the game, an American Flag draped on his shoulders, his smile showing the missing teeth and blood on his remaining front chiclets, is as iconic as that image from Butler showing President Trump against a backdrop of our flag shortly after being shot in an assassination attempt.

Speaking of such things, it is ironic and appropriate that on the same day the Americans took gold, yet another lunatic was killed, presumably attempting to harm Trump.

The deranged fool was in Florida at Trump’s estate, but Trump was in Washington, D.C. Thankfully.

Our country is plagued by this type of cancer, and winning a gold medal won’t cure it. But, it helps one feel better as we wait for resolution.

Canadians already have taken to social media to whine and downplay the result of this game, as is their national wont. You can be pretty sure their Prime Minster Mark Carney (Barker) was whining, too, just not publicly.

As someone who used to cover sports for his daily bread, I will concede the Canadians carried play most of the game.

They also benefited from more than a minute and a half of 5-on-3 power play time, yet failed to score. As I had pointed out in a previous post, teams failing on such opportunities almost always lose the game.

For that, and many more aspects, I give full credit to American goalie Connor Hellebuyck. During the game he stopped Canadian stars Connor McDavid and Macklin Celebrini on separate breakaways, and also made a once-in-a-lifetime save with the paddle of this stick on a point-blank shot from the goal crease.

Hellebuyck, who is an accomplished goalie impugned for not coming up big in the crunch, was the reason the U.S. won. He was huge and Hughes made a point to note that in his postgame interview.

Although I have yet to see it, Canadians also can be counted on to whine that Sidney Crosby was out with an injury. It is of note they accepted their overtime win vs. the United States in the 4 Nations Face-off without mentioning Quinn Hughes (brother of Jack) missed that entire tournament due to injury and the Americans played the final game with key injuries to star forward Matthew Tkachuk and equally prominent defenseman Charlie McAvoy.

Just a reminder here, the United States beat Canada in the round-robin stage of that 4-Nations affair, and lost with an injury depleted roster in overtime for the title.

Now, the United States has beaten Canada in the Olympic Gold Medal Game, also in overtime. So, the United States has beaten Canada twice in the past three meetings between the respective nations’ best players.

Could be more of a trend than luck. Just saying.

There is one final point to be made before we put a period on this. I was among those questioning how the U.S. team left off some huge firepower in the form of Cole Caufield and Jason Robertson. Instead, the Olympic roster has two players from perhaps the worst team in the NHL this season, Vincent Trocheck and J.T. Miller.

It turns out Trocheck and Miller were key players on the penalty kill, which did not allow a single power-play goal in these Olympics, including killing off the aforementioned two-man advantage for Canada. Trocheck also was a key faceoff man.

In the final analysis, tip your hat to USA Hockey general manager Bill Guerin. The roster he put together won the gold. It doesn’t get any better than that.

The U.S. men’s hockey team plays Canada for Olympic gold very early Sunday morning in one of those athletic contests that transcends sports. And I am thinking of a former news editor, not a sports fan, who often told me that he couldn’t understand why people got so worked up over things that meant so little in the big picture.

I’d tell him back then just to think of it as tribal instincts writ large. You see it in politics, all manner of international matters, and, yes, in sports. Nothing is as intoxicating as identifying with a group – fanatically at times since fan is shorthand for that word – and indulging in us vs. them thoughts and actions.

There is a lot of that in Olympics sports, no matter the propaganda they spew about friendly competition. Already in these Olympics, we’ve had Canada men’s and women’s curling teams accused of cheating, a skating judge raising red flags over absurdly low scores for a U.S. ice dancing pair, some cross-country skiers banned for an illegal substance on their skis, and some male ski jumpers being accused of penile injections to increase size and help them jump further due to enhanced aerodynamics of the bigger crotch bulge in those skin-tight suits they wear.

I know all of this from reading the internet. I have watched only men’s hockey games and that U.S. women’s gold medal win – admittedly not all of that.

Mostly, I’ve avoided the Olympics because of the rampant hypocrisy of the Games and general overkill of the coverage.

But, to repeat, I do follow the hockey.

I prepped for this Sunday gold-medal game by watching the movie “Miracle,” a chronicle of the amazing gold medal run of the 1980 American men. Ironically, our men have not won Olympic hockey gold since. Meanwhile, the U.S. women hockey players have just grabbed yet another gold, their third since it became an Olympic sport for women in 1998.

It seems that in hockey, much as in soccer, our women’s national teams are threats to win it all and our men, well, they are threats to disappoint.

But, ever since last season’s 4 Nations Face-Off, an NHL production featuring teams from Canada, Sweden, Finland and the United States, there has been great anticipation of these Olympics.

