Lynne Cheney: Dick and Barack Obama are eighth cousins

[deminks]

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/10/16/lynne-cheney-dick-and-barack-obama-are-eighth-cousins/

Lynne Cheney: ‘Dick and Barack Obama are eighth cousins.’

In an MSNBC interview today, host Norah O’Donnell asked Lynne Cheney her views on Sen. Hillary Clinton’s (D-NY) presidential campaign and whether “America is ready for a woman president.” Cheney replied that she actually has a “certain bias”:

One of the things I discovered was that Dick and Barack Obama are eighth cousins. Is that an amazing thing? If you go back eight generations, we have a common ancestor.

When asked if that means she’s “for Barack Obama,” Cheney replied, “No.”

[L. Coyote]

1. We are all distant cousins. 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128

in 25 generations, that's 1,099 trillion great-great....grandparents. Many people will find that the same person is a grandparent twice in the last 10 generations, and the duplication probabilities rise with each generation.

http://jqjacobs.net/anthro/ancestors.html

[Ian David]

2. Doesn't that mean someone from Cheney's family likely OWNED someone from Obama's family? n/t

[Withywindle]

3. No.

They're related on the side of Obama's mother, who was white. His father, who was black, came here from Kenya as a student in the 50s - Obama's a first-generation African-American.

[Ian David]

5. Ah, thanks for the clarification. The amazing thing is that this reveals that at somepoint...

someone in the Cheney family actually had sex.

[LadyAziz]

4. No

Obama's dad is from Kenya.

[Bitwit1234]

6. Obama's white ancestor was a Chaney

from Maryland. According to the records that you can locate on line thru census none of Cheney's ancestors ever lived in Maryland. Cant' see the connection. But who knows.