Mike Coffman is the U.S. Representative for Colorado’s 6th
congressional district since 2009, having formerly served as the Secretary of
State of Colorado. He is famous for his birther sympethies, and during a
campaign fundraiser in 2012 he declared that “I don’t know whether Barack Obama
was born in the United States of America. I don’t know that. But I do know
this, that in his heart, he’s not an American. He’s just not an American.” He
later claimed that he “misspoke”,
which he rather clearly didn’t. He may not have anticipated that a recording
from the meeting be made public, but apparently some of the contributors at the
meeting (e.g. Brooks Imperial, who made the recording) agreed with the
sentiment and thought it should be distributed more widely. He later also
walked back on his apology,
praising those who don’t believe Obama was born in the United States: “[Issues
are] going to determine this election, not focusing on the birther question.
God bless people that do that. I understand their passion.”
So that tells you a bit about Coffman’s cognitive abilities
– or his honesty and integrity (or probably both). It’s not particularly
surprising, then, that Coffman is a global warming denialist. He is aware of
the scientific consensus surrounding the issue, but as he points out:
“One thing that I certainly read in, from, viable sources is that a lot of the
research that’s being done, if you don’t, when you put your application in to
get a grant, if you don’t submit to the, you know, orthodoxy of climate change by
the radical environmentalists you’re not going to get a grant.” Yes, that’s
right. Scientists don’t disagree with the radical orthodoxy for fear of losing their research grants,
and need someone like Coffman – who is so independent of any scientific group,
background or body of evidence that it borders on the remarkable – to speak out
for them. Of course, Coffman doesn’t quite understand how research grants work,
but neither does his audience so it is really a win-win for him. (Nor does he
have any evidence for his pretty easily testable claim, nor does he realize
that even if the claim were correct, it would do little to undermine the
existing evidence for AGW, and so on.)
Diagnosis: Inhofe-wannabe, it seems – at least Coffman is
yet another delusional conspiracy theorist, Coast-to-Coast-AM-style, who has
managed to get himself elected into a position of power. Scary stuff.
Yet another reason why I am ashamed to be from Colorado. Between this bonehead and that idiot (and hopefully future loon Klingenschmidt(sp?)) it is surprising that we have representatives who believe the world is flat, electricity is the devils work, and that Jesus rode a dinosaur to the last supper.
ReplyDeleteKeep up the good work.
Thanks. We covered Klingenschmidt back in 2011. He's done a lot since then, and I sometimes wonder whether we need to cover some of these people for a second time. There are plenty of loons waiting for their first entry before we do, though.
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