That tournament, played at the height of tariff spats and Canada-United States friction, saw crowds in Canada booing our national anthem. That led to three fights in the first 9 seconds of a Canada-U.S. round-robin game, won by the U.S.

Canada bounced back to win the championship game vs. the United States, in overtime.

It was widely anticipated there would be a rematch for Olympic gold and, despite a few hiccups and near-misses along the way, both Canada and the United States made it.

I have a few wishes for this game, including the U.S. not to have yet another apparent goal wiped off the board due to infractions real or imagined. There have been three such examples already for the United States.

I’m hoping the referees won’t both be from Canada, as was the case in Canada’s dramatic, last-minute, 3-2 win over Finland in the previous round. Finland led 2-0, but Canada rallied, including one goal that was close to interference, then was gifted a late power-play to enable the win.

I’m praying American wunderkind defenseman Quinn Hughes quits getting his slapshots blocked by charging defenders, leading to odd-man breaks.

Mostly, I’m hoping for a clean, well-played game, with no strange calls or plays deciding the outcome.

Much will be made of this game being played on the 46^th anniversary of the Miracle On Ice win over the Soviets, but the similarities stop there.

First, that 1980 U.S. team had to go on to beat Finland in the next game to claim gold due to the round-robin format of the time. Also, those were true amateurs, a bunch of college kids, playing for the United States, against a team of professionals masquerading as amateurs for the Soviets and some other teams.

Now, we’re all sending pros, the Soviet Union is no more, and Russia is banned from these international competitions because some nincompoops think that will stop them from invading other countries. Spoiler alert: It hasn’t and won’t.

Both Canada and the United States have better squads than even in last year’s 4 Nations affair.

My heart says United States to win, but the head says Canada will find a way to eke out yet another victory.

Here’s hoping the heart is right.

I tried life as an Altoid Thursday regarding women’s Olympic hockey. It was tougher than expected, but rewarding in the end. Allow me to explain.

First, Altoids refers not the candy mints of the same name, but to fans of Altoona High School sports. Growing up in Johnstown, I was amazed at those fans. We called them Altoids, because it seemed they were not of this Earth.

They lived to bask in reflected glory of their sports teams and, in the end, it didn’t matter what the sport was. These were fans of winning. If it filtered all the way down to tiddlywinks, and Altoona was dominant, they’d show up wearing the colors.

I saw this, first as a student at Johnstown High School, with Altoona being our big rival, and later while working more than two decades, mostly in sports, for the Johnstown Woke Gazette.

Altoona had some great high school football teams through the years, but as far as I can tell, never won a state or WPIAL title. Johnstown, twice claimed WPIAL titles.

The Altoid fans progressed to boys basketball. Over a stretch of decades, Altoona had a string of eventual NBA players, from Johnny Moore through Doug West, Mike Iuzzolino and Danny Fortson. Yet, Altoona never won a state title.

Altoid fans moved on to girls basketball and finally got their Holy Grail, with state titles and even a mythical national title.

On the flip side, if Altoids were confronted with their teams losing, they rushed to exits before game’s end. Theirs was a curious take on the philosophical chestnut about a tree falling in the woods with no one around to hear and whether or not it made a noise. If their team lost, but the Altoids did not witness the ending, then it never really happened.

I decided to try being an Altoid regarding the U.S. women’s Olympic hockey team, which played Canada for the gold Thursday.

I never have watched a single women’s hockey game in my life, but in the best Altoid fashion, this was a chance to hop aboard the bandwagon and share their success. After all, the U.S. women were expected to continue dominating, even against their great rivals from the land of the Snow Peso.

Having sweated out the OT triumph of the U.S. Men vs. Sweden a day earlier, I was in the mood for some American domination.

Alas, the first period apparently was a showcase of women’s hockey, slow-developing plays and limited individual brilliance.

But, I endured into the second period, when the Americans coughed up a short-handed goal while on the powerplay and trailed, 1-0.

There are some basic hockey rules covering such things. First, teams with 5 on-3 advantages that fail to score a goal, usually lose. Along that line, teams that give up short-handed goals, also tend to lose.

I moved to watching a DVRd episode of the Charles Payne show on Fox Business, and made a phone call to straighten out a billing issue on my Medicare RX plan.

It was time to check back on the game and, imagine my surprise to find it tied at 1-1 and headed to overtime.

First, a thought on the 3-on-3 overtimes of the Olympics. The U.S. men, and now the U.S. women, have prevailed, but it’s a joke. The Olympics come around once every four years. Can’t we spare a few extra minutes to play 5-on-5 in overtime, with medals on the line?

