Web content for Monday, June 6th, 2011

First Guess: God's Hotline to Michele Bachmann
Video via Current.com
via YouTube, h/t fferkleheimer

Contradictionary: "Hannitized"
Video via Current.com
podcast

Contradictionary: "Palin-guistics"
Video via Current.com
podcast


Transcripts:

First Guess:

God told me to do this commentary.

I'm Keith Olbermann in the Countdown Newsroom with a First Guess.

Michele Bachmann has done it again: announced that she's had a calling from God about running for president and felt that tugging on her heart that it is the right thing to do. God talks to the Congresswoman a lot. While a state senator in 2006, Bachmann told a Minnesota mega-church that God has called on her to run for the United States Congress.

The problem is - I mean, the other problem, besides the fact that if you had said God told you to do something they might ask you to see a psychiatrist, but nobody's suggesting that for Michele - is that God is politically unfaithful. He also told Newt Gingrich that he was forgiven and could run for President, too. There's also Sarah Palin, who may or may not have suggested she got divine instructions, or may simply think that she is God.

Actually there's a third problem here. It seems to me that of all of the different lines of work one could pursue, political office is the only field where God likes to have a hand in the staffing process. Sure, He intervenes here and there in the outcome of major sporting events, but when it comes to recommending people for the position, political office is exclusively where He works. You never hear a sanitation worker explaining that he'd always been most interested in the field of psychology in his youth, but when he was 21, he heard the voice of God, which told him his real calling was sanitation.

As for me, the only voice I hear is my conscience. And occasionally some ethereal disc jockey who likes to play the classic rock of 10CC.

When it comes to heavenly messages, I'm holding out for the first candidate to drop out, saying "God told me not to run."

Him, I might listen to.

See you on Current on June 20th.


Contradictionary: Hannitized:

Another quick howdy from Countdown's Contra-dictionary, where we try to keep up with the changing political language by taking your suggestions, and a few of our own, and present new definitions for new words:

This is really more of a new phrase but - what? There are rules here? There are no rules here.

When Sean Hannity scrubs and disinfects truth from current events so you can view them the way Fox wants you to - liberated from facts, nuance, context, and common sense... Countdown's Contra-dictionary suggests..."Hannitized... for your protection."


Contradictionary: Palin-guistics:

Welcome back to Countdown's Contra-dictionary, where we accept your suggests for new additions to the political lexicon, and offer a few of our own.

Here is a very specific new one: When the meaning of a word or concept is twisted so severely by Sarah Palin that it means its exact opposite. Cases in point: when on Memorial Day she sought to reference the "founding" of the nation but wound up saying "the foundation" as if the country was built on effective caulking. More importantly, there is her tour theme of "One Nation", as if she didn't spend her career trying to villainize Progressive America, Gay America, Working America, Compassionate America, Literate America, and Non-Idiot America.

Countdown's Contra-dictionary defines this as... Palin-guistics.