Today's Big Stuff 3.24.22

3.24.22

It’s Thursday. There are 229 days until the midterm elections. The world loses a giant, recapping our fury from the second day of SCOTUS hearings and Biden takes a big stick to Europe. 

Be advised: This newsletter cusses like a saillorp. And we spell like ship too.

Note: Well hey there, Sexy Patriots! You surprised us. We’re a little earlier today than usual, and we hadn’t finished putting our heads back together AFTER THEY FUCKING EXPLODED watching that outrageous racist creepy fucking bullshit in the Senate yesterday. But we’ll get to that later. Today we wanted to talk to you about a very important personnel change in the federal government. 

Yes, the nation was saddened to learn that these two hilariously famous dumbshits will no longer be advising its youngsters about the best ways to stay healthy and fit. Predictably, both Oz and Herschel were livid. Or Oz was anyway, demanding that Joe Biden fire him as if that dude doesn’t have enough shit to deal with right now. But it turns out that Oz and Herschel have actually been applying an experimental new fitness and health curriculum on one student, a kid named Billy, and they want us to talk to him before we rush to judgment here. We reluctantly agreed while we were giving them both double middle fingers. So here’s us talking to Billy. 

TBS: Billy? Are you there?

Billy: Mmmhpghnidfnlhf]dhlhfsd

TBS: Um, Herschel? Oz? What the fuck is wrong with Billy?

Herschel: Not a goddamn thing! He’s a fucking champion!

Oz: Medically, you could say his mouth has been sewn shut and he’s missing an arm. 

TBS: What?! Why has his mouth been sewn shut and where’s his arm?! 

Herschel: We sewed it for freedom! And his arm fell off for freedom! He’s a winner! America!

Oz: Yeah, things went bad. The mouth thing was for his own good. Not sure about the arm.

TBS: Good god! You guys are fucking monsters!

Billy: MMMMMHMMMM!!!

Herschel: Monsters for America! 

Oz: I’m gonna call my lawyer. This has gotten really out of hand. I just wanted to be a star.

TBS: Ok guys, well we’re sending a team to rescue Billy, and we hope you both burn in hell.

Oz: Oh I can just about guarantee it. I mean I’m a doctor who’s politicizing a pandemic. 

TBS: Fuck, guys, he’s bleeding from his ears. 

Herschel: Let’s go Brian!

TBS: Do you mean Brandon?

Herschel: Steve! 

Yikes. Well there you have it, folks. Looks like the president made the right call here. Just as we suspected.

Note two: That was so long. We don’t even know what the president’s council on whatever does. But it’s what we wrote yesterday to calm ourselves down. Cory Booker took us from an 11 to a 10. Writing that note took us from a 10 to a nine. And nine is pretty much where we’ve lived since 2016. 

Note three: We have no idea if this is real, but we really hope it is. This young person has just earned themselves a TBS scholarship. Don’t get too excited. It’s just a couple of ketchup packets, a sixer of Pabst and $5 toward the uber ride to campus. 

Note four: Sadly, we do know that this is real. 

Note five: When it comes to Republicans, you can almost set your watch to shit like this. More: Daily Beast

Note six: So um gee what the fuck, Alvin Bragg? We don’t want to rush to judgment here, but yeah seriously what the fuck? More: New York Times

Note seven: Oh shit. We’re gonna call this movie Mo Brooks’s Revenge. He would probably make an important witness if the Jan. 6 committee wasn’t too afraid to subpoena members of Congress. More: CNBC

Note eight: Hey btw, can we come watch teevee at your house? We threw a nespresso at ours yesterday while watching those hearings. And then we a few minutes later we threw what was left out the window. We’ll get another one as soon as we can figure out how to send the bill to Hawley’s creepy ass. 

Note nine: And Lindsey. Fucking Lindsey. We gotta count to 10 or we’re not getting through this newsletter. 

Note 10: One silver lining to the asshole-a-thon? That racist baby book is doing great in sales. Thanks, Ted! More: The Daily Beast

Note 11: But seriously, we don’t think we’ll ever stop being mad at Durbin or Coons or DiFi for being so woefully unprepared for this hearing and letting Republicans smear Judge Jackson like that. Graham went 10 minutes over his time yelling at her, and Dick just took it. How in the world is it possible that after what happened on Jan. 6 these wimps still don’t get what they’re dealing with? More: Slate

Note 12 : Y’all know how yesterday was Obamacare’s 12th birthday? Well you wanna see something awesome?

Note 13: So um we’re a little confused about what went down in SCOTUS yesterday. Kagan and Sotomayor dissented, and that’s usually enough for us. But Elias said it’s a win. It looks like a win on the federal level and maybe a loss on the state level? Or are we just making that up? So anyway, yay and boo. More: CNN, Vox

Note 14: You know those Russian generals we wanted to interview but couldn’t because they kept getting killed by Ukrainians? Well there are way more than we thought. Like 40,000 dead, injured or captured. Yeah, that’s a huge number. Huge. Y’all, don’t ever ever ever fuck with Ukraine. More: CNBC

Note 15: Do these people hate being smart because it hated them first? More: Huff Post

Note 16: Hey, um, MacKenzie Scott is awesome. Someone should make a movie about her. More: NPR

Note 17: Well looky there. More good economic news. Thanks, Brandon. More: The Guardian

Note 18: Hey it sure seems like a big fucking deal to us that Senate Republicans went on a racist attack to appeal to a deranged cult. More: New York Times

Note 19: Ken Paxton wants to investigate a school district in Austin for having a Pride Week. The school district is standing by its students. Fuck Ken Paxton. More: Statesman

Note 20: Ok, you beautiful beautiful lovers of democracy, let’s do some news. You’ve almost made it to the weekend. Just hang in there a little longer. Love y’all! We’re coming, Billy! 

Giant loss

Madeleine Albright was the first woman U.S. Secretary of State. It is hard to adequately describe what a generational badass this person was. So we’re not gonna try. We’re just gonna say that we were always deeply moved when we heard the secretary speak about her experiences as a child in Eastern Europe, and we will miss her strong, reassuring voice in this disintegrating world. Rest in Power. More: CNN

Confirm her already

So to recap yesterday, it was a goddamn disgrace. We’re not gonna repeat the trash attacks. You saw them. They made you sick to your stomach. We won’t forget. Here’s the good news — the committee vote will be on Monday, April 4. (h/t WaPo) Judge Jackson earned her spot on that bench, and we look forward to seeing her sworn in soon. And the whiny little weenies in the Senate GOP can eat shit. We are still so goddamn mad we can’t see straight. More: CNN

Go Joe!

President Biden arrived at NATO headquarters in Brussels to show support for the alliance in the face of Russian aggression. Flexing some muscle on the trip, the president announced new sanctions on the country, including more oligarchs. The president also announced that the U.S. will take up to 100,000 Ukrainians in. So let’s get to it. NATO also heard from President Zelensky who dropped some shade about Ukraine’s army not being up to NATO standards. Maybe we should all be striving for Ukrainian standards. Next the president is off to Warsaw, Poland. Godspeed, Mr. President. More: Associated Press, CNN

Today’s clips

Four days after Russia invaded Ukraine, President Joe Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan authorized a team of officials to quietly map out potential ways the US could respond if Russian President Vladimir Putin took an extreme step, including deploying chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, a senior administration official told CNN. More: CNN

Republican senators started the week promising Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson a respectful and thorough examination of important legal issues in her Supreme Court confirmation hearings.

What they ended up focusing on, more than anything else, was child pornography and pushing the false notion that Jackson is sympathetic to people who consume it. More: CNN

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