The women’s overtime, unlike the breathtaking skill exhibited by the men with all that open ice, was more a comedy of errors with lost pucks, offsides calls and other assorted gaffes.

The U.S. wrote a merciful end with a semi-breakaway goal and it was time to celebrate.

U-S-A!

Now, I can’t imagine watching another women’s hockey game anytime, but it was fun playing the role of an Altoid on a rainy February afternoon.

I, however, am not willing to be an Altoid regardless of the team or athlete.

There will be no cheering from me for American Soy Boy snowboarders, “Pansexual” skaters and Americans competing for China because the money is better and due to Olympics loopholes, they apparently qualify due to once having eaten at a Chinese buffet.

I’m not about to embrace these Hate America types, even if they are wearing our colors as members of national teams.

With the benefit of 20-20 hindsight, it’s probably better that Canada led much of the game and the U.S. needed to score a late goal with its goalie pulled to force OT, just when Canada was sniffing an upset.

I’d liked to have been there with Canada PM Mark Carney (Barker) when that overtime goal was scored. Bet the dog got kicked more than once, eh.

On Valentine’s Day I did the right thing and took the wife out to eat and then ran her around on various shopping errands.

All the while, the U.S. men’s Olympic hockey team was playing Denmark. But, never fear, I was DVRing the game to be viewed later.

Not to say I was overconfident, but I did suggest to more than one person that, considering Denmark sort of claims Greenland and we’d like to have it and easily could take it, we might settle the whole matter by ceding that great expanse of ice to the winner of this game.

Even after a U.S. defenseman had kicked the game’s opening goal into his own net Saturday, I was confident.

Later, as American goalie Jeremy Swayman gave up not one, but two goals from the next area code, my confidence wavered more than a little.

In the end, the massive offensive talent of this American team was too much for the Danes, who succumbed to the tune of a 6-3 final.

I read tales of great angst on the Internet regarding the game. If you judge only by the final score, it was closer than expected. If you look deeper, at the massive U.S. edge in shots on goal and faceoffs won, it was not all that close.

Again, what made it seem close was Swayman gave up two goals from the next county, shots most beer league goalies might have stopped.

I think this unimpressive outing has cemented that the U.S. must go with Connor Hellebuyck in goal in subsequent games. Hellebuyck is known for playing well in the regular season of the NHL, and having nothing extra to offer in the playoffs or events such as this.

Some saw Swayman as a goalie who could dazzle with big saves at key moments in big games. After his Great Dane Meltdown, forget that.

The U.S. plays again Sunday, vs. Germany, to see if the Americans can win their group ahead of knockout play.

Swayman ought to just watch this one, and subsequent games.

At least Saturday’s game unfolded without the ridiculous interventions of the previous game, which saw two U.S. goals wiped out by challenges, and also some uneven officiating.

Swayman personally deducted two goals from the Americans’ winning margin vs. Denmark. The officiating was just fine.

After two games in these Olympics, this seems to be a typical American hockey team, prone to stretches of absolute dominance offensively, punctuated by runs when it looks like they never saw a hockey puck before.

At its best, this team is a legitimate contender to win the gold. But, one of those sustained stretches of lethargy against, say, the Canadians, will doom the U.S. team to failure.

The U.S. could lose to Germany today, but probably won’t. This looms as a chance for the Americans to put together a complete game, which would be their first of these Olympics, and a good way to build momentum for coming single-defeat elimination games.

I tuned in to watch the U.S. Men’s Olympic hockey game Thursday afternoon and almost at once began to have flashbacks, to Olympic men’s basketball and September 1972.

Back then, I’d just turned 17 years of age, I’d started my senior year at Greater Johnstown High School, and most important, it was becoming more and more unlikely that I’d not be sent to fight in Vietnam since there was speculation the military draft was being ended.

In those simpler timers, I could afford to be concerned about such things as our U.S. men’s Olympic basketball team, composed entirely of college players, not the pros other nations sent to the Games back then. The U.S. never lost in the Olympic men’s basketball, despite all that.

And yet, this time we did lose, to a Soviet Union team of professional athletes listed as soldiers and the like. Worse, it seemed the Soviets got about a thousand chances at the end to hit the game-winning shot.

Okay, so maybe it was only three chances, but that was two too many. The U.S. protested and a five-member panel with two Soviet stooges onboard said protest denied. The Russkies got the gold and we got the shaft.

Imagine, cheating by referees and judges at the Olympics. Good thing that hasn’t continued. Oh, wait.

It was quite a lesson for this teenager, and one I never quite forgot.

