Obama’s grandmother has died; condolences from the McCains
God rest her soul.
Reuters reporting:
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s grandmother died of cancer, he said in a statement on Monday, a little more than a week after Obama interrupted the White House race to say goodbye to her in Hawaii.
“It is with great sadness that we announce that our grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, has died peacefully after a battle with cancer,” Obama said in a joint statement with his sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng. “She was the cornerstone of our family, and a woman of extraordinary accomplishment, strength, and humility.”
From John and Cindy McCain:
Today, U.S. Senator John McCain and Mrs. Cindy McCain issued the following statement on the passing of Barack Obama’s grandmother, Madelyn Dunham:
“We offer our deepest condolences to Barack Obama and his family as they grieve the loss of their beloved grandmother. Our thoughts and prayers go out to them as they remember and celebrate the life of someone who had such a profound impact in their lives.”
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May she rest in peace.
It’s a real pity shouldn’t couldn’t make it till Wed. She helped raise an extraordinary man. This will be a bittersweet week for Barack Obama.
more like it.
It’s a real pity
shouldn’t she couldn’t make it till Wed. She helped raise an extraordinary man. This will be a bittersweet week for Barack Obama.#3
nice, you nailed it misscheryl!
Good thoughts to the Obamas on THIS issue.
My sympathies are with Obama and his family.
Rest in Peace, Grandma Madelyn.
My condolences go out to the Obama family… but my vote still goes to McCain.
She probably tried to hang in there until election day, but the doctors told him she probably wouldn’t make it – thus the trip last week.
She had every right to be proud.
Gonna be a hard day for the Obamas, they’re in my prayers.
God rest her soul.
Fixed that for you.
Please keep it civil. May Grandma Madelyn rest in peace.
While I disagree wih his politics, his family deserves my prayers at this moment.
It’s sad. I wish the loss of a family member on nobody.
If it helps I’m sure she will vote tomorrow in Ohio.
Let’s keep it classy here folks. No need to say anything ugly about a lady that took in her daughters illegitimate child and raised him. Our differences are with her grandson, not her. This isn’t the place for snarkiness.
Will BHO now get the Sympathy” Vote? Will he fly to Hawaii to oversee the last wishes of his grandmother? We’ll never get to ask her any questions. Had she passed on Wed. the Left/Media would have blamed it on Obama’s loss and racism. Did he really have any real love for her? Maybe, but he didn’t bring his wife and children to see her the week before she passed. And where was she at his christening to the Democratic Nomination.
I hope she passed painlessly.
AMEN!!!! You don’t have to like the guy to understand what is happening to him.
MY grandmother is 87, I get what Obama is probably going through.
I’m glad he got to say his goodbyes to his Grandmother. Even though I cannot vote for him, my sympathies are with him, he has just lost the last person who is responsible for his place on earth.
How very sad she won’t witness the big day. However, I’m sure she will be watching… God Bless.
Whatever politics she may have had, she raised a boy who had been deserted by his father, dumped by his mother, kept him mostly out of trouble, got him into a great prep school, which led on into better opportunities in his adult life. Much to praise her for. His decisions as an adult are his. Loving and raising a grandson who needed her – first rate.
Even though he didnt deserve it his grandma was a good person may she rip.
I only wish that he hadn’t thrown her under the bus.
She had to live with that, and so now will barry.
She definitely deserved better, sounds like an amazing woman really.
What else? What the hell else is next to generate sympathy for this guy? Yeah, God bless the Obamas but God help the country …
VOTE MCCAIN/PALIN!!
Just heard that. The closest thing he had to a mother, really. Has to be hard on the psyche, being abandoned by a head case mother at the age of 7. But Grandma Dunham was a typical white person, who had the ‘audacity’ to be scared of a black panhandler who wasn’t satisfied when she gave the man a dollar, and physically menaced her.
I just heard the Obama coal bankruptcy and skyrocketing electric rates tape today. I knew before, somehow, that he was a Marxist, and seemed to enjoy the Messianic attenttion, but he has not a care in the world about killing the coal industry, or crushing the poor and middle class (even the one’s who will get his “tax cuts” w/o paying taxes, aka welfare). I doubt the five hundred or thousand dollar check from the Treasury will cover homeowners whose electric rates will double or triple as Obama actually wants to happen.
I knew he lied with Clintonian ease, I now think he is a Stalinistic sociopath.
I think you’re right AlohaGuy. She lasted as long as she could. I’m sure the Obamas had closure with her last week. My grandfather died of cancer in the hospital just as I was driving into the parking lot to say goodbye to him. You never know when you’ll have that last farewell. Life’s tough. I think I’ll go home and watch Magnolia.
