Six things that I think are just plain outrageous

Oh, by the way, Johns Hopkins says lockdowns do more harm than good

January somehow slipped by so quickly we didn’t get in an Outrage Column. Why, that’s outrageous. It’s certainly not for lack of material.

Let’s get to it today: Court flap — Since there are clearly many qualified Black women jurists, President Joe Biden should have simply nominated one of them for the Supreme Court without all the high drama about pledging to do so in advance.

But, as President Barack Obama famously said, “Never underestimate Joe’s ability to f--- things up.”

Now there are all manner of silly arguments about “affirmative action hires” on the Supreme Court, and more division being stirred up.

If the Republicans were smart — and that’s an enormous “if ” — they would, unless Biden nominates Whoopi Goldberg, ask a few perfunctory questions, vote yes, and say, “Congratulations, Madame Justice.”

They should comport themselves with dignity. In other words, the opposite of how Democrats comport themselves in Supreme Court nomination hearings.

And some enterprising reporter should ask Biden why he filibustered against highly qualified Black jurist Janice Rogers Brown — twice — when she was nominated for a district court post in 2003.

Whoopi flap — Whoopi Goldberg said something strikingly ignorant about which she knew nothing and got suspended for two weeks from the “The View.”

I wouldn’t have suspended her. If every person who said strikingly ignorant things about which they knew nothing got suspended, there would be about 10 people left on TV.

Again, I stand with free speech over cancel culture.

Maskless society — In yet another display of “Rules for thee but not for me,” Gov. Gavin Newsom, San Francisco Mayor London Breed and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti were photographed sans masks with Magic Johnson at the NFC championship game.

The utter contempt they have for the everyday people who must live under the rules they concoct is remarkable. Talk about Marie Antoniette moments. They were at an event where tickets cost more than some people make in a year, and they were next to an immunocompromised man in his sixties as the Omicron surge was near its peak.

But you make sure your children keep their masks on out on the playground.

Debt? Hello? — Longtime readers will know a common feature of the Outrage Column over the last three decades has been our national debt.

Neither Republicans nor Democrats talk about it, much less do anything about it.

The debt just passed $30 trillion. A billion is 1000 million, and a trillion is 1000 billion.

Staggering numbers.

Bad drivers — My dear friend Vern Lawson died at 95 in October, but he is still saving my life.

He used to drive us to lunch most days and I noticed how he always waited and looked both ways when the light turned rather than robotically moving forward at the green. “You never know when somebody’s going to run the red light,” he said.

I adopted that strategy myself and it has saved me a few times over the years, including last week. I was stopped at an intersection in Palmdale and the light was green for a good two seconds before a gray Challenger came zooming through the intersection at about 60 mph.

Nationally, traffic deaths are up during the pandemic, even though people are driving less. Just one more effect of lockdowns and living under the cloud of COVID, I guess.

There’s also an increased sense of “That doesn’t mean me,” when it comes to rules.

Follow the science — I am vaxxed to the max and wear my mask where required, but I can also see that the stringent measures crowd doesn’t know it all.

There is a middle ground between the lockdowners and the anti-vaxxers.

Johns Hopkins — the leading medical research university in the nation if not the world — published a meta-analysis on lockdowns last week.

A meta-analysis is a study of hundreds of studies. You can find the Johns Hopkins report online. It’s very long, but here is the bottom line. It says lockdowns are ineffective in reducing deaths, and:

“They have contributed to reducing economic activity, raising unemployment, reducing schooling, causing political unrest, contributing to domestic violence, and undermining liberal democracy. These costs to society must be compared to the benefits of lockdowns, which our meta-analysis has shown are marginal at best. Such a standard benefit-cost calculation leads to a strong conclusion: lockdowns should be rejected out of hand as a pandemic policy instrument.”

And yet, as of Thursday morning, I find stories about this study only on conservative leaning sites.

Why is that?