Rock star David Bowie dead of cancer at age 69

David Bowie, a rock and roll icon who sustained a chart-topping career for five decades with hits including "Fame", "Heroes" and "Let's Dance", has died at the age of 69, his family and representative confirmed Monday.
Spokesman Steve Martin said in a statement that the "Ashes to Ashes" singer was surrounded by his family when he died Sunday after an 18-month battle against cancer.
"While many of you will share in this loss, we ask that you respect the family's privacy during their time of grief," Martin's statement concluded. No further details were provided.
The singer's son, filmmaker Duncan Jones, issued a confirming statement of his own on Twitter.

Tributes poured in on social media from, among others, British Prime Minister David Cameron and comedian Ricky Gervais, who hosted Sunday night's Golden Globe Awards show in Los Angeles.


Bowie died two days after the release of "Blackstar", his 29th album, which had been timed to coincide with his birthday. The singer had kept a low profile in recent years after reportedly suffering a heart attack in the 2000s, and it had not been widely known that he was struggling with cancer.
Long before alter egos and wild outfits became commonplace in pop, Bowie set the music world on its ear with the release of the 1972 album, "The Rise of Ziggy Stardust and Spiders from Mars," which introduced one of music's most famous personas. Ziggy Stardust was a concept album that imagined a genre-bending rock star from outer space trying to make his way in the music world. The persona -- the red-headed, eyeliner wearing Stardust -- would become an enduring part of his legacy, and a touchstone for the way entertainers packaged themselves for years to come.
Bowie, who was born David Jones in the Brixton area of South London, came of age in the glam rock era of the early 1970s. He had a striking androgynous look in his early days and was known for changing his looks and sounds. The stuttering rock sound of "Changes" gave way to the disco soul of "Young Americans," co-written with John Lennon, to a droning collaboration with Brian Eno in Berlin that produced "Heroes."
He had some of his biggest successes in the early 1980s with the stylistic "Let's Dance," and a massive American tour. Another one of his definitive songs was "Under Pressure," which he recorded with Queen; Vanilla Ice would years later infamously use the song's hook for his much maligned smash "Ice Ice Baby."
Bowie was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996, but he didn't attend the ceremony. Madonna, another artist who knew something about changing styles to stay ahead of the curve, accepted for him and recounted how a Bowie concert changed her life when she attended it as a teenager. David Byrne, of the art rockers Talking Heads, inducted Bowie and said he gave rock music a necessary shot in the arm.
"Like all rock `n' roll, it was visionary, it was tasteless, it was glamorous, it was perverse, it was fun, it was crass, it was sexy and it was confusing," Byrne said.
"My entire career, I've only really worked with the same subject matter," Bowie said in a 2002 interview with The Associated Press. "The trousers may change, but the actual words and subjects I've always chosen to write with are things to do with isolation, abandonment, fear and anxiety -- all of the high points of one's life."
His performance of "Heroes" was a highlight of a concert for rescue workers after the 2001 World Trade Center attacks.
"What I'm most proud of is that I can't help but notice that I've affected the vocabulary of pop music. For me, frankly, as an artist, that's the most satisfying thing for the ego."
However, Bowie felt uneasy about some of his greatest material, once embarking on a "greatest hits" tour saying it would be the last time performing much of his old material. He later relented, however.
"I'm not a natural performer," he said in the 2002 AP interview. "I don't enjoy performing terribly much. Never have. I can do it and, if my mind's on the situation, do it quite well. But five or six shows in, I'm dying to get off the road and go back into the studio."
Bowie was awarded a Grammy lifetime achievement award in February 2006 and his final performance on stage was later that year when he sang alongside Alicia Keys at the Black Ball in New York. He made a surprise comeback in 2013 when he suddenly released a new single on his 66th birthday, with his first new album in 10 years, "The Next Day," following just weeks later.
"Blackstar," which earned positive reviews from critics, represented yet another stylistic shift, as Bowie gathered jazz players to join him. He released a music video on Friday for the new song "Lazarus," which shows a frail Bowie lying in bed and singing the track's lyrics. The song begins with the line: "Look up here, I'm in heaven."
Bowie was married twice, to the actress and model Mary Angela "Angie" Barnett from 1970-80, and to international supermodel Iman since 1992. He had two children -- Duncan Jones and Alexandra Zahra Jones -- one with each wife.

Obama will not endorse candidate in Democratic primary race

President Obama will not endorse a Democratic candidate in the 2016 presidential primary race, White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough said Sunday.
"That's not our job,” McDonough said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “That's the job of the party to make those decisions and then they'll take a look at the agendas and the positions of those candidates."
McDonough said that Obama, in the final 11 months of his presidency, will wait until voters pick a nominee, as he has in the past.
“When the nominee will be set, then the president will be out there," McDonough said.
Obama undoubtedly will back a fellow Democrat -- either front-running Hillary Clinton, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders or former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley.
The president has recently suggested that he will nevertheless get involved in 2016 Senate races in which gun control is an issue, following his recently announced plans to tighten federal gun laws through a series of executive orders that side-step Congress.
Obama’s decision not to issue an endorsement, however, has
some precedent among recent two-term presidents.
George W. Bush didn’t endorse his party’s nominee in 2008 until March 5, by which point Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., had just about locked up the bid.
Ronald Reagan didn’t endorse his sitting Vice President, George H. W. Bush, as the Republican nominee until May 1988. Reagan said he wanted to wait until the outcome of the nomination race was clear.
Bill Clinton was the only two-termer in the past 30 years to break with the tradition. He endorsed his sitting vice president, Al Gore, in December 1999.

