A point about Elizabeth Warren's Native American Ancestry

[Flash]

No, very obviously a person born into enough wealth does not need to work hard to maintain wealth, nor to be materially successful.

I said "successful"--that does not have to be financially. A very wealthy person could do nothing and still have wealth, but they must work hard to continue being a successful athlete, musician, actor, entrepreneur......

[Ralph]

Elizabeth Warren has released a DNA test strongly suggesting she has Native American ancestry. This is a fun story because it puts Trump in a position where he'll want to lie and claim he never promised a million dollars to charity if she did so. Watching that weasel squirm is a joy. But the test itself shouldn't matter.

Think about it. What was the knock on Warren? It was that she made up Native American ancestry. Whether or not she actually has Native American ancestry is entirely beside the point. What was relevant is whether she had reason to think she had Native American ancestry when she claimed it. If she had good cause to think it (e.g., plausible family oral history) and it turned out not to be true, that's not her fault. And if she didn't have good cause to think it, but it randomly turned out to be true, that doesn't relieve her of the charge of fabrication.

For example, what if I told you I have 100% Korean ancestry, which I said on the basis of my mother and father both having told me they were of Korean ancestry. And what if I took a DNA test later and found out that I'm actually 100% of Chinese ancestry -- that my parents actually adopted me from China but didn't want me to know I was adopted. Would I have been lying when I told you of my Korean ancestry? Should I be attacked and ridiculed for having told you something I had good cause to think was true?

Or, on the flip side, imagine that, thinking I was 100% of Korean ancestry, I applied for a scholarship reserved only for those of Chinese ancestry, telling them falsely that my ancestors were Chinese. If later I found out from a DNA test that I was actually 100% of Chinese ancestry, due to that hypothetical adoption, would that change the fact I'd lied about my heritage for personal advantage?

The focus on a DNA test doesn't really make sense in the Warren story, and never did. The important question is whether her family did, in fact, have an oral tradition about Native American ancestry. Her DNA test adds a little to the plausibility of such a story having existed (since there was, in fact, a Native American ancestor, it seems more plausible that she was told a story about a Native American ancestor.) But a DNA test could never settle the question of whether such a story existed, one way or the other. The best you can do for that is to interview members of her extended family and see if such a story was, in fact, going around.

Truth: A Jeep Grand "Cherokee" (as quoted by Ben Shapiro) has more Native American Blood than this idiot female who is rapidly burying herself in order to prove she knows how to use a shovel. Really? 1/100 of a percentile that can easily be dismissed with the false positive due to certain types of European ancestry being diluted with Asian DNA? This proves that she has CHEROKEE blood running through her veins as originally claimed?

To "ME".....personally this is far worse than representing STOLEN VALOR as did Blumenthal's documented lies.

Another thing that Shapiro had right: If this weeks news cycle was represented in analogical terms: Trump would be the "Lone Ranger"...…..horse face would be "Silver" and the Fake native American would be "Tonto" as played by a Hollywood actress after a couch casting session.

[Celticguy]

There are no Colombian, Peruvian, or Mexican Native Americans????

Are you kidding...or what?

My guess would be a HUGE native American DNA component in MOST Colombians, Peruvians, and Mexicans.

And lots of european in those colonized places.
Stick with your day job as your guesses are not so hot.

[Flash]

Agreed. But whether you think of that qualification as something you have to earn through years of hard work, or whether you think you're entitled to it by way of being a "very stable genius" makes all the difference in the world.

Very true. But to know that difference we have to know what a person believes. To assume the person who earns his position through years of hard work does not believe he is entitled is just dishonest speculation; especially when we attribute it to those of the other party with whom we disagree or intensely dislike.

[Gotcha68]

It continually amazes me how Trump supporters will tear apart any comment/claim anyone makes while ignoring Trump's lies, ignorance and all around bullshit.

Fucking hypocrites.

