Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

If you are still in the gop, you are either an extremist yourself, or in bed with those who are.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

There are more Russians standing up to Putin than Republicans.

In my day, never was longer.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

We will not go quietly into the night; we will not vanish without a fight.

Let me file that under fuck it.

Narcissists are always shocked to discover other people have agency.

“Loving your country does not mean lying about its history.”

Giving up is unforgivable.

When they say they are pro-life, they do not mean yours.

All hail the time of the bunny!

Let the trolls come, and then ignore them. that’s the worst thing you can do to a troll.

Fight for a just cause, love your fellow man, live a good life.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

Every reporter and pundit should have to declare if they ever vacationed with a billionaire.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

Republicans: The threats are dire, but my tickets are non-refundable!

The press swings at every pitch, we don’t have to.

GOP baffled that ‘we don’t care if you die’ is not a winning slogan.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

You are here: Home / Politics / Trumpery / Dolt 45 / Warren’s Unforgivable Sin

Warren’s Unforgivable Sin

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Betty Cracker covered this earlier, but two quick things about this Trump “Pocahontas” outburst.

1.) As my friend pointed out to me on FB, these fucking stooges in the WH chose to honor the Navajo code talkers in front of a large portrait of Andrew Jackson.

2.) It’s worth remembering what Senator Warren did to deserve this crap. Her major transgression, her big sin, this egregious breach of trust was… relying on what her family told her about her heritage and then passing it on to others. I know this is hard to believe, but this is how most people learned who they were and their family history- the oral tradition. There wasn’t always genealogy.com and DNA testing.

So she relied on what she was told growing up in Oklahoma, where probably everyone is somewhat Cherokee to some extent. That’s why they are calling her Pocahontas and the sophisticated race-baiters and bigots are calling her Fauxcahontas. That’s her fucking crime. And it is worth noting that to this date NO ONE has proven she is not some small part Cherokee, there’s just no paperork proving she is.

At any rate, I need to get something off my chest. This is me, my brother, and sisters, as children. I’m the gap toothed one on the far left.

A bunch of fine looking Kinder! For years, we have been telling people that we were mostly German. On my mothers side, there is a touch of Scottish. But mostly we were under the impression that we were pretty much full German. My father’s parent’s names were Vogel and Cole, and my mom’s side is Rudolph and Blaine (her father a German and my grandmother Scot from on parent). We can trace our family back to the Hessians. We’ve always thought we were almost completely German

But a year ago, my father did a DNA test, and it turns out we are a bunch of frauds and not nearly as German as we thought. In fact, my father is only about 30% German. It appears that Nordic blood courses through his veins, and we are as much Viking as we are German.

My entire life has been a fraud- an elaborate ruse, a lie.

That’s how fucking stupid this Pocahontas crap is, on top of being offensive to Native Americans.

Reader Interactions

240Comments

  1. 1.

    (((CassandraLeo)))

    According to commenters below, Warren has actually had genetic testing done that confirmed her Cherokee ancestry and is now an official member of the tribe. In addition, Harvard didn’t even ask her if she wanted to be cited as an example of diversity, and she certainly doesn’t seem to have asked for any special treatment on account of her ancestry.

  5. 5.

    Ian G.

    My father only recently discovered he has Danish ancestry. Before that, he learned what he thought was Czech ancestry was actually Sudeten German ancestry. Then we have some Scots Catholic and Irish Protestant and who knows what else in there. And there’s my mother, with her Lithuanian ancestry that seems to have some Laplander in there too.

    We’re all a fuckin’ mix of different people who conquered and bred with each other. And that will continue, particularly in a country like the US, no matter how much it panics Richard Spencer and Steve King.

  6. 6.

    TenguPhule

    It appears that Nordic blood courses through his veins, and we are as much Viking as we are German.

    Less sausage, more battle axes?

  8. 8.

    Juice Box

    @Brian: The tests are proprietary and unvalidated, but fun.

    My mom and I have markers for Mali and Senegal, so I’m assuming that not all of my ancestors migrated here on a voluntary basis. It makes one stop and think.

  10. 10.

    raven

    @Brian: We did one on Bohdi and it said he was just what he thought he was. On the other hand people we know who know genetics says”hahahaha”!

  11. 11.

    TenguPhule

    But this doesn’t mean we’ve forgiven her for her “Primary was rigged for Hillary, I agree!” own goal.

  13. 13.

    Betty Cracker

    Random observation: the term “self-own” doesn’t work when spoken rather than written. Sounds too much like “cell phone.”

  14. 14.

    Bobby Thomson

    @(((CassandraLeo))):

    Warren has actually had genetic testing done that confirmed her Cherokee ancestry and is now an official member of the tribe.

    Doesn’t sound right. I think you have to be a documented lineal descendant of someone on the Dawes Rolls.

  15. 15.

    Mustang Bobby

    I’m afraid to take the DNA ancestry test because I’m sure it will prove I’m from just as boring a background as I suspect I am. All those stories about being descended somehow from King Edward III of England will be bullshit; we’re actually from a long line of sock-knitters from Cardiff.

  16. 16.

    Roger Moore

    But a year ago, my father did a DNA test, and it turns out we are a bunch of frauds and not nearly as German as we thought. In fact, my father is only about 30% German. It appears that Nordic blood courses through his veins, and we are as much Viking as we are German.

    Of course the other way of interpreting this is that genetics isn’t the be-all, end-all of nationality. Your ancestors were probably German in the same way you’re American. They lived in Germany, spoke German, and identified culturally as German. That made them German in their own eyes and those of their neighbors, even if their ancestors a few generations back had migrated there from Denmark or Sweden or someplace. We as Americans should be capable of recognizing that kind of nationality by association rather than blood.

  18. 18.

    Corner Stone

    As an aside, the new FireFox fucking hates Balloon-Juice.com. It goes into Not Responding mode every other click.

  20. 20.

    Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)

    Yeah, this whole shit is shit. I have a great-great-great-odd grandmother who got bitten by a rabid fox in 1702 or something. Her husband was sick in bed with a bad cold, and the chickens began raising hell out in the henhouse in the middle of the night, so he got up and went out to see what had set them off. She was worried about him and went out to get him back in so he wouldn’t get pneumonia and die. And as she was ushering him up the steps back into the house, a fox darted out from under the stairs and bit her on the heel. It was a bad bite and she bled all over the millstone at the foot of the steps before she could get back in the house.

    So she came down with rabies, and this being 1702 or whenever it was, the only treatment there was then was to smother her under a feather mattress, so that’s what she did. The millstone is still there at the foot of the back steps, and when you pour water on it, you can see the bloodstain. I’ve seen it myself.

    And there’s no proof. You know? There isn’t any proof at all. It’s a family story, and it’s as well documented as a story can be, since this is a place with the longest continuous court records in the U.S., so you can look up anything, but there’s no way to test the DNA on the millstone. I can’t swear with absolute certainty that this is true, although I know it is. And that’s how all this is. And I believe Warren. She says she heard growing up that she was part Cherokee, and there’s no reason not to believe her. Why would there be?

    These assholes don’t really give a shit, though. And that’s the heart of the problem. They don’t care whether she’s part Cherokee or not. She doesn’t look like a Cherokee, and because of that, they can point to her and call her a liar, and that’s all there is to this. She could take a DNA test that proved she was part Cherokee and they’s still tell us she’s a liar, and that’s because these people don’t care about the truth, which makes their charge that Warren is a liar even more ironic. They just don’t care. The truth doesn’t mean anything to them. If something they say furthers their claims or their causes, they lie without a thought or care in the world.

  21. 21.

    Corner Stone

    @Sister Golden Bear: “You will tell us what we want to know…or else.”
    “Ha! I’ve been tortured before! You’ll get nothing from me. Give me your wurst!”
    “Hmmm, a tough man, I see. Bring in the lutefisk platters!”
    “No! NO! NOOO!! I’ll tell you everything!”

  22. 22.

    PhoenixRising

    Welp.

    it is worth noting that to this date NO ONE has proven she is not some small part Cherokee, there’s just no paperwork proving she is.

    So this is bit more complicated than the German vs Viking division, which…I mean…that’s subtle but it’s also long gone by. In terms of any practical consequences for anyone.

    In OK, the question of who is a little bit Cherokee is not inconsequential. If you have an ancestor on the Dawes Rolls, you can register as a member of the tribe, and certain rights and privileges come with that. If not, you’re not a Cherokee. It’s a legal boundary, and a cultural one, with actual consequences.

