Is John Kasich just a cynically pandering tool or is he a genuine imbecile?

Diogenes_the_Cynic · June 18, 2006, 3:45am

In John Kasich’s Fox News show this evening he interviewed a guest named Bob Cornuke. Cornuke is a former police officer turned con artist (with a mail-order “PhD”) who specializes in “discovering” Biblical sites and artifacts and such as the “real” Mt. Sinai and the anchors from St. Paul’s sunken ship. Cornuke was on Kasich’s show tonight to pimp his discovery of Noah’s Ark in Iran.

Cornuke was more circumspect about the nature of his discovery than the ludicrous claims made in the linked article. The site really only amounts to little more than a cleft rock formation and some fossils indcating the site was once underwater. Cornuke was trying spin this as “possibly” being Noah’s Ark but pretended to be cautious about declaring it outright. He also burbled a lot of obfuscating bullshit about the location being corroborated by the Bible (an outright lie since Genesis says nothing at all about where the Ark supposedly landed) and laughably postures himself as a “police investigator” who “deals in probabilities.” He really just dumps out horseshit by the shovelful but that’s not so unusual or surprising. I don’t even think Cornuke believes a word he’s saying himself, he’s just scamming credulous suckers to sell books and videos.

What was more irksome to me was that John Kasich was just eating up every bit of this steaming pile of donkey shite like it was banana pudding. He asked no critical questions, kept calling Cornuke “doctor” (Cornuke is no more doctor than Julius Irving) and acted as though the video footage of perfectly ordinary and unremarkable rock formations was the news of the century. He seemed to take it for granted the Bibical story of the flood and the ark was genuine history.

So is Kasich really THAT fucking gullible and stupid or he just cynically pandering to the fundie morons in the Fox News audience to make them like him and watch his show?

Either way, Fox News just loses more credibility every day.

samclem · June 18, 2006, 4:06am

Yes and Yes.

Wesley_Clark · June 18, 2006, 4:29am

LMAO. No #1 rated news organization in america. This is making me laugh that this is the number #1 news station.

Tomorrows panel discussion: Did Jesus just die for Americans alone or everybody?

duffer · June 18, 2006, 4:47am

Wow, someone that gets under people’s skin is hosting a show on cable news? Say it ain’t so!

Sadly, I think my cynicism may have surpassed the standard-bearer. The fact you all still fall for this, in any form be it Fox, CNN, MSNBC, etc, is a bit sad.

But great entertainment. Keep it coming!

Wesley_Clark · June 18, 2006, 4:50am

Glad we could help. Maybe a news show where they don’t even require a Ph.D. from a diploma mill before they call you doctor would be an even better idea though.

Hung_Mung · June 18, 2006, 5:07am

These cable “news” programs aren’t worth watching at all. It’s just like radio and a lot of internet sports writing: just opinion for the sake of opinion.
If I want some facts I’ll watch Tim Russert or Lehrer.
Fuck these silly cable primadonnas. And Nancy Grace.

Sampiro · June 18, 2006, 5:30am

Slight hijack possibly, but I was channel surfing the other night and landed on The Hystery Channel just long enough to hear “experts” and theologians discuss the “ludicrous” theory that space aliens were responsible for The Bible Code. The sickening part was that they didn’t think the Bible Code was a heaping pile of ordure, just the space alien theory.

This reminds me of Dr. Dale Griffis, another mail order Ph.D. theologian. The West Memphis Three are still in prison in Arkansas (Damien Echols on death row) in large part due to Griffis’s “expert testimony” (no DNA or blood or other remotely conclusive physical or even circumstantial evidence connected the convicted to the scene of the crime or the victims). Among his other testimonials Griffis asserted that because two of the teenagers on trial had been seen wearing black to school and had books by Stephen King at home they were incomparably more likely than almost anybody else to brutally murder three young boys (the crime for which they were on trial), and he stated that the murders occurred on a Satanic holiday (there was NO occult holiday anytime that week).
Griffis’s alma mailbox was not only never accredited, it was later ordered closed for mail fraud by the Federal government. Nevertheless his testimony was allowed to stand as he was, after all, the author of more than two dozen books on the subject (only 1 copy of which is to be found in any library anywhere- it’s a vanity press pub he donated to a law enforcement library in Ohio).

duffer · June 18, 2006, 5:45am

Um, News Show? Gimme Cronkite for news. Everything else is spin, entertainment and ratings gimmicks. I get the feeling we’re in agreement on this. I want news. Not news entertainment. It’s time we Dopers in so many disagreements get together on the simplest of ideals.