Now Barack Obama has no parental figures left. The Rev. Wright relationship is over. Maybe he’ll lean or Emil Jones from Illinois, or perhaps he’ll get closer to his family in Kenya. I can’t imagine what he’s going through.
RIP
Come on folks! I enjoy snark just as much as the rest of you, but this is not the time! Please stop now!
Anyone here who has lost someone of significance knows the value of life, knows its preciousness and the delicacy with which we hold onto each other. Rest in deep and everlasting peace.
en = end
It’s sad for this woman…..rest her soul. It’s really sad that her grandson will use her death to get sympathy votes rather than morn her like a normal human.
Mrs. Dunham was a bank vice president, and apparently the one who worked in that relationship. It was Mr. Dunham, deciding Barack needed a Black father figure, who decided a member of the Communist Party USA was just the man to fit the bill. Per Barack, Dunham and Davis were drinking buds, Grandpa Dunham may have been a communist himself. He was the one who named his daughter “Stanley”, who knows how that affected her and made her turn out so badly.
Poor woman, probably. Sounds like she didn’t exactly have a winner for a husband, or a daughter, or a grandson.
I also add my condolences and sympathies. I will not pretend to respect Obama’s politics, tactics or actions, and I think most of us reading this will agree; but in this moment, he is a fellow human being, and should be entitled to the same care and human dignity we all are.
She filled in where she did not have to, taking the place of two absent parents, and did much for the young Barack Obama. May she be rewarded for her kindness in the next world.
Don’t forget Mrs. Dunham was about the only responsible person in Obama’s early life. RIP.
R.I.P
It’s sad that Barack didn’t take his daughters with him to Hawaii to see their grandmother before she died.
That’s fair enough. But, even if he loses, he’s made his mark on history. He never would have made it this far without his grandmother. This has been a crazy, emotional election season.
I kind of sort of have the feeling that someone needs to play the principal from “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”.
While is is sad that his Grandmother died, my grandmother, in fact both as well as both grandfathers have died, and I do not expect people to make me president.
My sympathies to Sen. Obama and his family.
This brings up a question I hadn’t thought of before because I did not know she was suffering from cancer. When did he throw her under the bus? Before he knew she had cancer or after?
Godspeed to her and may she finally rest in peace!
You know, praying for her soul is respectable and admirable, but I swear some of you would have sympathy for the devil if his closest died.
Just because “we aren’t the left” doesn’t mean we have to rain down love and compassion upon the individual who is dead set on tearing this country apart and destroying everything it stands for.
I’m sorry for his loss. It was bad enough for me when my grandmother died of cancer and I didn’t have the stress of a presidential bid to deal with as well. Her soul is in God’s hands now.
The snark in me ponders: will he mourn more her passing or his losing tomorrow? Hopefully he’ll have ample time to grieve back in Chicago while McCain prepares for 20 Jan.
Mistress Justice- maybe the wrong thread for this, but did you hear the audiotape of the SF interview where Obama was positively gleeful about bankrupting the US coal industry, and said that electric rates would ‘neccesarily skyrocket’.
Do you really think he has concern, even for the poor people who pay no taxes but will get a tax cut (the audacity of dishonest language- welfare not called welfare), whose electric bills he plans to raise probably well in excess of their check from the Treasury?
I mena, he called this poor woman a ‘typical white woman’ because she was scared of an agressive Black panhandler who did not stop acosting her after she gave him money.
He abandoned her more quickly than he did Reveredn Wright. And while he disavowed Reverend Wright, he has never disavowed Bernadine Dohrn, probable cop killer and a woman who celebrated the Manson murders.
He has more regard for Dohrn and Ayers than he does his Aunt in a Boston slum, his brother living on a dollar a month in Kenya or the woman who raised him when his mother abandoned him.
My sympathies to the family.
I’ll leave it at that – not because of snarkiness but rather because I grow weary of deleting and re-editing what I want to write regarding similar siutations, expecially with the visibility that this blog is getting these last few days.
Im going to the hot tub now to revel in being alive and sticking it to the man for one more day.
May she rest in peace.
I think people have sympathy for this woman. They do not have any sympathy for her family. It’s an understandable reaction as we have witnessed over the past two years Obama’s complete narcissistic disregard for anyone but himself, including family members. We have sympthay that this woman had such a creep for a grandson!
R.I.P.
Great Grandmother, actually
Maybe Michelle didn’t like her because she was a typical white person.