    This makes sense in light of what share of our mutual ancestors in Appalachia (assuming your family has roots there like mine does) told each other they were ‘part Cherokee’. This is a very popular ancestry myth in the region. Some of us have a particular ancestor IDed as ‘part Cherokee’ who…how to put this politely…arrived in McDowell County WV as a free black man (1870 census) and showed up in Ohio in 1890 as ‘Indian’ (to cite the example I found in my own genealogy research).

    So that’s a piece of why Indian people may perceive Sen. Warren’s claim differently than your claim to be German-American vs ‘Viking’.

    The other piece of this puzzle is the racist whites who think that affirmative action means unqualified people of color getting goodies that should go to white men. They believe that the Senator was angling for these non-existent ‘benefits’ by using her family history to claim an identity that her DNA may not be able to verify–without the paperwork. And this enrages them and triggers their contemptuous outbursts–hence the topic of this post.

  23. 23.

    ZyklonBeaArthur

    Would someone please provide a link to back up the claim she’s taken a DNA test? I can’t find anything on the googles.

  24. 24.

    Corner Stone

    This David Catanese asshole was on Tweety lying about what the background was for Warren and her lineage. And Tweety not only went with it, he amplified and confirmed the bullshit.

  26. 26.

    Adam L Silverman

    @(((CassandraLeo))): She is not and cannot be a member of the Cherokee Nation. In order to be a member, regardless of what a DNA test might or might not indicate, she must be descended from one of the people listed on the Dawes Rolls.

    Here’s the link to the actual Dawes Rolls:
    https://www.archives.gov/research/native-americans/rolls/final-rolls.html

    And here’s the description of what this is all about:
    https://www.archives.gov/research/native-americans/dawes/background.html

    The Dawes Act of February 8, 1887 marks a turning point in determining tribal citizenship. This Act developed a Federal commission tasked with creating Final Rolls for the Five Civilized Tribes of Oklahoma (Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Creeks, and Seminoles). The Commission prepared new citizenship rolls for each tribe, incorporating names of approved applicants while simultaneously documenting those who were considered doubtful and ultimately rejected. Upon approval of the Rolls, the Dawes Commission allotted a share of communal land to the approved individual members of these Tribes. The Dawes Commission required that the individual or family reside in Indian Territory to be considered for approval.

    While the official process started with the 1896 Applications, these were eventually declared null and void. Two years later, the Curtis Act amended the process and required applicants to re-apply even if they had filed under the original 1896 process. With new guidelines in place, the Commission continued to accept applications from 1898 through 1907, with a handful accepted in 1914. The list of approved applications created the ” Final Rolls of the Citizens and Freedmen of the Five Civilized Tribes in Indian Territory”.

    Dawes Records

    The most requested Dawes Commission records are Census Cards, Enrollment Jackets, and Land Allotment Jackets. Researchers generally start with Census Cards and then continue with Enrollment Jackets and Land Allotment Jackets. These three records can include:

    Census Cards
    (Enrollment Cards)
    Available on Ancestry.com and Fold3.com Enrollment Jackets
    (Dawes Applications or testimonial packets)
    Available on Ancestry.com and Fold3.com Land Allotment Jackets
    Available on Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.org
    Name and variant spellings
    Names of parents and extended families
    Residence or nearby post office
    Tribal enrollment
    Age and gender
    Census card and enrollment card numbers
    Occasional annotations regarding birth, death, changes in marital status
    Occasional cross references to other census cards or actions
    For Freedmen: the applicant’s previous owners and the owners of the applicant’s parents
    Census card and enrollment numbers
    Name and variant spellings
    Names of parents and extended families
    Residence or nearby post office
    Tribal enrollment
    Transcripts of testimonies and correspondence regarding the application
    Occasionally information regarding birth, death, marriages, divorces
    Occasionally affidavits from family members, friends, or neighbors
    Enrollment number
    Name of applicant
    Names of parents and extended families
    Physical location of land
    Legal definition of land
    Description of improvements on land
    Printed annotated plat maps
    Correspondence regarding the land
    Notices of contested allotment selections

    *Rejected Applications will have a Census Card and Enrollment Jacket; however, it will not have a Land Allotment Jacket.

  28. 28.

    FlyingToaster

    @Bobby Thomson: The Cherokee Nation requires 1/32 ancestry, documented; the problem is that for Warren, the documentation is poor &/or not there. Hearsay isn’t sufficient. Genetic testing isn’t sufficient (yet). While she likely is a descendant, without the docs she can’t join the tribe. Which, for Senator Professor Warren, it probably the least of her worries.

  29. 29.

    Amir Khalid

    In fact, my father is only about 30% German. It appears that Nordic blood courses through his veins, and we are as much Viking as we are German.

    Something like this is almost certainly true of most white Germans in Germany.

    About Elizabeth Warren’s Cherokee heritage, her Wikipedia entry doesn’t mention her enrollment as a Cherokee, which a commenter a few threads back said he’d read of. It does have this to say:

    The New England Historic Genealogical Society found a family newsletter that alluded to a marriage license application that listed Elizabeth Warren’s great-great-great grandmother as part Cherokee, but could not find the primary document and found no proof of her descent. The Oklahoma Historical Society said that finding a definitive answer about Native American heritage can be difficult because of intermarriage and deliberate avoidance of registration.

  30. 30.

    Baud

    I don’t think this is any more stupid a “controversy” than EMAILS!, which captivated a nation and elected a president.

  31. 31.

    Gin & Tonic

    I’m trying and failing to imagine any other President in history mocking someone in such a setting. I’m afraid this asshole will have broken the presidency beyond repair.

  33. 33.

    Adam L Silverman

    I highly recommend this 2012 Atlantic article by Garance Franke-Ruta. Here’s an excerpt:
    https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/05/is-elizabeth-warren-native-american-or-what/257415/

    Further, to enroll as a member of the Cherokee Nation, an individual must have had a direct ancestor listed among the more than 101,000 people enrolled on the “Final Rolls of the Citizens and Freedmen of the Five Civilized Tribes in Indian Territory” between 1898-1914, now known as the Dawes Rolls. The Cherokee Nation is very strict about this, even keeping descendants of siblings of men and women on the rolls out of the tribe, as well as descendents of Cherokees who were living out of the area at the time the lists were drawn up in what was then Northeastern Oklahoma.

    “If she does not have an ancestor listed on the Dawes Rolls, she cannot be considered Cherokee through this tribe,” explained Lydia Neal, a processor with the registrar’s office of the Cherokee Nation.

    O.C. Sarah Smith died long before the rolls were drawn up, too far in the past to make Warren eligible for membership in the tribe (assuming Smith was Cherokee).

    No direct-line relatives of Warren are listed on the Dawes Rolls, according to Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak (the doubled name is not a typo), the independent genealogist who identified Michelle Obama’s slave ancestors in 2009 in a project with The New York Times.

    “The Dawes Rolls don’t lend support to [Warren’s] claim,” she told The Atlantic.

    The Eastern Band of the Cherokee, for their part, have since 1963 required individuals to be at least 1/16 Cherokee to enroll — and also to have “a direct lineal ancestor” on “the 1924 Baker Roll of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians.” Even were Smith discovered to be Cherokee, Warren would not be eligible to join the tribe as someone who also lacks a direct-line ancestor on the 1924 rolls, according to Smolenyak’s research.

    “If she has Native American ancestry, it’s likely quite a ways back and not reflected in more contemporary resources,” Smolenyak said.

    “In her immediate pedigree there is no one who is listing themselves as not white,” the New England Historic and Genealogical Society’s Child told the Boston Herald after looking at her maternal line in late April.

    And while many have pointed out that the current principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, Bill John Baker, is only 1/32 Cherokee, his background is not like Warren’s; he was “born and raised in Cherokee County” and is a direct descendant of “Nancy Walker Osage, an early Tahlequah business owner and Cherokee Healer” listed on the Dawes Rolls.

    The difference between him and Warren is he has a direct-line ancestor clearly documented as a Cherokee whom he can name. So far, Warren has only been able to point to family lore.

    Asked if Warren were claiming O.C. Sarah Smith or any other ancestor was Cherokee or if the campaign or Warren had reached out to a genealogist to research Warren’s background, Warren spokesperson Alethea Harney said she’d have to look into it, then declined to answer the questions in a follow-up email exchange.

