Ramesh Ponnuru concentrates the stupid

His post in full:

Unarmed in Yosemite [Ramesh Ponnuru]

I yield to few in my admiration for Heather Mac Donald, but if it comes down to an unarmed Mac Donald against a bear I'm betting on the bear. (Jonah: If The Fair Jessica wants to weigh in on the wisdom of going into the Alaskan wilderness without a side-arm, I'd love to hear it.)

I've spent a lot of time in Yosemite - most recently, last weekend - and six summers in central Alaska. In Yosemite, bears are everywhere. There was one about 20 feet from my rock-climbing group on Saturday. They're very dangerous to your cars and your tents if you leave food in them, but they're almost completely non-dangerous to people. Guns in parks translate into drunken idiots in crowded campgrounds, shooting bears that are breaking into cars where the idiots left their food instead of putting the food away in lockers.

As for Alaska, I never had a gun and never needed one. Use some intelligence instead. But if you rely on a gun, what the hell does Ponnuru think a sidearm is going to do to a grizzly bear?

And I think the Corner writers actually get some kind of pay to produce this stuff.

Mike Pence: skeptical of warming, but 'reducing CO2 would be a good thing'

There's not much point in reducing CO2 unless anthropogenic climate change is real - it has no other negative impacts.*

Pence is the third-highest Republican Congressman in the House, considered a rising star, and appears to simply be stupid. His latest anti-climate change, plus refusal to acknowledge evolution is here. Yglesias has more on him not being very bright here, here (author of the Republican budget plan with no numbers attached to it), and especially here (couldn't understand the economic concept of moral hazard, even when explained to him).

While a party led by stupid people will be easier to beat, it can still cause a lot of damage in the American political system.


*I highly doubt this Republican party genius even knows about ocean acidification, and if he does he just groups it into his climate change skepticism.