Barack Obama's Grandmother Dies.

This is terrible news.

"Some of you heard that my grandmother who helped raise me passed away early this morning," [Barack Obama] said. "I'm not going to talk about it too long because it's hard for me to talk about."

He went on to tell the crowd that Ms. Dunham was born in 1922 in a small Kansas town. He said she lived through the Great Depression and two World Wars.

"She was one of those quiet heroes that we have all across America, they're not famous, their names aren't in the newspaper but each and every day they work hard, they look after their families, they sacrifice for their children and their grandchildren," he said.

In the statement, Sen. Obama called his grandmother "the person who encouraged and allowed us to take chances" and said his "debt to her is beyond measure." Last month, as his grandmother's health deteriorated, the Illinois Democrat took time off the campaign trail to visit her in Hawaii.

Sen. Obama, the son of a Kenyan father and a Kansas-born mother, was largely reared by his maternal grandparents. He called his grandmother "Toot," short for "tutu," the Hawaiian word for grandmother. Sen. Obama's mother, Ann Dunham, died of ovarian cancer in 1995 at the age of 57, and his grandfather, Stanley Dunham, died in 1992.

Don't worry, the wingnuts have already claimed that Barack planned this one. And they're the party of "value" voters. What a bunch of fuckers.