    None of this to say that a Cherokee citizen couldn’t look like Warren. Though it confounds many people’s expectations, the Cherokee Nation considers being Cherokee as much an ethnicity as anything racial, and given the tribe’s centuries-long history of intermarriage there are many Cherokee citizens today who do not look stereotypically Native American. As well, “there are a lot of folks who are legitimately Cherokee who are not eligible for citizenship,” said Krehbiel-Burton, because, for example, their ancestors lived in distant states or territories when the rolls were drawn up, or because they are direct descendants of people left off the rolls for other reasons.

    Fractional Native American ancestry is quite hard to prove to the standards of the U.S. government, which in many ways acts as the ultimate “birther” in this regard. Percentage of ancestry or “blood quantum” — the creepy and antique-sounding term used by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which certifies it for two of the three Cherokee tribes — is recognized by the Bureau based on original documents (such as birth certificates, Census records, and death certificates) through something called a Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood, or CDIB.

    Warren would need to be certified by the Bureau of Indian Affairs as at least 1/16 Eastern Cherokee on a CDIB to be eligible to join the Eastern Cherokee. The United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee has an even stricter enrollment cut-off: “a minimum blood quantum requirement of one quarter (1/4) degree Keetoowah Cherokee blood” documented via a CDIB plus a direct descent from someone on the Dawes Rolls. Tribal citizenship standards are set by the tribes themselves, and not the U.S. government.

    Warren has never attempted to join a tribe and had no documentation of her Native ancestry claim before the controversy broke, Harney told William A. Jacobson, a Cornell Law School professor, in late April. Instead, Warren has cited the sayings of her Aunt Bea, who was given to complaining that Warren’s maternal grandfather who “had high cheekbones like all of the Indians do” had not passed them on to her.

    To be sure, the absence of readily located evidence of Native ancestry outside the oral tradition does not mean that Warren has no Native American ancestry. Genealogy is a complicated field, where firm answers are hard to come by quickly. Proof of distant Native American ancestry could yet surface, were Warren to hire a genealogist to do a thorough dive into her own background while she works on riding out the political storm.

    But a lack of Native ancestry despite the family stories she’s heard all her life would also be consistent with one of the most common genealogical myths in the United States.

    “Many more Americans believe they have Native ancestry than actually do (we always suspected this, but can now confirm it through genetic testing),” said Smolenyak in an email. “In fact, in terms of wide-spread ancestral myths, this is one of the top two (the other being those who think their names were changed at Ellis Island). And someone who hails from Oklahoma would be even more prone to accept a tale of Native heritage than most.”

    She added: “There’s also a tendency to accept what our relatives (especially our elders) tell us.”

    As for Warren, “I can’t confirm or refute Cherokee heritage without extensive research,” she said. “All I can say is that Ms. Warren’s scenario is a wildly common one — minus the public scrutiny, of course.”

    Should the genealogists be unable to find supporting documents, Warren could also quietly pursue familial DNA testing, which might confirm Native American ancestry, even if records of individual ancestors or their specific tribal affiliations have been lost to the mists of time. Her one-time Harvard University colleague Prof. Henry Louis Gates Jr. has promoted such efforts as part of helping African Americans learn more about their mixed ancestry, hosting a series of shows on PBS featuring famous figures tracking down their forebears using genetics and genealogy. (He’s also pointed out that many African Americans erroneously believe they have Native American ancestors, especially Cherokee ones, making it “the biggest myth in African-American genealogy.”) DNA ancestry tests are not dispositive, and even a positive result would not be useful for tribal affiliation or CDIB purposes. But it would silence her critics, and — more importantly — it would help her learn whether what she had spent her life thinking she knew about herself and her family was true.

    “Being Native American has been part of my story I guess since the day I was born,” Warren told the Boston Herald in early May. “These are my family stories, I have lived in a family that has talked about Native American and talked about tribes since I was a little girl.”

  34. 34.

    Mnemosyne

    @PhoenixRising:

    If you have an ancestor on the Dawes Rolls, you can register as a member of the tribe, and certain rights and privileges come with that. If not, you’re not a Cherokee. It’s a legal boundary, and a cultural one, with actual consequences.

    I was googling around a bit myself and that was the answer that came up from Indian Country News — since membership in a tribe is a legal designation, not a matter of DNA, it’s perfectly possible for someone to have American Indian heritage but not legally be one. Last I saw, Warren does have the genealogical proof that would allow her to apply to become a registered member, but has not done so.

    However, the fact that she has the genealogical proof means that Trump is a racist fuckwad every time he calls her “Pocahontas” regardless of her legal status as a registered American Indian.

  36. 36.

    different-church-lady

    IF YOU ARE DEBATING WHETHER WARREN IS CHEROKEE OR NOT YOU ARE MISSING THE ENTIRE DAMN POINT OF WHAT HAPPENED TODAY.

  37. 37.

    FlyingToaster

    @Corner Stone: I spent some time after I got home this evening massaging Ghostery and NoScript into loading BJ’s front page without crashing.

    There’s some infinite loop that Twitter Syndication is going into that’s killing Firefox, from what I can tell.

  39. 39.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Brian: Also, the fine print, which no one reads, means Cole’s dad has now signed the rights to the Cole family genome over to the testing company. Forever.
    https://gizmodo.com/what-dna-testing-companies-terrifying-privacy-policies-1819158337
    https://thinkprogress.org/ancestry-com-takes-dna-ownership-rights-from-customers-and-their-relatives-dbafeed02b9e/
    http://www.newsweek.com/genetic-tests-find-ancestry-could-allow-companies-exploit-you-schumer-warns-723091
    https://nypost.com/2017/11/26/schumer-warns-dna-home-tests-could-be-gathering-personal-info/
    http://www.legalgenealogist.com/2016/12/11/read-the-fine-print/

  46. 46.

    Roger Moore

    @Mustang Bobby:

    I’m afraid to take the DNA ancestry test because I’m sure it will prove I’m from just as boring a background as I suspect I am, and all those stories about being descended somehow from King Edward III of England will be bullshit

    That can be good or bad. I found out that my ancestry is more or less as the family history said it was. I show up as 50% Ashkenazi (including my X chromosome and mitochondrial DNA) and 50% a grab bag of European centering on the British isles. And you may very well be descended from Edward III; he lived long enough ago and had enough children that pretty much anyone with much English ancestry is probably descended from him one way or another.

  48. 48.

    Mnemosyne

    @Adam L Silverman:

    It looks like that story was written before the marriage certificate was found. But it does do a good job of explaining the difference between having American Indian ancestry and being able to register as a legal member of a tribe.

  52. 52.

    Major Major Major Major

    @Roger Moore:

    And you may very well be descended from Edward III; he lived long enough ago and had enough children that pretty much anyone with much English ancestry is probably descended from him one way or another.

    There are multiple ways to be descended from somebody? I thought it was sorta binary.

  55. 55.

    FlyingToaster

    @different-church-lady: Behold, Twitter. “You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious.”

    Though I am on Twitter, because of things like Swear_Trek and Effin_Birds. Unlike Facebook, which is where the Nazis I went to HS with still are.

  56. 56.

    No Drought No More

    “..Don’t care where your from
    Or where you’re going
    All I know
    Is that you came..”.

    John Lennon, lyric from Freida People

  57. 57.

    eemom

    Greek and Greek on both sides dating back to the 12 gods. It has its disadvantages, but at least I don’t have to deal with this DNA shit.

  58. 58.

    Ohio Mom

    Being Jewish, my contribution to this sort of discussion is always, “Ur. My family came from Ur.”

    (Yes, I know this claim is very problematic. No one knows where Abraham came from, and also it is sexist to only claim the patriarchal side.

    In the final analysis, it is as silly as everyone else’s claim. Which is why I like it. Wherever your ancestors are from, whatever they accomplished, belongs to them, not you. I suppose you could say I’m trolling.)

  59. 59.

    Quinerly

    @Mary G: I’m the most upset over the Jackson portrait too. You can’t tell me that the people who planned the event are truly that stupid.

  61. 61.

    gene108

    Warren’s sin was being bitchy about banks ripping people off to pad their pockets and getting the CFPB into law.

    Republicans were going to destroy the universe to keep her from heading the agency that was her brainchild.

    So she showed the Senate Republicans up and became a Senator herself.

    The same big money folks, who wanted Republicans to move heaven and earth to keep her off the CFPB still want a pound of her flesh, and Pocohontas is the best they have right now.

  62. 62.

    hellslittlestangel

    I imagine a long-ago Viking slipping on a pile of reindeer shit while arguing with another Viking, falling down and breaking his leg while impaling both hands on the horns of his helmet.