Carson prays with Clemson coach ahead of college football title game

Republican presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson isn't taking sides in Monday night's college football national championship, but he prayed with one of the coaches for a solid performance, his campaign said Sunday. 
Carson had a private phone call with the Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney to pray for the Tigers when they take on the Alabama Crimson Tide in the national championship football game, according to the campaign.
Carson and Swinney prayed together for the team "to do very well,” and the two men also reminisced about their childhoods and the struggles of growing up in poverty.
The campaign also said Carson was happy to pray for the Clemson team because he felt they too were the underdogs and that Carson believes in the underdogs.
Carson campaign staffers in South Carolina were told that the Clemson coach was a “fan” of the presidential candidate and helped to organize a phone call between the two. The men spoke for a short while before praying together over the team and the game.
However, Carson's senior communications strategist, Jason Osborne, is an Alabama fan so Carson  wasn’t quick to completely back either team.
Clemson is ranked No 1. and Alabama is ranked No 2.

Conservative elite, sounding a bit panicked, says Trump will destroy GOP

The Republican establishment, which has always distrusted and discounted Donald Trump, is getting increasingly nervous.
So nervous, in fact, that some of its media voices are starting to denounce their party’s front-runner in the strongest possible terms.
As in, refusing to vote for the man if he’s the nominee. As in, loudly proclaiming that he will destroy the GOP.
Viewed from one perspective, this has the smell of panic. Viewed from another, it’s a case of party stalwarts speaking out based on principle.
For decades now, there has been primary-season sniping between the establishment wing and the insurgent/hard-line/Tea Party wing. Commentators rough up their least favorite candidate, even declare them unqualified for the White House.
But if that person prevails—think Mitt Romney in 2012—the sharpest Republican critics find a way to walk it back. Well, he wasn’t my first choice, but he would be better than Barack Obama. He’s evolved on immigration/tax cuts/ObamaCare. He would pull this country out of its left-wing tailspin.
These days, the rhetoric is getting so hot that there will be no scrambling back on board. Bill Kristol has been openly musing about a third party if Trump wins the nomination.
Does the conservative media elite hope to throw some tacks under the Trump steamroller with such sharp rhetoric? Or are its members just speaking out to clear their consciences?
If it’s the former, I think it might actually help Trump to have the Beltway types arrayed against him. These are the folks he is running against, and he’s never positioned himself as a doctrinaire conservative.
Michael Gerson, a Bush White House official who writes for the Washington Post, uses sweeping language:
“Trump’s nomination would not be the temporary victory of one of the GOP’s ideological factions. It would involve the replacement of the humane ideal at the center of the party and its history. If Trump were the nominee, the GOP would cease to be.”
Cease to be. That’s pretty historic stuff.
Gerson calls Trump a “demagogue” who “has followed some of America’s worst instincts wherever they have led, and fed ethnic and religious prejudice in the process. All presidential nominees, to some extent, shape their parties into their own image. Trump would deface the GOP beyond recognition.”
In case you missed the point, Gerson says: “Trump is disqualified for the presidency by his erratic temperament, his ignorance about public affairs and his scary sympathy for authoritarianism. But for me, and I suspect for many, the largest problem is that Trump would make the GOP the party of racial and religious exclusion.”

Doug Heye

Doug Heye has been communications chief of the RNC, a top deputy to Eric Cantor and a Bush administration official. He makes a personal declaration in the Independent Journal:
“Because of Trump’s perversion of conservatism, along with the devastating impact he would have if nominated, I cannot support Donald Trump were he to win the Republican nomination.”
Heye says Trump would be “dangerous to the United States and the world at a time when the world is at risk.” His nomination, says Heye, “would be catastrophic for Republican hopes to win the White House and maintain control of the Senate and would damage the party and the conservative cause for years to come. His having the legitimacy that comes with the nomination of a major political party would cause greater instability throughout the world at a time when the world looks to America for leadership that is serious and sober.”
This is the New York Times’ latest version of the same story, calling it a “people’s coup”:
At family dinners and New Year’s parties, in conference calls and at private lunches, longtime Republicans are expressing a growing fear that the coming election could be shattering for the party, or reshape it in ways that leave it unrecognizable.
But a very different tack from Peggy Noonan, who worked for Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, who turns the question back on the establishment:
“I do not understand the inability or refusal of Republican leaders to take Mr. Trump seriously. They take his numbers seriously—they can read a poll—but they think, as Mr. Bush said, that his support is all about anger, angst and theatrics. That’s part of the story, but the other, more consequential part has to do with real policy issues. The establishment refuses to see that, because to admit it is to implicate themselves and their leadership. Political consultants can’t see it because they don’t think issues matter—not to them and certainly not to the dumb voters.
“But issues do matter, and Mr. Trump has functioned this year not as a great communicator or great compromiser but as the great disruptor. He brags that he has brought up great questions and forced other candidates to face them and sometimes change their stands—and he has.”
There really isn’t much of an establishment left. It consists of some megabuck donors, elected officials, seasoned operatives and media pundits. They don’t have the power to stop Trump, and they know it.
The best they can hope for is to influence the debate. Their problem is that most of them don’t like Ted Cruz, either.
Howard Kurtz is a Fox News analyst and the host of "MediaBuzz" (Sundays 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. ET). He is the author of five books and is based in Washington. Follow him at @HowardKurtz. Click here for more information on Howard Kurtz.