Obama and Cheney may be related.

Obama and Cheney may be related.

news.yahoo.com

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - There's no sign of a family reunion planned, but U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney and Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama are distant cousins.

So says the vice president's wife, Lynne Cheney, who said she discovered that her husband of 43 years is eighth cousins with the senator from Illinois.

(visit the link for the full news article)



[edit on 16-10-2007 by UM_Gazz]

Is this true? If it is, its all over for Obama. Even if they are distant, most Americans that thinks of anybody with Cheney are going to be considered a curse.

news.yahoo.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Really this should only be note worthy to those who take an interest in history. Politically even in the highly charged partisan atmosphere that exists in the US this fact shouldn't be mud that sticks. People probably marry there distance cousins without even realising it.

I'd agree. 8th cousins is a bit of a stretch. As xpert said, that's distant enough that people probably marry that close all the time. Once you go out so far, we're all related somehow.

Now, if they were brothers or something…

8th cousins... ok... thats a little far back, i can't even be sure who all my 3rd cousins are, since i have 100's of them (My mom came from a VERY big family).

This really doesn't matter at all... but that won't stop me from telling this to every Barack Huesain Obama supporter i know! I might just 'forget' how distant they are

Now on a serious note, or a conspericy related one, mabye this is why he is such the darling of the media, that he is of the bloodline, and is aproved by the Powers That Be?

There just discrediting the man so he has no chance of winning the elections. I watched a documentary last night about how a internet site had linked him to Muslim extremists and it made CNN and all the other mainstream media. Dig the dirt up and if theres no dirt well just discredit the man with absurd accusations.

Really this should only be note worthy to those who take an interest in history.

And for fans of comedy...who says genetics can't be funny.

I agree 8th cousins is a stretch but it's still funny.

I assume both gave the proverbial "d'oh!" when they heard the news.

But from a political stand point I would think Obama thought it was funnier than Cheney.

Spiderj

double post my bad.

spider

[edit on 10/17/2007 by Spiderj]

Kerry and Bush are distant cousins too.

So this can be seen one of two ways...

Either A) We're all related if you go far enough down the line

or B) Distant relatives are chosen as high powered politicians to sort of keep the power in the family, along the lines of how the royal family is.

I pick A

Originally posted by NovusOrdoMundi

So this can be seen one of two ways...

Either A) We're all related if you go far enough down the line

or B) Distant relatives are chosen as high powered politicians to sort of keep the power in the family, along the lines of how the royal family is.

I pick A

Well i pick B... but im sure A is the case...

But, come on, lets have a little fun... After all, can't family members get along

The way I see, most of us are eight cousins of each other. Nothing interesting to report there. It's just a hold over of antiquated, feudal notions that just because you popped out of someone's womb, you must share similar characteristics. Isn't that assumption attacked as foolish under just about every kids book ever?

So we're all related to Hitler.

Bin Laden too.

Bush, Putin, Saddam, Stalin...

Oh, and for those of you who are married........

This seems like a more rational discussion of the subject matter.

Just to put it in perspective: Assuming they are truly 8th cousins, Obama and Cheney share in common a great great great great great great great grandparent??? (and yes, that is the correct number of "greats").

At about 25 years per generation, that means there was a common ancestor between 200 and 300 years ago. Considering the fact the U.S. Population was a paltry 2 million by the 1770's, and your typical family had eight children on average (five of which, on average, died), you do the math.

3^9 = 19,683 people, on average, would be 8th cousins to Cheney.

3^11 = 177,147 people, on average, would be 10th cousins to Bush.

And technically, you could multiply those respective numbers by 2, because you could be related to the original mother OR the original father.

Soo... let's see...

39,366 and 354,294

That means 1 out of every 9 people whom are 8th cousins of Cheney are also 10th cousins to Bush.

That makes 4,374 people who are both 8th cousins of Cheney AND 10th cousins of Bush. That means 1 in every 68,848 Americans are in this situation. Meaning, there's one in almost every city of over 50k people.

This really is a non-issue.

I've noticed that in recent stump speeches Obama has referred to Cheney as "My cousin Dick Cheney" over and over, to thunderous laughter and applause. If the point was to sling mud at the man, I think it backfired. He's effectively disarmed that "bomb" and turned it into delicious cake.

I think Barack Obama got a fair chance of being installed as the next president or vice-president of the United States by default of him being related by bloodline to Cheney as an eight cousin.