Hate Obama later-and I do, the women has died. If she was a Christian the Best is Yet to Come. If not…
that old women was not a threat. Caught between her husband, daughter and Barrack Hussein I imagine her life was quite hard.
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Restart Obama hating. For him we refer his soul to the moon god and camel driver-he can serve Ismael, Satan and Uncle Karl.
Sympathies go out to those who loved her. To those family members who would use her and had used her for political gain, God has a place for them. They know who they are. I hope she has peace and is protected in God’s loving care.
Very sobering and sad. My thoughts are with the Obama family, especially his daughters who aren’t going to be able to grow up knowing the woman who played such an important role in their father’s life.
It’s sort-of a reminder to me that there are things in life that transcend partisan divisions and are more important than the outcome of an election. We are all *humans* before we are Republicans, Democrats, Greens, Libertarians, etc.
Lets be respectful to the poor woman. I suspect she did the best she could, and she obviously did not get loyalty in return.
Now, imagine the orgy of celebration at Kos or Dem Underground if Laura Bush or Barabara Bush died. You don’t want to be debauched like that, really, you don’t.
A caring person’s death deminishes us all.
My condolences to the U.S. Obamas.
I lost my last grandmother a little over a year ago now, and luckily I got to visit her several weeks before she passed away. I had the opportunity to take my first daughter (and only one so far) and watch her try to crawl up on her great-grandmother’s frail lap. At the time, none of us realized how weak she really was, and if I’d known, I’ve snapped a thousand photos to commemorate that moment. But I didn’t, the moment passed, and nothing I can do will ever bring it back.
Sen. Obama had the chance to take his family with him to Hawaii when he received word from the doctors. He didn’t, and more than anything else during this election, that will be the choice which will haunt him for the rest of his life. We always think “there will be more time… later”.
The only thing proven in this world is that there will never be more time… later.”
I don’t want to see a “statement of grief released by the Obama campaign”, I want to see that man stand up and acknowledge that woman in a press conference. That’s what he should do, whether it’s politically-savy or not.
That’s what I would do…
Please save your snark for his political ambitions and liberal policies. There’s ample cannon fodder to be had in them there fields.
Rest in peace.
At least she won’t be able to see Barry rip this country to shreds with all the lawsuits Tuesday night. He won’t go quietly.
Such a sad time for their family.
Is it inappropriate to ask who was with the grandmother when she died seeing as her grandson wasn’t there?…
My prayers for his grandmother’s soul and his family.
That’s all I’m saying on this thread. This is beyond politics, or should be.
I’d guess Obama’s half sister was there. Just a guess.
It must be a difficult time for Sen. Obama. Although I’m a harsh critic of his, I can imagine that it must in some ways be like losing his mother, and I think we owe him, and her, our respect.
I hope he shows a little character, and doesn’t use her battle with cancer and passing, as a political tool, like he did with his mother.
Amen.
My sincere condolences to the Obama family.
May she rest in peace.
My sympathy and prayers go out to the Obama family. Even though he said some nasty things about her she gave up quite a bit for him to get to where he is today.
Best wishes to the Obama family.
My granny is 95 and fortunately is still going strong.
And my great granny, long since passed, was one of the few who came from the east coast to Kansas in a covered wagon, then later in life from Kansas to California in a jet airliner.
I don’t mourn Hopenchange’s loss, nor do I celebrate it. Deaths in the family are something we all eventually share; being a presidential hopeful’s grandmother doesn’t distinguish this event from any other part of humanity.
For some reason, I’m reminded of the closing to the film “Barry Lyndon:”
“It was in the reign of George III that the above-named personages lived and quarreled; good or bad, handsome or ugly, rich or poor, they are all equal now.”
Nope.
This is tricky. Of course one wants to wish a bereaved family comfort.
But here, in the case of Barack Obama, there is a confusion. He is a man of layers of lies.
There is simply no surety that any circumstance about Mr. Obama are honest.
Here’s the best I can do: I wish comfort to anyone truly bereaved in their days of bereavment.
This is just awful.
It is bad enough to lose a relative, but to come so close and yet not get to see how her grandson does in what is a very important election is sad.
Exactly. May she rest in peace.
As for Senator Obama – essentially the man has lost his mother – again. In my estimation he (and his family) deserve sympathy and prayers. I am sorry for their loss.
Whatever you may think of Senator Obama, this is not the place to disparage him. You can do that elsewhere and in another context.
May she rest in peace.
She won’t have to watch him lose the election now. She can rest knowing he may have won.
Condolences.
God bless her. May she rest in peace.