  64. 64.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Mnemosyne: There’s a lot of wacky stuff with the tribe that we think of as the Cherokee Nation (even though it is one of several). It is important to remember that the Cherokee were originally located in the Carolinas and Georgia. As such they owned African slaves. When they were forced west on the Trail of Tears they forced their slaves to come with them. The descendants of those slaves were excluded from tribal membership until they finally won recognition of their rights in Federal court:
    https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/08/31/547705829/judge-rules-that-cherokee-freedmen-have-right-to-tribal-citizenship

    The Central Band of Cherokee, one of the more recently formed Cherokee tribes, claims that DNA testing has proved they’re one of the 10 lost tribes of the Israelites. Which while not impossible is, of course, highly improbable.

  65. 65.

    Felonius Monk

    @Mnemosyne:

    Trump is a racist fuckwad every time he calls her “Pocahontas” regardless of her legal status as a registered American Indian.

    Trump is a racist fuckwad even if he doesn’t call her Pocahontas.

  67. 67.

    smintheus

    At my first (temporary, part-time) academic job, I mentioned in passing to a colleague that my grandmother had been a native American. He immediately wanted to notify the administration so that they could claim me as a minority hire, white though I am; in fact he was practically insistent that it was for the good of the department to be seen to have minority faculty. Seems like that’s exactly the kind of nonsense that transpired at Harvard with Warren being added for no compelling reason to their list of ‘minority’ hires. It was happening everywhere in the 80s and 90s, one of the more ridiculous outgrowths of affirmative action policies. It’s a reflection on Harvard’s administrative cheesiness more than on Warren.

  68. 68.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    @eemom:

    Greek and Greek on both sides

    I thought you were against college fraternities and sororities.

  69. 69.

    Roger Moore

    @Mary G:

    It was the sight of the Navajo man standing in front of Andrew Jackson’s portrait that drove me over the edge. How disrespectful can you be?

    If they had really tried, they could have dredged up a portrait of Kit Carson instead.

  70. 70.

    Amir Khalid

    @Major Major Major Major:
    It’s like how Prince Harry and his American fiancee are (very distantly) related, through a common ancestor who lived centuries ago. You and another person can be related through more than one such ancestor. I’m pretty sure, although I could of course be wrong about this, that Roger Moore isn’t talking about nontraditional methods of reproduction.

  73. 73.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    he finds that “Pocahontas” crap devastatingly witty

    @Mustang Bobby: All those stories about being descended somehow from King Edward III of England will be bullshit; we’re actually from a long line of sock-knitters from Cardiff.

    Even my family legend is kind of boring: Before we were dirt-poor farmers in Ireland, one branch of the family claims to have been landed gentry dispossessed by Cromwell.

  74. 74.

    PhoenixRising

    @Roger Moore: Trump pulled down a portrait of someone who was a patriotic American, can’t recall who right now, and replaced it with that portrait of Andrew Jackson…to honor our previous worst POTUS. It was a news story last January.

  75. 75.

    raven

    You might have heard that Donald Trump likes to call me “Pocahontas.” He does it on Twitter, at rallies, and even in official White House meetings.

    But today, he stooped to a disgusting low. This afternoon, in the Oval Office, Donald Trump was supposed to be honoring Navajo code talkers – American heroes who helped save the world from fascism and hate during World War II. Instead, Trump stood right next to those Native American war heroes and came after me with another racist slur.

    He did this because he thinks that he can bully me and shut me up. He thinks he can bully and silence anybody he wants.

    Just to be clear: I learned about my family’s heritage the same way everyone else does – from my parents and grandparents. I never asked for and never got any benefit from it.

    But that’s not what any of this is about. Donald Trump doesn’t care about the facts. He ran a campaign that started with racial attacks and then rode the escalator down. This is the very worst of gutter politics.

    Every time that Donald Trump calls me “Pocahontas” – and the media goes crazy over it – he’s happy that people are not focused on how he’s trying to cut taxes for billionaires and giant corporations. He’s happy we’re not focused on how he’s trying to gut the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to let big banks and predatory lenders scam ordinary Americans out of billions of dollars.

    Donald Trump wants us distracted. But we’re not going to stop standing up for middle class families. We’re not going to stop standing up for consumers.

    Let’s show Donald Trump that we’re sick of his racist slurs by getting to work to fight his agenda. Donald Trump can keep attacking my family – but I’m going to keep fighting for yours.

    Thanks for being a part of this,

    Elizabeth

  76. 76.

    Baud

    @Amir Khalid:

    It’s like how Prince Harry and his American fiancee are (very distantly) related, through a common ancestor who lived centuries ago.

    For example

    Though they may spar across the political aisle, Vice President Dick Cheney is close enough to Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama to call him “cousin.”

    Eighth cousin, that is.

  78. 78.

    TS

    @Gin & Tonic:

    I’m afraid this asshole will have broken the presidency beyond repair.

    He has surely destroyed, in international circles, that other world leaders can trust the word of a US President. It will take, at a minimum, a generation of apologizing for trump to recover world respect for the US. The next President will be making an apology tour that lasts his/her complete term.

    Internally, I have no idea how long it will take for the US to recover from the onslaught of horror brought on by this excuse for a person.

  79. 79.

    Roger Moore

    @Major Major Major Major:

    There are multiple ways to be descended from somebody?

    Yes. I’m descended from each of my great grandparents a different way. I happen to be descended from some of my great-great-great grandparents in more than one way, since one of my grandmother’s parents were first cousins.

  80. 80.

    ellie

    My husband thought he was German. There are birth and death records that go back to the 1500s in Germany. But we did a DNA test and he is not German at all, like that commercial, he is Scottish and Irish. I had no surprises except I am more middle Eastern than I thought I was.

  81. 81.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    we are a bunch of frauds and not nearly as German as we thought. In fact, my father is only about 30% German.

    Does this mean your dad didn’t bomb Pearl Harbor?

  83. 83.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Roger Moore: Actually most of the Kit Carson stuff was a myth created back East to sell penny dreadfuls. He was no saint and a man of his times, and he certainly failed (though anyone/everyone would have) as the administer of the Bosque Redondo, but the myth and the reality are two different things. I highly recommend Hampton Sides Blood and Thunder: The Epic Story of Kit Carson and the Conquest of the American West
    https://www.amazon.com/Blood-Thunder-Carson-Conquest-American/dp/1400031109/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1511835732&sr=8-1&keywords=hampton+sides+blood+and+thunder

  84. 84.

    SFAW

    @different-church-lady:

    IF YOU ARE DEBATING WHETHER WARREN IS CHEROKEE OR NOT YOU ARE MISSING THE ENTIRE DAMN POINT OF WHAT HAPPENED TODAY.

    As Shakespeare or someone else once wrote: No fucking shit.

    I tells ya, it’s getting to the point where I’m thinking of changing my nym/nom to “Villago Delenda Est Shorty”

    And the Possum Queen can go fuck herself for being such an out-and-out liar. Just like her evil Pappy. If the Jesus of the “Left Behind” series were to come back and wreak his vengeance, they’d be among the first to get cast down.

  86. 86.

    SectionH

    @Quinerly: Stupid, disgusting, malicious – pick 2. Whichever way, yeah, that was the frozen limit for me this week. Yeah, I know it’s only Monday.

  87. 87.

    Felonius Monk

    @Roger Moore:

    If they had really tried, they could have dredged up a portrait of Kit Carson instead.

    I think a portrait of Custer might have been more appropriate and it would have gone right over Trump’s head.

  88. 88.

    Mayim

    DNA tests….

    The ethnicity side is an evolving science. It’s very good at the continental level, and decent at the regions within a continent. But separating English from Scandinavian from French from German? So-so to minimally accurate ~ but it will fairly consistently distinguish northwestern Europe regions like those from Southern European regions, and both northwestern and southern from eastern.

    Finding relatives from DNA testing is much more reliable, within the constraints of the DNA. Autosomal DNA only looks back about 5 to 7 generations because of the way DNA recombined, so relatives further than 4th-ish cousins often don’t share enough DNA be matched.

    If anyone wants to read more, Blaine Bettinger’s The Genetic Genealogist is a good start, and his new book is a good basic introduction to all the background science.

    (Note: I’m not a geneticist, but I am a genealogist working as a reference librarian, so I spend about a 1/3 of my work life on this stuff.)

  89. 89.