Fast-forward to Thursday and I settled in to watch the U.S. face Latvia in the Olympic men’s hockey. I know, I know the U.S. women already have trounced Canada, 5-0, in a preliminary round game and are favorites to take gold medals among the women. Fine and dandy, but I’m more interested in the men’s games.

The good news is there is a considerable talent differential between our hockey team and Latvia’s, unlike the closely matched Soviet and American Olympic basketball teams from 1972.

That meant the U.S. could overcome some – shall we say – questionable decisions made by game officials today and still prevail.

Consider, the U.S. twice in the first period scored goals only to have them waved off after challenges from Latvia. I will concede the first play might have been offside, although any video evidence to that effect was not shared with the viewers. The second, well, it was not goalie interference in my book.

And then there was the phantom hooking penalty called against a U.S. player, giving Latvia a power-play opportunity. All this in the first period.

I paused the broadcast and rushed to the computer to find out exactly who these game officials might be. Turns out the two referees were Canadians. You might have heard, there is quite a rivalry between Canada and the U.S. in hockey, politics, and just about everything else.

I’m sure these two Hosers called it straight. But skeptics might struggle to accept that.

Unlike that 1972 basketball game, a possible finger on the scale for the opposition wasn’t enough to change the outcome of this hockey contest.

The U.S. ran away away with a 5-1 win and it wasn’t that close. Add back in the two disputed goals and consider the U.S. hit a crossbar and a goalpost — an inch or two either way and two more goals — and you’re looking at a 9-1 final.

My concern is, down the line when the talent levels are closer, having two goals taken away in a single period might be too much to overcome.

If, as anticipated, Canada and the Americans meet later in this affair, I’m hoping we get an even split when it comes to officiating breaks. No referees from Canada, please!

Back in 1975, when Saturday Night Live was new, and funny, and equal opportunity, it developed a catchphrase, Franco is still dead, to mock overkill news coverage.

In this case, the reference was to Spanish dictator Francisco Franco, who was in ill health. Networks, including NBC, repeated stories ad nauseam about Franco’s health. On slow news days, they led with reports he still was alive.

Eventually, this prompted SNL wiseguy Chevy Chase, on his parody weekend news update, first to report Franco’s death, then repeat weekly that Franco still was dead.

Not a lot has changed in intervening years, witness the disappearance of Savannah Guthrie’s mother and the cloying, insipid coverage it has inspired. For almost two weeks, the elderly, ailing woman has been missing and news types rush to their cameras hourly with breathless updates that basically amount to, we know nothing more than we did when she first disappeared.

Imagine my surprise Tuesday night when I attempted to tune in the Gutfeld show at 10 p.m. and instead found an insufferable Fox News talking head giving the latest Guthrie updates, which is to say nothing.

Eventually it came to light that some food delivery type, a “person of interest” had been questioned and released. For that I had no Gutfeld show.

To understand Fox’s idiocy on this, the network pre-empted its most successful, most well-done prime time show to run useless fluff and speculation, just because it could.

Allow me to speculate. Savannah’s mother is dead. Period. I hope I’m wrong, but I don’t like the odds of her being alive.

Once you have arrested someone, get back to me. Until then, stop imitating Saturday Night Live with Franco is still dead updates.

It occurs me that it is curious that so much is allowed to be said about Savannah’s missing mother, but other topics, news happening even as we speculate about Mrs. Guthrie, remains largely in the background.

Were you stunned when it leaked out the Canada mass shooter was yet another trans type? I wasn’t. But such reality is not spoken about in polite company.

Similarly, we are to ignore that Josh Shapiro’s Pennsylvania government hands out CDLs like CrackerJack prizes, leading to carnage around the nation.

Voter ID, why that’s just discrimination. Yes, I needed ID — a driver’s license — to cash checks today at the bank I’ve used for about 50 years. Yes, I need such ID to board airplanes, enter federal buildings, secure a loan, buy alcohol, operate a car, carry a handgun, etc., etc., etc. But asking for ID from voters, that’s absurdly racist.

Pointing out widespread fraud in Minnesota, California, and other blue strongholds, that also is verboten. What’s a little fraud, especially when it supports left-wing radicals?

Olympians embarrassed to represent the United States, ridiculous Super Bowl political screeds passing as halftime shows, national politicians alleged to be on the payroll of Chinese interests, record low crime rates, massive job and income growth, all these seem to merit little or no mention. But give me the latest Guthrie non-update. Yes, please.

I long for a time when people tasked with reporting news understood what news was.

Those people are long gone, apparently, replaced with dull, largely brainless types who can spend an hour talking about stale developments and offering nothing new.

Because you accept this, you will get more of it.

Maybe in a year or so we’ll find out what happened to Mrs. Guthrie. But don’t hold your breath.