Any grandparent that raises a grandchild because the parents wouldn’t or couldn’t deserves acknowledgment for taking on probably the most important role in that child’s early life.
May she rest in peace.
May she now rest in peace in the loving arms of God.
Condolences to the Obama family.
My grandfather passed away on Sunday. It kind of stinks, because he and my family that’s traveling to the funeral will not be able to cast the anti-Obama votes as they had wished. He was an ardent Republican that lived just outside of Chicago. I’m dedicating my already-sent absentee ballot for McCain to his memory.
That being said, my condolences to the Obama family.
OK…..I am sorry, but I have to ask this. Did she early vote? Now you can all condemn me to Hell.
Godspeed, Mrs Dunham. Rest in peace.
Sorry about your grandfather, Pookysgirl.
My sympathies to the Obama-Soetoro families. It is sad when any one dies and cancer is a terrible way to go.
My condolences on her family’s loss.
ECS
Condolences to her family. It’s a shame she dies one day short, but I understand. My mother died one day short of the day she wanted (All Saint’s Day). May she rest in peace and may we “rest in peace” once this election debacle is over with. 2 years is a bit much. I wonder how long we get to “rest” before someone throws their hat “in the ring” and start the nonsense all over again…Feb. 2009?
I’m sorry for her that she died.
Thanks, Tuffy. I know he’s laughing it up with Ronnie Reagan now.
Wow. Your level of callousness is
almostpathological.Exactly. And frankly, for those who say he should’ve taken his family (particularly his daughters) when he went to visit a few weeks ago, remember that he also left the campaign trail in August — you may recall that there were mocking pictures of him bodysurfing in Hawaii on this very site — and took his kids and family with him. I hardly doubt this decision to vacation at that moment was an accident. He knew she was ill, and he brought the entire family along for a holiday with her, at a point that she was likely still in (relatively, mind you) okay shape. His kids are young — 10 and 7 — and so, it doesn’t strike me as at all odd that he didn’t take them to see her at her weakest. If you’ve ever watched an elderly person die of an illness, you know it’s often accompanied by a form of dementia — they sometimes don’t recognize those they’ve raised, loved and spent countless hours with. People — loving parents — often choose to protect their children from those images (I know mine did when one of my grandmas was dying when I was very little). We all deal with impending death in own way.
And this notion that you can’t overestimate the time someone has left — as Obama did with his mother — is just a load of crap. It happens — especially with a disease like cancer — and it has NOTHING to do with the amount of love you may have in your heart for someone. To imply otherwise is, essentially, an affront to everyone who has found him or herself at a loss for time with a loved one.
Always annoying to have some people deciding what other people should do. Holyer than thou people are sooooo annoying.
The strongest meme about Obama’s grandmother is his reference to her in his epic speech on race. It wasn’t a flattering reference. Actually, it was ugly. After Nov 4, I’d like him to create a new meme, of love and gratitude for all that she did for him. As Prez, it should be easy for him to do.
I’ll add my strong Amen, too. Save the snark for later. More pressing issues. Hoping this doesn’t generate a sympathy vote. And again, may God show us (US) undeserved mercy and not give us what we deserve, BHO and Socialism, but, rather, strong and wise leadership of Senator McCain & Gov. Palin. Yes, in spite of our differences with Senator McCain on a few things, he’s not pushing Socialism.
Ditto.
My father passed away several weeks ago. He was a staunch conservative, but was bored with politics. Mom sent in his absentee ballot for McCain.
The McCains are a class act.
SoCal, we’re not playing holier than thou. Just asking for some class and respect. Let’s not act like the left has so many times…we don’t need to look or sound like them.
I lost my grandmother 6 months ago.
We disagree on politics, but are all human. I hope she is resting comfortably in Heaven.
Respectfully,
eric aka the Tygrrrr Express
I have sympathy for Obama’s grandmother…
Obama may have gone to Hawaii in August bringing with him his wife and children so that they could visit his ailing grandmother. And I firmly believe that the state of her health at that time was nobody’s business but the family’s. But, weeks ago, Obama said he was taking time off from the campaign for the sole reason of visiting his ailing granmother. Once said and NOT bringing your family at least to Hawaii with him, not nessersarily to be in the same room as his grandmother,but at the least for support makes many of us wonder and rightfully so. The inner workings of families are very complex, but as a very public figure, it certainly looked bad to leave his wife and children behind.
May allah and 72 virgins with with him.
—
God Bless America except for the blue states.
bvw wrote:
I agree wholeheartedly. Thanks for writing that first so I didn’t have to.
..and we are the product of our environment…