    Mike in NC

    Met my (now) wife in 1990 in NoVA, just after her mother had passed away. Her name was Margaret MacDonald. My living mom’s name was also Margaret MacDonald, from Dorchester, MA. So in 1999, we visited beautiful Nova Scotia, starting in Halifax and ending up in Antigonish to do some joint family research. Frankly, in the end we blew it off but still had a great time in Canada.

  91. 91.

    Roger Moore

    @raven:
    This is on the Ashkenazi side of the family. Marrying cousins is by no means limited to our backwater hicks; it happens in any community where the pool of potential spouses is limited.

  92. 92.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    Jennifer Rubin‏ @JRubinBlogger

    I repeat: Those who said HRC would be worse should hang their heads in shame.

    926 replies 12,558 retweets 41,408 likes

  96. 96.

    SFAW

    @ellie:

    But we did a DNA test and he is not German at all, like that commercial, he is Scottish and Irish.

    One little known bit of history: the area that eventually became Germany was actually conquered by the Scots and Irish in the 11th Century. Right after Harold of Wessex beat William at Hastings, he crossed the Channel, and cut a bloody swath through France, aided by Brian Boru and Ewan McTeagle. Harold got tired of all the smoting, and Boru and McTeagle continued into Germany.

  97. 97.

    Duane

    Another in a long list of propaganda racists eagerly accept. Obama is a Kenyan, too. Everyone knows these things, you can’t trust the lying liberal media, Trump says so. There’s no end to it.

  98. 98.

    different-church-lady

    What if this stuff is like a star registry and they’re not actually testing any of it at all?

  99. 99.

    delk

    Half of the Polish speaking people I meet say that my last name is a type of crochet needle. The other half say needle point.

    I tell them I knit.

  100. 100.

    different-church-lady

    @Duane: It’s funny: in Nineteen Eighty-Four, the citizens needed to be beaten down by war and totalitarianism to accept the Ministry of Truth. I bet Orwell never imagined just three-score years later people would volunteer for it.

  102. 102.

    Steeplejack

    @Corner Stone:

    David Catanese: I just got on the regular computer with the real keyboard so I could vent better about this.

    I’ve been running almost in real time on the DVR tonight, and Catanese set off my spidey sense in that segment on Hardball. Matthews started off asking about Trump’s “Pocahontas” gaffe, and Catanese (identified as being with U.S. News & World Report) was the one who derailed things and started gleefully back-filling about “She’s only 1/32 Cherokee!” and “she fibbed” about her heritage back in 2012.

    I got on the Google and ended up on Catanese’s Twitter account. I know U.S. News leans (at least) a little right, but I wanted to find out if Catanese is a partisan hack. Near the top, replying to someone, he has this tweet:

    She’s 1/32nd Native American and put that on her job application

    1/32nd.

    Further down Catanese’s Twitter feed, triumph1 says: “Wish you’d called out Warren when she claimed to be Native American.”

    Catanese responds: “I actually did, back in 2012.” And he provides a link to a Politico article, “How Elizabeth Warren Fumbled First Controversy.” It’s a soft hit piece cloaked in both-siderism. From page 2:

    “I am very proud of the stories my parents told me. . . . Being Native American is part of who our family is,” Warren said, according to the Boston Herald. “I’ve been hired in different jobs because I work hard, because I’m a good teacher. . . . The only one who is raising any question about whether I was qualified for my job is Scott Brown.”

    The response—besides being late—seemed only to raise more questions.

    She said she listed her Native American heritage as a way to meet others who are “like” her, but law school directories listed her vaguely as a “minority” teacher for nearly a decade—not specifically as someone with tribal roots.

    She said that she’s long been “proud” of her heritage, but that assertion seems to be undermined by her decision to delist herself as a minority teacher in the law directories and the fact that there is virtually no mention of her lineage over the past decade-and-half, including as she climbed the ranks in the Obama White House.

    She said that listing her ethnicity was not part of her efforts to seek a job, yet she scrubbed that listing as she received tenure at Harvard.

    While Warren insists she was hired solely on merit, the campaign has no plans to release records detailing whether she cited her minority status as she sought law jobs in the early part of her career.

    Finally, here’s the kicker at the bottom—and why I had to towel up a margarita spit-take: “Maggie Haberman contributed to this report.”

    P.S. I note that it’s not clear whether Warren specifically said she was “1/32 Native American” on a job application (which one?), because elsewhere Catanese seems to indicate that the 1/32 thing came out later, after some research by a New England genealogists’ organization. I report, you decide.

  103. 103.

    mike in dc

    Aside from racist dog-whistling, the whole point of the Pocohontas slur against Warren is to smear her as a “phony”, when her integrity, credibility and authenticity is the currency of her political relevance. In point of fact, her ancestry is not disproven, and she did not use her claim of ancestry in any way, shape or form to advance her career.

  105. 105.

    Anne Laurie

    @hellslittlestangel

    : I imagine a long-ago Viking slipping on a pile of reindeer shit while arguing with another Viking, falling down and breaking his leg while impaling both hands on the horns of his helmet.

    Dude, Cole’s accident-prone history is IMO the greatest proof of his Viking ancestry! Those guys made a fekkin’ history out of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, usually because they’d been fighting to the death with all their cousins and some of their siblings. As someone who married the son of a Norwegian-born lady (and who has the phenotypic markers of Viking heritage, though my known ancestors were all Celts), I think the five most dangerous words in the world are “I know there’s a shortcut… “

  109. 109.

    TheOtherHank

    I did the ancestry.com thing. My family is so boring. Family lore is that I’m supposed to be almost entirely Scandinavian with a bit of German tossed in. The test results show that I’m almost entirely Scandinavian with a bit of German tossed in. Maybe there was unsanctioned hanky-panky going on back in the day, but they kept it in the ethnic group.

  110. 110.

    different-church-lady

    Okay… once again, since people seem to still be missing the point:

    TRUMP USED A CEREMONY HONORING NATIVE AMERICANS TO ATTACK SOMEONE USING A STEREOTYPE AGAINST NATIVE AMERICANS. ELIZABETH WARREN’S BACKGROUND IS NOT THE DAMN ISSUE HERE.

  111. 111.

    efgoldman

    @Ian G.:

    We’re all a fuckin’ mix of different people who conquered and bred with each other

    If I had the money to waste, I’d get researched by the genealogy site (non-DNA). My IRL Scots-Irish, very common last name only goes back to my dad and two of his brothers (one generation). They changed it at the beginning of WW2 when it was apparent it might be smart not to be obviously Jewish. My grandfather’s legal last name was three layers different than his name when he got on the boat as a teen ~1905-1910; my paternal grandmother came over at about the same time from either Ukraine or Byelorussia. As far as anyone knows the rest of her family perished.
    And that’s just the paternal side.

  112. 112.

    rikyrah

    Sarah Kendzior‏Verified account @sarahkendzior

    Belittling non-white veterans and their families is a constant theme with Trump, from the Khan family to La David Johnson to the Navaho code talkers
    12:59 PM – 27 Nov 2017

  113. 113.

    SFAW

    @different-church-lady:

    TRUMP USED A CEREMONY HONORING NATIVE AMERICANS TO ATTACK SOMEONE USING A STEREOTYPE AGAINST NATIVE AMERICANS. ELIZABETH WARREN’S BACKGROUND IS NOT THE DAMN ISSUE HERE.

    I hear ya (even without the shouting), but you’re wasting your breath.

  115. 115.

    Gretchen

    Oklahoma was Indian Territory before it was a state. Many Native Americans hid their ancestry to avoid discrimination. Warren’s own family story includes the detail that a couple had to elope because the white family didn’t want their kid to marry an Indian. How likely is that couple to register their children as Indians?

  118. 118.

    Steeplejack

    @Steeplejack:

    P.P.S. I’m also wondering about this: “[. . .] there is virtually no mention of her lineage over the past decade-and-half, including as she climbed the ranks in the Obama White House.”

    Climbed the ranks in the Obama White House? As far as I can tell from Wikipedia, Warren worked in the executive branch for 10½ months, from September 2010 to August 2011, as assistant to the President and special advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Not even sure that’s “in the White House.”

  119. 119.

    Mnemosyne

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Carson did burn the orchards of the Navajo, though, to try and starve them out. He did a whole lot of horrendous shit that may not have been quite as picturesque as the penny dreadfuls made it out to be.

  121. 121.

    Jeffro

    @Adam L Silverman:

    The Central Band of Cherokee, one of the more recently formed Cherokee tribes, claims that DNA testing has proved they’re one of the 10 lost tribes of the Israelites. Which while not impossible is, of course, highly improbable.