[Frank Apisa]

And lots of european in those colonized places.
Stick with your day job as your guesses are not so hot.

What the hell are you babbling about?

Get someone to help you compose a coherent sentence...with a coherent notion to share.

[Oneuli]

No, she was not correct.

As a reminder: she claimed she had Native American ancestry, based on family oral history indicating a couple of her grandparents had some Native American blood. Her relatives have since confirmed such family oral history did, in fact, exist, and DNA tests have confirmed that she does, in fact, have Native American ancestry.

[Oneuli]

https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-m...-native-ameri/

it is common knowledge. It is the entire reason she is being mocked for her false claim.

No. As you're quite aware, the reason right-wingers tried to mock her for what turned out to be a true claim is that they fear she'll run for president. It's the same reason the same bunch of yahoos pretended to doubt that Obama was born in the US, and why they speculated about him being a secret Muslim, or why they pretended to be outraged that Hillary Clinton used private email for work, or why they pretended to believe the Swift Boat hit squad's lies about Kerry's service, or why they incessantly pushed the lie that Gore claimed he invented the Internet. When they identify a potential threat to their political hegemony, they'll dutifully repeat any old nonsense handed to them by way of the apparatchiks at Fox News.

[Oneuli]

I said "successful"--that does not have to be financially

Yes -- that's why I qualified my own use of "successful." I view true success as making a positive difference for humanity.... but that's hard to measure. Measuring the advance of a person's fortune, by comparison, is easy. In terms of that material success, someone born rich can be very economically successful without ever working a day in his life. Trump is a great example. Many on the right would call him a successful businessman. Yet not only does he fail my test of success (he made his money preying on gambling addicts and gullible investors, and certainly didn't make the world better), he also isn't successful even in the sense of having gotten a decent return on the money his father handed him. Any imbecile with an index fund would have gotten a MUCH better return without lifting a finger. All Trump's efforts to stiff contractors, sucker rubes, exploit women with his pageants, run the USFL into the ground, and so on, didn't even achieve a mediocre rate of return. He was a huge failure as an entrepreneur, even in those investing terms. However, because he started out so very wealthy, even a markedly sub-par return was still enough to make him a billionaire and thus satisfy many people's understanding of success.

[Frank Apisa]

As a reminder: she claimed she had Native American ancestry, based on family oral history indicating a couple of her grandparents had some Native American blood. He relatives have since confirmed such family oral history did, in fact, exist, and DNA tests have confirmed that she does, in fact, have Native American ancestry.

That truly is the case, Oneuli...but it is apparent that Superfreak is not interested in the truth...

...he/she is only interested in promoting this fiction the conservatives have concocted.

No getting through that crap.

But I admire your tenacity in attempting to do so.

[TOP]

What's the real truth about the parents eloping?

[Getin the ring]

And I admire you guys continuing to display dumb a$$ thought process.

Pocahontas is not a Native American, in no way shape or form, and for her to continue to say so is embarrassing, and frankly just ended her political ambitions.

but that's fine with me, keep beating her war drum for her

[TOP]

And I admire you guys continuing to display dumb a$$ thought process.

Pocahontas is not a Native American, in no way shape or form, and for her to continue to say so is embarrassing, and frankly just ended her political ambitions.

but that's fine with me, keep beating her war drum for her

I believe that the Native american nation has suggested that she stop beating ' that drum....

[Oneuli]

Truth: A Jeep Grand "Cherokee" (as quoted by Ben Shapiro) has more Native American Blood than this idiot female who is rapidly burying herself in order to prove she knows how to use a shovel. Really? 1/100 of a percentile that can easily be dismissed with the false positive due to certain types of European ancestry being diluted with Asian DNA? This proves that she has CHEROKEE blood running through her veins as originally claimed?

To "ME".....personally this is far worse than representing STOLEN VALOR as did Blumenthal's documented lies.