I want someone to tell me WHAT is happening, not WHY they think it’s happening.

Oh yeah, this is a whole new duffer, needed some time to get right

kaylasdad99 · June 18, 2006, 5:47am

WELCOME BACK, SAMPIRO!

I can’t tell you how delighted I was to see your name in the “last post by” column. I hope things are well with you, and I look forward to seeing more of your posts (probably Monday – I’ve got to begin being productive around the house now).

Take care of yourself.

GIGObuster · June 18, 2006, 5:48am

My brain began to hurt as soon the “evidence” turned towards saying that Ararat is not the correct mountain. Duh! As I don’t think a flood as descrived in the Bible was possible, of course Ararat was the wrong place to look for, but [del]Cornholio[/del] Cornuke here thinks that there was another mountain:

http://www.watch.org/showprint.php3?idx=79928&mcat=1&rtn=/index.html

Noah’s Ark was claimed to be found in Northern Iran rather than Turkey. Over a thousand expeditions had previously scoured Turkey’s Mt. Ararat, but by following the precise language of the Bible, Cornuke found what is believed to be Noah’s Ark, nearly in tact. Turkey’s Mt. Ararat was incorrect because Marco Polo named the large mountain during his journeys in the 13th century. Through mapping scriptures in Genesis with ancient maps, Cornuke pieced together the clues and found where the Ararat Mountain Range made home for Noah’s Ark in Northern Iran not far from Turkey. Bob Cornuke has been at the center of several controversies over his past findings as he has come at odds with secular scholars, but several people who I know personally were on this expedition as well as some credible, internationally known heads of Christian ministries. Cornuke and the participants are careful to not say emphatically that they found Noah’s Ark, but have taken extensive documentation to present their facts for both the public, and the Biblical and scientific communities.

After crawling on hands and knees miles above the earth’s surface in four below zero weather, the expedition found an altar, which could very well be the altar Noah built because it was made from the same materials they later found in the Ark. They found grapevines over two inches think in the area, of which the DNA from the grapes is the oldest known to man. Genesis 9:20 says that Noah planted a vineyard. But most amazing was the ark itself. It was found in sections, somewhat like a house that had collapsed over the years. Sections of petrified wood 12 to 14 feet high and 40 feet long were found. They found a huge pile of timber, thought to be floors or walls, in four-to-six foot sections.

[Butt-Head]hehe hehe, he said wood…[/Butt-Head]

Well, at least we can say that if he is right, then all those expeditions “evidence” of the ark being on Ararat all these years, was 100% bullshit.

Is the new location credible? The oldest tale of the flood came from Sumeria and the boat actually landed on Mount Nisir… did I say Mount as in Mountain? IIRC even that translation is in doubt, very likely it was not referring to a mountain, but to the more logical place a boat would land after a “thousand year flood”: a land area or country, or a sand bar; most likely at the mouth of the Euphrates River.

EddyTeddyFreddy · June 18, 2006, 6:09am

Hey, duffer, welcome back, 'struth you’ve been absent for quite a while now, haven’t you? I hope all is reasonably well with you.

Wesley_Clark · June 18, 2006, 7:25am

Yeah, we are in agreement about that. Just a few weeks ago I was channel surfing and decided to watch CNN headline news (I usually get my news from online sources like AP) and saw unbiased reporting on meaningful global events and it was the first time in a while that I remember seeing that on TV. I’ve been watching headline news almost daily since then. I’m so used to specials, editorializing, obsessing over isolated incidents (what some judge in Nebraska did, some missing white woman, etc) that I forgot true news is still out there. I need to start watching the network 6 o’clock news again.

crowmanyclouds · June 18, 2006, 7:29am

He’s not a doctor? ?

-looks a bottle of anti transplant rejection drugs from Dr.J-
-looks in mirror at basketball grafted to neck as a cool second head-

Note to self; do not use FOX News recommendations when choosing doctors :eek: !

