Video: Meet the Black McCains

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Much as it means to them to mingle at their bi-racial family reunions, guess who these folks are voting for?

Courtesy of the Wall Street Journal.

And just for giggles, check McCain here, during his 2000 run, gobsmacked to learn that his Mississippi family—the one which owned 2000 miles of plantation and fought in the Civil War—had ever owned slaves. For a smart guy, connecting the dots seems kinda laborious:

“But what McCain didn’t know about his family until Tuesday was that William Alexander McCain had owned 52 slaves. The senator seemed surprised after Salon reporters showed him documents gathered from Carroll County Courthouse, the Carrollton Merrill Museum, the Mississippi State Archives and the Greenwood, Miss., Public Library.”

“I didn’t know that,” McCain said in measured tones wearing a stoic expression during a midday interview, as he looked at the documents before Tuesday night’s debate. “I knew they had sharecroppers. I did not know that.”

…”I knew we fought in the Civil War,” McCain went on. “But no, I had no idea. I guess thinking about it, I guess when you really think about it logically, it shouldn’t be a surprise. They had a plantation and they fought in the Civil War so I guess that it makes sense.”

“It’s very impactful,” he said of learning the news. “When you think about it, they owned a plantation, why didn’t I think about that before? Obviously, I’m going to have to do a little more research.”

Then he began to piece together information out loud. “So maybe their sharecroppers that were on the plantation were descendants of those slaves,” he said.

Puh-lease.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

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Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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