    This is making me think of Clive Cussler’s TREASURE, even though the plot is only slightly similar (and slightly more probable)

  123. 123.

    Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)

    I don’t do genealogy but a friend of mine does and she uses the DNA sites to make connections and trace ancestors. To me, the most interesting part is the stories she finds about these people of the past. You see the people leaving home, probably expecting never to return. You see them following work. You clearly see what BS it is when conservatives say people never used to divorce (they often just walked away) or have children out of wedlock.

  125. 125.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Steeplejack: According to someone in an earlier thread today, after Warren was already on Harvard’s faculty, they circulated some sort of survey to see if faculty members would be willing to help/mentor students from various ethnic/racial groups, She said she’d be willing to help students with Native American ancestry, figuring (probably correctly) that there wouldn’t be many faculty members with such ancestry themselves. So it wasn’t to benefit herself, it was to help others.

    A monster, I know.

  128. 128.

    rikyrah

    Daniel Dale‏Verified account @ddale8

    Prominent Native activist Faith Spotted Eagle tells me Trump’s “Pocahontas” is an “emotional assault” that “carries as much weight as a physical assault.”

    “He can phrase it and twist it and distort it any way he wants, the fact remains: that name does not belong in his mouth.”
    1:37 PM – 27 Nov 2017

  129. 129.

    Jeffro

    @rikyrah: that’s because they have the double whammy of being non-white (which Trumpov looks down on) but having served (which is widely admired/looked ‘up’ on…but since Trumpov didn’t serve, he feels a twinge of shame and conflict, if only momentarily).

    We should all buy Khzir Khan’s books and a) send his autobiography to the White House, while b) donating his kids’ book to a local school.

  130. 130.

    Ruckus

    What the hell difference does it make where your genetic material comes from? Are you human? Are you sure? If you are then it doen’t matter, we are all human, skin color, hair color, amount of hair, shape of the nose, whatever is bullshit. I didn’t look all that much different than John at the age he was in that picture. We don’t look a lot alike today. I sat on the bus yesterday, coming home from friends and sat next to an 81 yr old woman with 18 kids and 108 grandkids. I don’t have either. We told stories and laughed because we both seemed to understand that we really are not all that different, no matter our superficial differences. Our differences are experiences, not genetics.

  131. 131.

    NotMax

    @Jeffro

    Trivia: One of the (to us, ludicrous) things the Lewis & Clark expedition was tasked with looking for was a purported tribe of blue-eyed, Welsh-speaking Indians.

  136. 136.

    Anne Laurie

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Even my family legend is kind of boring: Before we were dirt-poor farmers in Ireland, one branch of the family claims to have been landed gentry dispossessed by Cromwell.

    Yeah, Cromwell’s infamous “to Hell or Connaught” (death or exile) decree is kinda the Irish version of America’s “My great-great-grandmother was Cherokee” story. My paternal relatives never ceased to point out that the family name came from Scotland. (And my paternal grandmother was actually Orange — CofE/Anglo-Irish — but that’s a family skeleton that we didn’t find out until both she and her son were dead!)

  137. 137.

    NotMax

    @Ruckus

    and sat next to an 81 yr old woman with 18 kids and 108 grandkids

    Now that’s one crowded bus. Nice of one of them to stand up and offer you the seat.

    ;)

  140. 140.

    Mnemosyne

    @NotMax:

    I did not realize until fairly recently that Madeleine L’Engle’s A Swiftly Tilting Planet incorporates that legend (though IIRC she places them in South America). It’s still a good book, though.

  141. 141.

    Jeffro

    @NotMax: Roanoke Colony runaways, I bet!! Who knew they made it that far West?!?

    lol

    One of the odder things I read a year or two ago was the first volume of a graphic novel series called “Manifest Destiny”. The big idea was that Lewis and Clark were sent West to explore, buuuut their secret mission from Jefferson was to bring back some of the monsters rumored to live in the Heartland. You know, bison-headed centaurs, plant/spore-zombies, etc etc. It was kind of cool…

  144. 144.

    Ruckus

    @Jeffro:
    he feels a twinge of shame and conflict
    If you read the comment I wrote at #130 you’d question the following.
    I know that drumpf should have the ability to experience shame, but I doubt that he does. Conflict he may get but shame? I can not see that entering into his brain. Because he should be overwhelmed by shame, considering his life. But I see no apparent evidence of him having shame in the least. Either that or shame and conflict are the only things he feels. Either way he is not normal.

  147. 147.

    Mnemosyne

    @Jeffro:

    Roanoke Colony runaways, I bet!!

    I’ve seen anthropologists refer to the “lost colony of Roanoke” as a totally bogus “mystery.” The surviving colonists joined up with the local tribes to survive. The End.

  149. 149.

    NotMax

    @Jeffro

    Cannot recommend Stephen Ambrose’s Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West highly enough. One of the true ‘can’t put it down’ history books.

  151. 151.

    efgoldman

    @different-church-lady:

    ELIZABETH WARREN’S BACKGROUND IS NOT THE DAMN ISSUE HERE.

    to you, me, and anybody with any genuine grey matter. Remember who we’re discussing here. You know “christ what an asshole”

  153. 153.

    Jeffro

    @Mnemosyne: Yes – I was kidding. =)

    Oddly enough, we were talking about this in the Fro household just 2 days ago and my daughter didn’t believe me! She wouldn’t let up with her wacky theories until I told her OK, HERE IT IS…they jumped up in a boat and headed north to dig out the Oak Island treasure pit. She was up all night reading about that, then told me in the morning that a) I was a meanie and b) the Oak Island thing was probably not true but couldn’t be ruled out. I was like, “Can I rule it out then? Because I made it up right there on the spot last night…”

    But yes, I think there’s been some looking into the local tribes having blue-eyed descendants in succeeding generations. A pretty pedestrian explanation and the most likely one as well.

  155. 155.

    rikyrah

    Ira Madison III
    ✔
    @ira

    Can’t wait for Trump’s pressed tweet about how he’s turning down an invitation to the royal wedding and Buckingham Palace’s subsequent tweet that they never invited him
    6:52 AM – Nov 27, 2017

    35 35 Replies
    845 845 Retweets

  156. 156.

    ukko

    It doesn’t take much to be related to royalty if you have European ancestry, I am a descendent of Charles VI Sage King of France De Valois. But that is 21 freaking generations back, just doing some math assuming old King Chuck averaged 2.7 surviving kids over all his descendants there should be 1,144,561,273 of us running around. Much more likely the family tree is more like a wreath if you know what I mean.

    I am also descended from Chief Joseph Brandt, which was cool when the kids learned about him in history class. But really it does not take many generations to show us white folk to be mostly mutts. Or possibly hard core Deliverence level inbred, which you know is a bad thing.

  157. 157.

    Ruckus

    @efgoldman:
    I like to hear the stories about why someone’s greatwhomever came over because of…….. A lot of them are possible if not plausible, but I’d bet a lot of them are totally made up excuses not to piss of their new neighbors and they get told time and time again, spreading the racism, even if it is in reverse.

  159. 159.

    Barbara

    Do we think that “German” is some kind of single origin commodity, like coffee or chocolate? German speaking people probably inhabit more than 1/3 of Europe and border, among others, France, Denmark, Bohemia (Czech Republic), Poland, Switzerland, and and and. Germans have traded throughout Europe for centuries and people came from other lands to Germany, for school, for trade. Of course Germans intermarried with the rest of Europe. This myth of “pure blood” is just that, a big fat myth. For just about everyone. It doesn’t fucking matter. I have German heritage because my grandparents spoke German growing up. We ate German things like sauerkraut. Your DNA barely figures into this equation.

  160. 160.

    different-church-lady

    @Ruckus:

    I sat on the bus yesterday, coming home from friends and sat next to an 81 yr old woman with 18 kids and 108 grandkids.

    How many were going to St. Ives?

  162. 162.

    Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho

    @Mary G:

    @different-church-lady: This. It was the sight of the Navajo man standing in front of Andrew Jackson’s portrait that drove me over the edge. How disrespectful can you be?

    Sent me right round the twist as well. I wanted to scream, but I knew it would alarm the dog, so I typed in caps instead.

    @Quinerly: Nah, but I do think they’re that hateful.

  166. 166.

    JCJ

    @Roger Moore:

    All this, plus maybe there were ancestors from Sweden who took part in the Thirty Years War and stayed in Germany or perhaps raping and pillaging by Vikings along the Baltic coast. Nothing like a quick rape and pillage in Lübeck followed by Marzipan.

