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I know I risk being banned from Twitter for criticizing NBC’s Olympic coverage, but I just can’t help myself. The beautiful image above wasn’t seen by the millions of Americans who tuned in – via tape delay – to the Opening Ceremonies of the XXX Olympiad in London. (Britain’s Guy Adams‘ Twitter account was suspended after repeated tweets criticizing NBC and at least one containing the email address of an NBC executive!)

But I have so many things to complain about that I’ll take the risk.

1. Stop with the tape delays! It’s bad enough you didn’t show the opening ceremonies live, but the sporting events too? Times have changed, and the whole world is communicating via Twitter, Facebook and the zillions of other ways to talk with one another via the internet.  I understand that you want to squeeze every last cent from the corporate sponsors by charging them top dollar for “prime time” advertising. But with the abundance of DVRs being used today, we all make our own prime time. I wanted to watch the women’s gymnastics trials. But because you tape -delayed them, I was sound asleep when you finally got around to showing the heartbreaking competitions.  I learned what happened in this morning’s newspaper.  Perhaps if you had aired it live, I would have seen it – and your high-priced ads too.

2. Opening ceremonies: Enough with the banal chatter of the “hosts”. Great Britain is our host – not Matt Lauer and Meredith Viera, and certainly not Ryan Seacrest! But we had to hear their inane comments instead of being allowed to focus on what was happening on the screen.  If the audience in London didn’t need the narration, neither did we.

3. Editing out the tribute to the 7/7 terrorist victims. This is unconscionable. NBC, I’ve been on the receiving end of your many and overblown tributes/remembrances of 9/11.  Can you imagine if the roles were reversed and the US chose to include one of those in our ceremony and the BBC cut away? Horrible judgement, to say the least.  

4. But to add insult to injury, you replace that segment with a complete non sequitur.  In the midst of a truly British production replete with British literary and theatrical stars, and a telling of British history, on our TV screens appear Ryan Seacrest in a throwaway interview with Michael Phelps? WTF?  We didn’t learn what had happened until the following day, but still haven’t gotten the “why” of the matter. Horrible.

5. Preempting Up With Chris Hayes. Is that really necessary? The one bit of appointment viewing I have left from your news organization, and you make me go without for three weeks? Ugh.  But I guess I should thank you for saving me from David Gregory’s perversion of Meet The Press and another few appearances from John McCain. 

I’m sure I’ll have much more to say on NBC’s poor performance, so stay tuned.

Today on the show, I spoke with West Virginia’s true progressive (though she prefers the term Populist) candidate, Sue Thorn. Yes Virginia, they do have progressives (populists) in West Virginia! Who knew? You do now..  Seriously, she’ll do a live chat with the Blue America folks over at Crooks and Liars tomorrow afternoon, so do check her out! 

I checked in with my old friend Maysoon Zayid, who’s just getting back on her feet after the sad loss of her father last month.  

And if it’s Monday, we get the scoop on what went down on the Sunday talking head shows in our Fools on the Hill ™ segment from Crooks & Liars‘ Nicole Belle, who watches those shows so you don’t have to.  Here’s what she brought us today:

There are Sundays where I am ever more convinced that conservatives and liberals live in completely different realities, parallel universes that do not meet.This was one of those Sundays.

 Because we have one of the top jurists in the country (not by intelligence, mind you, but by virtue of being a senior member of the Supreme Court) say with all seriousness that women have no right to contraception or abortion under the Constitution.

 Or that as far as the Founding Fathers’ intent, handheld rocket launchers would be considered constitutional. Ponder that for a moment.

 Meanwhile, Dick Cheney came out of his undisclosed location to caution Mitt Romney on the importance of picking the right VP candidate—something he knows well personally—and pointing to the McCain choice of Palin as a ‘mistake’ that Romney would not want to repeat.

 Meanwhile, a new fact checking site is debuting today, Face the Facts USA, and Howard Kurtz finds it a pie-in-the-sky hope that FtF could hope to establish itself among the partisan noise. What he doesn’t seem to question is why we need a separate fact checking organization when that’s supposedly what the media is charged with doing.

 And finally, the rare lone wolf of sanity in the Sunday shows: Paul Krugman. His latest bit of advice for the Obama administration? Obama Has to Say Government by Blackmail Not Acceptable Way to Run the Country