Via Raw Story.
“I find (Obama to be) one of the most divisive figures in — that I’ve witnessed in politics today,” Hannity told Powell during an interview on Tuesday.
“[T]hat’s a term that’s being used rather freely,” Powell noted. “I don’t think he’s that divisive an issue. … What could have been more divisive than, when President Obama was inaugurated, for a number of Republicans, friends of mine, and a number of commentators to say, ‘We’re going to destroy him. We’re going to destroy him’?”
“I wasn’t out to destroy him,” Hannity insisted. “I was critical about Bill Ayers and Rev. Wright.”
“Bill Ayers and Rev. Wright are just passing things,”
...
“I mean, it’s ancient history now. Why are we fooling with this?” former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under George Bush added. “Guess what? The American people heard it, they heard all the things that were said about the Rev. Wright issue. Then-Sen. Obama gave a speech on it. And the American people took it in stride and they elected him president.”
“Yeah,” Hannity sighed. “They didn’t listen to me.”
That's right they didn't listen to you Sean, because you didn't know what the
frell you were talking about.
First off Hannity still continue to claim that Barack Obama started his first campaign at Bill Ayers house - when in truth - he didn't. Via Politicfact.
In March 1995, Obama was named chair of the six-member Chicago Annenberg Challenge board that distributed the grants. A New York Times review of archives of the Chicago Annenberg project found that the two attended six board meetings together.
Later that year, the Ayers’ hosted a coffee at which Illinois State Sen. Alice Palmer, who planned to run for Congress, introduced Obama to some of her long-time supporters as her chosen successor. According to the New York Times story, it was one of several neighborhood events held that year on Obama’s behalf, and it was not the first. Obama campaign officials also note the event at Ayers’ home was not a fundraiser. And they claim that Obama did not know Ayers’ history with the Weather Underground at that time.
Oh and one other thing... Ayers and Dorhn were never charge or even tried for "Terrorism".
Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, also a Weather Underground member, spent years as fugitives in the 1970s, but federal riot and bombing conspiracy charges were dropped in 1974 because of illegal wiretaps and other prosecutorial misconduct.
There's no evidence that Ayers on Dohrn have done anything "Radical" let alone violent since the Vietnam War ended and the U.S. Attorney dropped all charges. Nothing. Zip. Zilch. He didn't meet Barack Obama until 21 years later - so what's the connection?
Here's what Powell said about Ayers.
“At the time, it was a guy who was living in Chicago and happened to have a friend by the name of Bill Ayers,” Powell replied. “But I don’t see Bill Ayers as having that kind of longstanding terrorist influence on the president.”
Yep, that's it - it was just some guy he met. You meet a lot of people as a politician and you might not neccesarily know what they did 21 years previously, or that they all charges were dropped.
The thing about Reverend Wright, is that many have completely taken his comments from the Pulpit completely out of context. For example when he said "God Damn America" he actually said quite a bit more....
REVEREND JEREMIAH WRIGHT: Where governments lie, God does not lie. Where governments change, God does not change. And I'm through now. But let me leave you with one more thing. Governments fail. The government in this text comprised of Caesar, Cornelius, Pontius Pilate - the Roman government failed. The British government used to rule from East to West. The British government had a Union Jack. She colonized Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria, Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad and Hong Kong. Her navies ruled the seven seas all the way down to the tip of Argentina in the Falklands, but the British government failed. The Russian government failed. The Japanese government failed. The German government failed. And the United States of America government, when it came to treating her citizens of Indian descent fairly, she failed.She put them on reservations. When it came to treating her citizens of Japanese descent fairly, she failed. She put them in internment prison camps. When it came to treating citizens of African descent fairly, America failed. She put them in chains. The government put them on slave quarters, put them on auction blocks, put them in cotton fields, put them in inferior schools, put them in substandard housing, put them in scientific experiments, put them in the lowest paying jobs, put them outside the equal protection of the law, kept them out of their racist bastions of higher education and locked them into position of hopelessness and helplessness. The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law, and then wants us to sing God bless America? No, no, no. Not God bless America; God damn America! That's in the Bible, for killing innocent people. God damn America for treating her citizen as less than human. God damn America as long as she keeps trying to act like she is God and she is supreme!
He certainly was not singling out America, he was singling out
Governments for their failures. Republicans ought to like what he was saying here since they seem to hate Government too. But they didn't get the message. They didn't listen when Wright said this.
Wright: They were saying that God was-- in fact, if you look at the damning, condemning, if you look at Deuteronomy, it talks about blessings and curses, how God doesn't bless everything. God does not bless gang-bangers. God does not bless dope dealers. God does not bless young thugs that hit old women upside the head and snatch their purse. God does not bless that. God does not bless the killing of babies. God does not bless the killing of enemies. And when you look at blessings and curses out of that Hebrew tradition from the book of Deuteronomy, that's what the prophets were saying, that God is not blessing this. God does not bless it- bless us. And when we're calling them, the prophets call them to repentance and to come back to God. If my people who are called by my name, God says to Solomon, will humble themselves and pray, seek my faith and turn from their wicked ways. God says that wicked ways, not Jeremiah Wright, then will I hear from heaven.
God condemns your
Actions, not your person. The way to remove that damnation is to
Change Your Ways, not who or what you are. But they weren't trying to hear that.
They also didn't listen when Wright said that "God Redeems".
Wright: And so, I had to show them using that Psalm 137, how the people who were carried away into slavery were very angry, very bitter, moved and in their anger from wanting revenge against the armies that had carried them away to slavery, to the babies. That Psalm ends up sayin' "Let's kill the baby-let's bash their heads against the stone." So, now you move from revolt and revulsion as to what has happened to you, to you want revenge. You move from anger with the military to taking it out on the innocents. You wanna kill babies. That's what's going on in Psalm 137. And that's exactly where we are. We want revenge. They wanted revenge. God doesn't wanna leave you there, however. God wants redemption. God wants wholeness. And that's the context, the biblical context I used to try to get people sitting again, in that sanctuary on that Sunday following 9/11, who wanted to know where is God in this? What is God saying? What is God saying? Because I want revenge.
He wasn't wrong about how people felt about 9/11. He wasn't wrong about the Trail of Tears. He wasn't wrong about the Tuskegee Experiment. He wasn't wrong about the Internment of Japanese Americans. He wasn't wrong about Jim Crow. But the part of his sermon that they
never aired or quoted was that
God Redeems. God Forgives.
They missed the entire point. But then again they intended for everyone else to miss the point also. To believe that Barack Obama sat in those pews for 20 years and all he learned was to "HATE AMERICA", rather than the love and trust in God over and above Government.
I know that there isn't going to be a big anti-Wright campaign by the GOP now after Mitt Romney condemned such attacks. I almost wish they would try it because there are actually plenty of quotes by Wright - if you can get people to actually Listen for more then 5 seconds - that perfectly explain what he meant and what he was saying. I almost wish they would go ahead and BRING IT!
But then again as Powell says - "It's ancient history".
Vyan