CMC fnord!

11811 · June 18, 2006, 11:28am

To quote Marah: if you didn’t laugh you’d cry

DoctorJ · June 18, 2006, 12:44pm

Fox News’s criteria for “experts” will never be as ridiculous as it was during the Terri Schiavo fracas. We can’t forget the quack who claimed to have been nominated for the Nobel Prize in Medicine, who believed Terri could be cured with hyperbaric O2 or something equally ridiculous.

Turned out that his “nomination” consisted of his state Representative sending a letter to the Nobel committee asking for him to be considered for the “Nobel Peace Prize in Medicine”. This is ludicrously far from the actual nomination process, and IIRC, actual nominees for the award are not officially made public. Yet well after even I was aware of this, FNC continued to repeat his claim of having been nominated, not just on Hannity, but on its “legitimate” news shows.

This was around the same time that they had John Edward (the “Crossing Over” guy, aka The Biggest Douche in the Universe) on for comment on the matter. That’s when I realized that not just was Fox News a joke, but they weren’t all that interested in hiding it anymore.

Hung_Mung · June 18, 2006, 3:39pm

CNN Headline is a good program. I feel sorry for the anchors doing the same stories twice an hour, but it’s good for the viewers. Plus, there’s always Robin Meade. She makes my mornings happier.

Bricker · June 18, 2006, 3:49pm

Taking no position on the meat of this complaint (except to say I agree he sounds pretty con-artisty) his doctorate, in divinity, was apparently conferred by Cathedral Bible College, which is apparently a real school in Myrtle Beach, SC. Why does this constitute a “mail order” PhD?

Bricker · June 18, 2006, 3:53pm

The same type of claim regarding Nobel prize nomination was made in support of Tookie Williams.

As I understand it, it’s both technically true and utterly disingenuous. Nominations can indeed be made by any elected official or by any educator in an accredited institution. Those “nominations” are winnowed drastically down before they are considered on any serious level. So to make the claim is technically true, but pretty damn useless.

Harborwolf · June 18, 2006, 3:58pm

Here’s the website on the college. It’s not technically a mail order school, but it’s pretty far from Harvard.

Diogenes_the_Cynic · June 18, 2006, 5:05pm

This is wrong. You must have googled the wrong Cornuke or something. The Bob Cornuke I’m talking about has only a phony PhD from an unaccredited Christian correspondence school called Louisana baptist University (in what, I can’t seem to find out. Even LBU’s own website proudly lists him as an alumn but doesn’t say what field for which he was awarded a PhD). It’s a straight up diploma mill.

Louisiana Baptist University matches several of the criteria for diploma mills, as defined by the US Department of Education (USDE). Primarily, if a university is accredited, but not by an agency recognized by the Council on Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA), then it may not be a reputable institution. [6] LBU and the Association of Christian Colleges and Theological Schools are not listed by CHEA, nor is the school listed as a charity. [7]

The USDE has warned to, “Beware of institutions that offer college credit and degrees based on life experience, with little or no documentation of prior learning” as a sign of a suspect school. [8] LBU will accept a limited amount of three types of non-traditional credit: experiential learning credits, military experience credits, and credit by examination. Also by purchasing and reading a book by Chuck Missler one can “receive college credit from Louisiana Baptist University upon completion of the book.” [9] Assist News quoted Missler as explaining LBU “has offered course credits for those that do a ‘reflective paper’ on what they got out of it” besides the three semester hours credit, people “also get a certificate for it.” [10]

LBU has been criticized for not making graduate student research easily available for the academic community. At accredited schools, master’s theses and doctoral dissertations are microfilmed and made available for loan; and since 1940 these universities have deposited their dissertations in the United States Library of Congress (LOC) [11] becoming available to the public. Some universities require students to submit their original dissertation and abstracts to the University Microfilms International (UMI) [12] who then submits them to the LOC. [13] LBU does require dissertations to be professionally bound and a hardback copy submitted to the LBU library for public viewing.[14] However, due to the fact that LBU policy does not require submission to the LOC or UMI, it is relatively difficult to determine the quality of instruction and graduate work at the university.