Another thing that Shapiro had right: If this weeks news cycle was represented in analogical terms: Trump would be the "Lone Ranger"...…..horse face would be "Silver" and the Fake native American would be "Tonto" as played by a Hollywood actress after a couch casting session.

The percentage was given as a range. Right wingers, being deeply dishonest people, have cited only the very low end of the range. The higher end is 1/64, which, as you know, is vastly more than 1/100th of a percentile.

Does that prove she has Cherokee blood? No. DNA tests aren't perfected to the point of identifying a particular tribal origin. What it shows is that she was almost certainly telling the truth about having been told a family history of such origins. Of course, we already knew she was almost certainly telling the truth about that, since reporters have checked with other relatives of hers (many of whom are Republicans), who confirmed they heard the same stories. So, she honestly passed along family history, and the Republicans dutifully pretended to think she was lying -- and then wound up with egg on their faces when their endless demands for DNA tests ended up showing that she did, in fact, have Native American ancestry. Oops!

As for the "Stolen Valor" argument, it's pretty weak. Even if it hadn't turned out that Warren was telling the truth, it would simply have been a deception about ancestry -- something that is an unearned accident of birth, anyway. It's similar to the way Trump repeatedly lies and says his father was born in Germany, which he wasn't. Is that "worse than stolen valor"? No. There's a reason that you probably haven't even heard about those repeated lies: a politician lying about family details predating his or her birth just isn't seen as important, even when done for personal advantage (the way Trump has used his father's fictitious German birth to assert a kinship with the EU when that's politically convenient). In the long list of vile Trump lies, his lies about where his father was born hardly even merit a mention. The same is true for the "stolen honor" of Trump repeatedly lying about graduating at the top of his class in college. It's slimy, but it's relatively trivial, so it's seldom brought up. But, as you know, Warren doesn't supply the same broad list of serious personal misconduct to attack as Trump does, and so the right-wingers must take what they can get, and that included trying to turn her ancestry claims into a major scandal, back when they thought she was lying. And they're at such a loss for what else to attack her about, that they're not letting go of that one even now that they know she was telling the truth.

[Frank Apisa]

The percentage was given as a range. Right wingers, being deeply dishonest people, have cited only the very low end of the range. The higher end is 1/64, which, as you know, is vastly more than 1/100th of a percentile.

Does that prove she has Cherokee blood? No. DNA tests aren't perfected to the point of identifying a particular tribal origin. What it shows is that she was almost certainly telling the truth about having been told a family history of such origins. Of course, we already knew she was almost certainly telling the truth about that, since reporters have checked with other relatives of hers (many of whom are Republicans), who confirmed they heard the same stories. So, she honestly passed along family history, and the Republicans dutifully pretended to think she was lying -- and then wound up with egg on their faces when their endless demands for DNA tests ended up showing that she did, in fact, have Native American ancestry. Oops!

As for the "Stolen Valor" argument, it's pretty weak. Even if it hadn't turned out that Warren was telling the truth, it would simply have been a deception about ancestry -- something that is an unearned accident of birth, anyway. It's similar to the way Trump repeatedly lies and says his father was born in Germany, which he wasn't. Is that "worse than stolen valor"? No. There's a reason that you probably haven't even heard about those repeated lies: a politician lying about family details predating his or her birth just isn't seen as important, even when done for personal advantage (the way Trump has used his father's fictitious German birth to assert a kinship with the EU when that's politically convenient). In the long list of vile Trump lies, his lies about where his father was born hardly even merit a mention. The same is true for the "stolen honor" of Trump repeatedly lying about graduating at the top of his class in college. It's slimy, but it's relatively trivial, so it's seldom brought up. But, as you know, Warren doesn't supply the same broad list of serious personal misconduct to attack as Trump does, and so the right-wingers must take what they can get, and that included trying to turn her ancestry claims into a major scandal, back when they thought she was lying. And they're at such a loss for what else to attack her about, that they're not letting go of that one even now that they know she was telling the truth.

Knocked it out of the park!