DAVENPORT, Iowa - Democrat Barack Obama raked in $25 million for his presidential bid in the first three months of 2007, placing him on a par with front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton and dashing her image as the party’s inevitable nominee.
The donations came from an eye-popping 100,000 donors, the campaign said in a statement.
The figure was the latest evidence that Obama, a political newcomer who has served just two years in the Senate, has emerged as the most powerful new force in presidential politics this year. It also reinforced his status as a significant threat to Clinton, who’d hoped her own $26 million first quarter fundraising total would begin to squeeze her rivals out of contention.
Rolling Stone 'snorted father's ashes'
Rolling Stones wildman Keith Richards claims he snorted his own father's ashes during a drugs binge.
Richards is known for his hard-living lifestyle
Richards made the extraordinary admission in an interview with NME magazine."The strangest thing I've tried to snort? My father. I snorted my father," he said.
"He was cremated and I couldn't resist grinding him up with a little bit of blow. My dad wouldn't have cared, he didn't give a s***.
"It went down pretty well, and I'm still alive."
Richards' father, Bert, died in 2002 aged 84.
The 63-year-old rocker also recounted his worst drugs experience.
"It was when someone put strychnine in my dope. It was in Switzerland. I was totally comatose, but I was totally awake. I could listen to everyone, and they were like, 'He's dead, he's dead!', waving their fingers and pushing me about, and I was thinking, 'I'm not dead!'," .
But he said: "I've no pretensions about immortality - I'm the same as everyone else - same as you, same as everybody.
"I was number one on the Who's Likely To Die list for 10 years. I mean, I was really disappointed when I fell off the list.
"Some doctor told me I had six months to live and I went to their funeral. The obit columns are of quite an interest to me these days. I don't trust doctors. It's not to say there ain't some good ones, but on a general level, no, I wouldn't trust 'em at all."
Richards predicted that Pete Doherty could be the next drugs casualty - and told him to leave supermodel Kate Moss alone.
"My advice for Pete Doherty is that he should shut up and leave her," he said. "I don't know the man, all I know is he's pushing his luck and there it is, but so is Kate, who I know very well.
"Kate wants to play with bad boys, and she's done one, and then another one, and then another one. Badabing, badabang, badaboom. She'll live, the boys will die."
And he warned rock stars not to emulate his fabled drug-taking.
"I did it because that was the way I did it. Now people think it's a way of life," he said.
The Rolling Stones will kick off the European leg of their A Bigger Bang tour in June.
Last year their touring was interrupted when Richards reportedly fell out of a palm tree while on holiday in Fiji.
But Richards said: "I wasn't climbing a tree. I was sitting on a shrub. I was sitting on that shrub again today, but I happened to fall off it the wrong way that day."
He underwent brain surgery after the accident and revealed: "I've been trepanned. That's quite an interesting experience, especially for my brain surgeon, who saw my thoughts flying around in my brain. I've got pictures of it, mate. They cut my head, brain, skull open, went in and pulled out the crap, and put some of it back again.The full interview is in the new issue of NME, out tomorrow.
Victor Gold, a friend of George H.W. Bush and the Cheney family, will release a book slamming the Bush administration entitled, "Invasion of the Party Snatchers: How the Holy-Rollers and the Neo-Cons Destroyed the GOP."
"For all the Rove-built facade of his being a 'strong' chief executive, George W. Bush has been, by comparison to even hapless Jimmy Carter, the weakest, most out of touch president in modern times," Gold writes. "Think Dan Quayle in cowboy boots."
In 2001, Gold wrote glowing biographies of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney for their first inauguration at the request of Lynn Cheney.
"A man of gravitas with a quick and easy wit," is how he described Cheney then.
In his soon to be released book, Gold refers to Cheney as a "a vice president out of control," who has a touch of paranoia and is a megalomaniac, reports the Washington Post
"In many ways, Gold's tale of disillusionment is a familiar one," continues the Post.
I'll never forget the first time that this was broadcast in America
(For you guitar geeks, that's a Fender six-string bass that George is Playing)
"I don't think he's a Christian; at least that's my impression."
-- Focus on the Family's James Dobson on former Sen. Fred Thompson (R-TN), according to U.S. News and World Report.