  168. 168.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @Adam L Silverman: :ahem:

    Bosque Redondo was the place to which the Navajo and the Mescalero Apache people were made to walk from their homelands. Not quite as far as the Trail of Tears, but I drove through some of that area in October, and I would not want to walk that distance. The whole idea was genocidal, and Kit Carson was part of it, as Jackson was of the Trail of Tears. The analogy fits well. It wasn’t just that he was a poor administrator of the project.

  171. 171.

    Eric U.

    a relative on my mom’s side of the family got tired of running into dead ends and did the unterhausen family tree. From what he found, my dad’s great-great-great grandfather bought his way out of military service and left Germany. I like to think it was to escape from the people he borrowed the money from. Dad’s family was Quaker, so that sorta fits. He also changed his name from Oberhausen to Unterhausen.

  172. 172.

    Mart

    Like Elizabeth Warren we also have a Native American family myth. My Dad would point to a grainy 1880’s picture and say – tell me if great great so and so is not an Indian looking fellow. The picture looked like an ancient sculpture with all the details weathered away. I had no idea what my dad was talking about. He would then tell me they would not want to admit to it back in the day, so there are no marriage records. So this must mean I am related to Ms. Warren.

    Retired members of the extended family have recently been relentlessly pursuing our heritage. Every now and then I find I am the Son of the Mayflower, and similar. They even have ceremonies for this stuff. I could give a shit. Four hundred years of descendants, with six degrees of separation, and we are all related.

  174. 174.

    Mnemosyne

    @Ruckus:

    I think he has a concept that other people tell him that he should be ashamed of something he did or said. His reaction to that is to double or triple down on the thing they tried to scold him about, just to show that they’re not the boss of him.

    So I guess it’s not really that he has an actual concept of shame, just a concept that other people are trying to control him and he must rebel against that.

  175. 175.

    NotMax

    @Jeffro

    Still rankles that NASA did not think to name the twin Mars rovers Lewis and Clark, as they arrived on Mars and began exploring during the 200th anniversary year of the expedition.

  178. 178.

    Ruckus

    @Mart:

    I could give a shit. Four hundred years of descendants, with six degrees of separation, and we are all related.

    Thank you.
    Mart said it better.

  179. 179.

    Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho

    @Pluky:

    it’s called inbreeding.

    Linebreeding.
    Or, as we say in equine genealogy, it’s called linebreeding when it works, and inbreeding when it doesn’t.

  182. 182.

    Ruckus

    @Mnemosyne:
    That’s what I think as well.
    OTOH he may have constant shame that keeps rearing it’s head every day and he just reacts to cover what he’s done rather than do what he should do. I’ll leave that what he should do for others to imagine.

  184. 184.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Donald the Dotard is only two generations removed from his German immigrant grandfather, and one generation removed from his Scottish immigrant mother.

    It’s not like his family has deep roots in North America, after all. Unlike those of us who talk about our heritage based on family lore…in my case, it goes back at least to the Civil War on my dad’s side, and the Revolution on my mom’s side.

  186. 186.

    some guy

    one of the things I find fascinating in Trumplandia2017 is how nakedly hacktacular all the “even the liberal” NYT hacks like Haberman and Baker have proven to be, while Righties like Jennifer Rubin have proven, through their words and deeds, that there are, in fact, some principled conservatives. a tiny tiny minority on the Right, no doubt, but I guess you find hope where you can.

  187. 187.

    Corner Stone

    @JCJ:

    Nothing like a quick rape and pillage in Lübeck followed by Marzipan.

    “We pruned the hedges of many small villages”

  188. 188.

    mike in dc

    @some guy:
    A lot of the alienated conservatives who are now “Never Trumpers” are Jewish. The under- and over- currents of Anti-Semitism running through Trumpism are a big reason for that conversion experience.

  189. 189.

    MoxieM

    @Anne Laurie: And, just to add to the annoying and pointless regarding genealogy etc., Cromwell defeated a very large army of Scots who were attempting to separate from Britain (again), in 1650. From the 10,000 on the field at Dunbar, about 60 or so were sent to the North American colonies to work in the iron producing ventures (most of the colonies were VC efforts of the day, after all.) A good other half of the poor bastids starved in or on the way to Durham Cathedral. Tl: Dr. So the Lord Pretender practised on the Scots what he perfected on the Irish. Monster.

    When I was in the Small Museum and Historical Society biz, my favorite NYorker cartoon has one person coming home, to find his partner on the sofa wearing a crown and exclaiming, “I did my DNA! I’m a Hapsburg!” I always kept that on my bulletin board. (They’re dead, Jim.)

  192. 192.

    Mnemosyne

    @MoxieM:

    Did you ever see the episode of “30 Rock” with Paul Reubens playing the last surviving Hapsburg prince? It was hysterical.

  193. 193.

    MoxieM

    @JCJ: Lübeck was (and is) a Hanseatic (Independent) entity–like Hamburg. and, usta be like Bruges, and Stockholm (??) Copenhagen… point is, plenty of opportunity for sharing of Nordic molecules in the many, many trading expeditions–remember that in Nordic societies women participated, somewhat–not necessarily rape. (Yikes, does that make me a rape apologist. say no.)

    But, the marzipan there is really stunning, and a trip to the Niederegger store to ogle the giant marzipan fruits and veg is a must do–in addition to the medieval hospital &&. Cool city gate, and awesome Weihnachtsmarkt too. Mmmm sausage! Mulled wine!! yum!

  195. 195.

    Eric U.

    I didn’t see anyone mention that the Nazi that was the subject of the NYT’s puff piece has been fired from his job as a waiter. Wife too, apparently. NYT did a great job of reporting, the article said he was a welder

  198. 198.

    JCJ

    @MoxieM:

    Lübeck was (and is) a Hanseatic (Independent) entity–like Hamburg

    Yup. The license plates for Hamburg (HH), Lübeck (HL), and Bremen (HB) all show the pride of being a Hansestadt – Hansestadt Hamburg,etc. I haven’t been to Lübeck since 1982. Reading your comment makes me want to visit again.

  200. 200.

    Anne Laurie

    @Ruckus:

    I like to hear the stories about why someone’s greatwhomever came over because of…….. A lot of them are possible if not plausible, but I’d bet a lot of them are totally made up excuses not to piss of their new neighbors and they get told time and time again, spreading the racism, even if it is in reverse.

    Hell, it’s the “mundane” explanations you have to be dubious about! My old man was told that his parents emigrated separately to Montreal, right after the Irish Civil War, and then got married because there weren’t many other potential partners from the old neighborhood in their new Canadian ghetto. It wasn’t until after he died we discovered his mother had been born Protestant, and that they’d met before emigrating… certainly a prudent choice for an Anglo-Irish horse dealer’s daughter looking to hook up with a young Catholic policeman…

  201. 201.

    mike in dc

    @Eric U.: When you are in a public-facing business like a restaurant, having a publicly-identified Nazis as one of your waiters is a no-go.

  202. 202.

    Anne Laurie

    @Ruckus:

    Do you have any idea if he has the concept of shame, or do you think that’s why he’s such a gigantic ass?

    Trump’s like a badly-raised dog; “shame” is that state where people are yelling at you, for reasons you can’t fully comprehend. His first response is to attack “in return”, whether or not it’s prudent.

  203. 203.

    Feathers

    @Anne Laurie: I’ve got that as well. Family from Galway, islands off Connemara, recently enough that my grandparents generation kept in touch and we visited them when I was a child. I have to explain to people that my unusual and seemingly impossible to pronounce name (my brother pronounces it differently than I do) is because it is the non-Anglicized version of a common and much simpler Irish name from what is now Northern Ireland.

  205. 205.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Anne Laurie:

    Trump’s like a badly-raised dog; “shame” is that state where people are yelling at you, for reasons you can’t fully comprehend. His first response is to attack “in return”, whether or not it’s prudent.

    Aren’t those the dogs who end up being put down.

    Also, I may be one of the very few who post here who can clam neither Irish nor Jewish ancestry.

  207. 207.

    Felonius Monk

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Also, I may be one of the very few who post here who can clam neither Irish nor Jewish ancestry.

    I’m sorry to inform you that this means no more corned beef for you. Rules is rules.

  209. 209.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Cheryl Rofer: I am very, very familiar with the Long Walk and Carson’s role. I’ve read not just Sides’ history, but several others from a variety of sources. Carson repeatedly argued against the policy and accepted the administrator’s position to try to mitigate the problems he knew were coming. And this was after he had disobeyed orders to just kill the Dine wherever he might find them when they were trying to avoid being rounded up.

    I use the whole policy against the Dine as part of the materials I’ve prepared for the Army about why cultural context and information matters. And why over 150 years after this insanity the Army still makes the same mistakes.

  213. 213.

    J R in WV

    @Adam L Silverman:

    What about the indians who didn’t go to Oklahoma? Not civilized? Fled up into the mountains, moving away from the white land thieves into the darker valleys and higher hollows? Here in the hollow where we live, there were two brothers next door, elderly in the 1970s. One was a teamster when that involved harnesses and hooves.

    And they told us that when their family moved to this hollow, where the creek name on the maps is their family name, there was an “Indian Princess” – probably a single woman, no royalty because that wasn’t a Native custom – living in the last tiny hollow on the right as you go to the head of the main-stem hollow.

    No telling which tribe she was, Shawnee were common back in the 1700s, that’s who the local Indian Fighters were fighting back then. I’m not willing to trust crummy government lists built by white folks who hated Native Americans, personally. Fuck those rules!

    Around our place in Arizona, lots of Hispanic names, people with those Hispanic names. But I’m willing to bet that the short wide ones are from Pueblo stock and the tall thin ones are from Apache stock, and they got those Hispanic names from monks that came through with Spanish troops in 1600. Some of them worked on our house with us. And some families have tall thin people AND short wide people.

    ETA: No disrespect intended, you know what you’re writing about, I’m just not agreeing with the rules you are informing us about…

  216. 216.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Adam L Silverman: I am sure it does. My ancestry is as tightest ass northern Euro as can be. We have actually looked at ways to find Native connections. The best we get is that Langlade was a cousin.

  218. 218.

    J R in WV

    @raven:

    Good Job, Raven, to give us that direct quote from Senator Warren. One of my grandparents was a Warren, but not out of OK, out of VA. So probably no relation, but you never know, do you?

  219. 219.

    J R in WV

    @Steeplejack:

    I’ve never heard of this “Catanese” fellow, but I can tell you just from the information you provide and the quotes you include, he is one shitty excuse for a reporter, already knows the position he intends to support no matter how he has to twist the truth.

    Just one more Republican pushing lies, like the Possum Queen and her father. And her boss. And “judge” Roy Moore. Are you still allowed to call yourself “judge” if you have been impeached and put off the bench twice? Not in my book you aren’t.

  221. 221.

    J R in WV

    @different-church-lady:

    WE GOT IT THE First Time, really we do! Trump also has a picture of a genocidal homicidal maniac on the wall behind those Native American Heroes! Trump is a racist hater thug who if not stopped will destroy our culture and our national honor.

    There is no limit to how low that rat bastid will sink, as when he hits bottom, he starts digging and chewing to get deeper.

  223. 223.

    chopper

    nobody I’ve talked to (and it’s a lot) with Indian/NA ancestry gives a shit about warren’s familial claims here that she didn’t actually use for any gain. they all are way more pissed about trump (and the gop’s) continual use of shitty stereotypes like ‘Pocahontas’.

    stop focusing on the stupid bullshit like “is she or isn’t she”. it’s a goddamn distraction. well what about the Dawes rolls!. this shit is why we lose all the time.

  225. 225.

    J R in WV

    @Anne Laurie:

    My family’s only Irish connection was orange Irish. I’m not proud nor embarrassed about it, as all that BS was forced upon the people by the rulers and their minions. Forced by rank brutality.

  226. 226.

    MCA1

    I’m tired of all the analysis of this. This is nothing more than Cleek’s Law come to vivid life:

    – Drumpf doesn’t care about the fact he’s a second/third generation American and the irony of his nationalism in light of that. He’s no different than the original know-nothings, who were mostly new immigrants making sure to close the door immediately behind themselves. He cares about skin color, but how long you’ve been here makes no difference as long as it’s longer than him.
    – He damn sure doesn’t give a flying fuck about the full details of the Warren/Cherokee lineage/Harvard/Dawes registry “issue,” or any nuances therein, or the fact that her saying her family’s oral history always accounted for some Cherokee on her maternal grandmother’s side but couldn’t really be fully substantiated 45 years ago is like the least controversial thing ever. IT DOES NOT MATTER, and he is bereft of the curiosity to care or learn. All he knows is the noise machine talking points, which tell him that Warren only got into Harvard and remained there because she lied about her background (race traitoring in the process) AND relied on Affirmative Action in doing so.
    – The fact that he’s tacitly conceding that she does have Native American background by calling her Pocahontas either doesn’t register or again, he don’t give a dayum.
    – Because all that DOES matter to him is that repeating “Pohh-ka-HAAAN-us” in his best condescending prick voice gets the cheers he longs for from the troglodytes. It’s one of his greatest hits, and the intended audience need not be in the room.
    They love it because it’s the ultimate asshole move, and it pisses off liberals. The fact that he did it in front of the people who are most likely to be offended by it, in person, is a plus for them. Because it pisses off decent people even more. AND, added bonus, it pisses off the people who he directly insults, the Native Americans in the room, but they’re not in a position to really say “Fuck you, Mr. President” and walk out of the room. It’s the kind of crap a 6th grade bully pulls.

    He’s a degenerate asshole, and his fans love him for it. End of analysis.

  227. 227.

    chopper

    @MCA1:

    yeah but what part of what you said involves playing pretend expert by paraphrasing a bunch of shit from wikipedia? come on, man, let’s get distracted! down the rabbit hole!

  229. 229.

    frosty

    @MCA1:

    He’s a degenerate asshole, and his fans love him for it. End of analysis.

    That sums it up perfectly. On to the next Gish Gallop.

  230. 230.

    bluefish

    No kidding, John Cole, on how ridiculous the complaint towards Warren is. We have at least one DNA advert on tv that gets into this very sort of understandable confusion. (Great foto of you and your siblings.)

    It’s always odd what sets a person off — Trump’s cynicism, racism, stupidity — One has to resist getting used to it. It’s when he put his hand on the fellow’s shoulder while saying that he likes him. That’s what got me seeing red. He’s a creepy, predatory asshole. And evidently POTUS.

  232. 232.

    Anne Laurie

    @J R in WV:

    My family’s only Irish connection was orange Irish. I’m not proud nor embarrassed about it

    I’ll admit, when I’m being particularly surly, passive-aggressive & racist, I tend to use Granny Joyce’s Orange genes as an excuse…

  234. 234.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    There’s a third-party site called Gedmatch that has additional admixture tools. In my experience, they’re all generally consistent in the broad strokes, keeping historical migration patterns in mind. It was a source of some hilarity when one of the Gedmatch admixture tools identified me as some percentage Orcadian.

  235. 235.

    SFAW

    @Dog Mom:

    @John Cole – My mother was a Blaine – we may be cousins!

    Since you posted this twice (yeah, I know, FYWP), does that mean you’re second cousins?

  236. 236.

    SFAW

    @MCA1:

    any nuances

    Re: Shitgibbon and “nuance”: the closest he’ll get to understanding “nuance” is if he thinks it’s a village in Upstate New York — the hamlet of New Ahntz, located in Herkimer or Oneida County.

  237. 237.

    Dog Mom

    @SFAW I don’t know about the second cousins – but I do know that insomnia and having too many pages open, confuses me greatly.

  238. 238.

    mwing

    My fathers family has the same story as Senator Warren- an ancestor who came down from French Canada, supposedly half or quarter Native American because his dad or grandad had married a native gal. We don’t even know what tribe she was supposed to be from, my dad remembers something like Huron or Heron.
    I grew up believing that I was 1/16 native (well, Canada native.)

  239. 239.

    steverinoCT

    @Adam L Silverman:
    I just downloaded the Kindle version, thanks. In my youth, around 5th grade I guess, I read a bunch of biographies my school library had, including Kit Carson. A lot of my later years have been spent in abolishing or at least enlightening ideas I got from them. Well, they were for kids; the messy details get filled in as you grow.

  240. 240.

    steverinoCT

    @Mnemosyne:
    Ditto the “Lost Tribes of Israel.” The ones captured and taken to Babylon modified/solidified/codified the “modern” Jewish religion; the remaining “lost” people were integrated with the colonists the Babylonians brought in; some that due to lack of access to Jerusalem began worshiping at a (forget which) particular mountain instead. When the exiled Jews returned, anyone left were goyim; the mountain-worshipers were close enough religiously to be especially reviled: the Samaritans.

    At least that’s my basic-basic understanding of the matter.

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