The Department Of Pointing Out The Obvious (DOPOTO) has been keeping busy, as usual, performing our only function: observing events and pointing out the obvious. It is often a thankless task, since many humans enjoy interpreting reality to suit their own philosophies, even though the truth has been getting severe sprains from all the contortions it has been forced to bend itself into. Naturally the Department’s frowns on this sort of activity, but also notes that it is fairly harmless. The sky is no less blue than it was yesterday when someone emphatically insists it is green.

Be that as it may, researchers at DOPOTO have been noticing a few trends of late; good, bad and strange. The good development is that several United States Senators have suddenly remembered their job description and have decided to vote on potential laws before them in the Senate according the their merits and for no other consideration. A thorough scan of Department archives confirms that this has not happened within recent memory, with even the rescue monies for the 9/11 attacks and the Hurricane Katrina disaster having been loaded with “earmarks,” a polite euphemism for political patronage and earnest treasury-looting.

The law in question is the Health Care Reform Bill, which was subject to a great deal of overloading with pork in the House of Representatives. This reassuringly sleazy behavior of the Representatives was fully expected to be repeated in The Senate. Several Senators have instead thrown a monkey wrench into the process of political observation by acting ethically and responsibly, one even going so far as to question the wisdom of political action committees spending $3 million on advertisements in her state opposing the health care bill.

She wisely noted that the debate is in Congress, not Arkansas, where lawmakers actually review the proposed legislation and speak to one another face to face, negating the need for media advertising campaigns to familiarize themselves with the facts. The advertising campaigns reflect what the Department considers a bad trend, with various organizations spending untold millions of dollars in media and print ads to attempt to make voters feel that they have some input into running the government beyond casting their votes for the candidates of their choice.

This is how representative government works; the actual elected representatives get to do the legislating. In other words, doing the job they were hired to do for their terms in office. If the voters are displeased with their representatives’ job performance, they can always fire them at the next election, but meanwhile must live with their choices. If they feel that their Senator or Representative isn’t doing their job properly, contributing money to lobbying organizations to formulate advertising campaigns designed to benefit only those lobbying organizations doesn’t help their cause.

Other than enflaming the sizable segment of society that is easily enflamed by just about anything, the ad campaigns are basicaly exercises in “alternate reality,” which is something that does not exist. But once one accepts the possibility of alternate realities, then it is but a short leap into bald lying and slander, and then calling lies and slander something else. The Department Of Pointing Out The Obvious cannot refrain from pointing out that calling a hyena a lamb has never made a single hyena anything but a hyena.

While we welcome these several Senators into the realm of seeing the forest for the trees, long observation by DOPOTO cannot help but wonder how long this burst of integrity will last. Traditionally, when asked to behave morally and ethically, most elected officials are willing to give it a shot as long as there is something in it for them. As a class, they are deservedly famous for “not getting it,” and have earned their nation’s mistrust. Senators deviating from this norm are worth noting. The Department will keep a keen eye on these anomalous developments.

In the Strange Trends category, DOPOTO researchers and senior observers have noticed that the campaign for the living deification of Sarah Palin is quickly losing steam, well before the usual expiration date of these sorts of things. Apparently the American public has seen enough of her and has decided that she really is a dim bulb not worth wasting any more time over. Always a person of below-average intelligence, Ms. Palin swiftly rose to iconic status in the minds of many when she was picked to be the Vice Presidential candidate in the 2008 election.

When she did the unprecedented by becoming the first defeated vice-presidential candidate to remain a viable political presence, America’s disgraced right wing politicians believed they had found their savior and their ticket back into national power. While veteran observers of the obvious could only note what a lightweight and bizarre individual they had chosen as their poster girl, the woman was catapulted into even greater national fame by quitting the job of Governor of Alaska, essentially telling the people who elected her that they do not matter in the grand scheme of things.

Her lack of intelligence, her sleazy behavior and her dedication to alternate reality made her a natural in the Perverse Idol Worshipping Sweepstakes that has become a hallmark of American right wing politics since the curious elevation of the amiable but dim B-movie actor Ronald Reagan into the Pantheon of Great Statesmen, all reality be damned. And it worked splendidly, even to the point where they succeeded in getting George Bush the Younger elected president twice, even though he was so dumb he once attacked the wrong country.

Which leaves the Department wondering what went wrong with the Sarah Palin juggernaut. She is at least as dumb as Reagan and smarter than Bush The Younger (who isn’t?), so it is curious to observe that this natural for Right Wing Sainthood is seeing her star dim before its time. While DOPOTO would like to claim credit for people being able to see the obvious, senior analysts here feel that Ms. Palin has simply derailed her own train by actually speaking candidly once too often, revealing the painfully obvious even to those who scrupulously shun the truth.

Which, in a sense, is too bad. There was still a lot of mileage left in the pure entertainment value of Ms. Palin’s ascendancy, and the potential for a huge and embarrassing flameout. We here at The Department Of Pointing Out The Obvious feel that she is cheating the American public by simply petering out into being an odd footnote in American politics before she had a chance to do anything truly bizarre. This is what it must feel like to be a voter in Alaska.

This was a report from The Department Of Pointing Out The Obvious.

The Department Of Pointing Out The Obvious (DOPOTO) has been observing with interest the various Green Campaigns, those scientific, and less-than-scientific efforts to reduce mankind’s carbon footprint, cut down on unhealthy pollution, reverse global warming or all of the above. The efforts to exploit non-combustible sources of energy like wind, solar and tidal power have thus far been fairly ineffectual, producing only a fraction of the vast amounts of energy required to power human society, while the “dirty” sources of energy continue to perform spectacularly. This is not to say this will always be the case, but for the present time it is the obvious (our specialty) truth.

Some concerned Green campaigners focus their efforts on making human beings feel guilty about living their lives in the only system they know, an odd approach at best and one not likely to solve the very real energy-related problems faced by humanity. Others champion low-energy light bulbs, which have indeed reduced energy consumption but also contain enough mercury in each of these bulbs to poison several gallons of water, thus creating another potential ecological disaster to go with the many other potential ecological disasters we face. As in so many other endeavors, science giveth and science taketh away.

Still others berate their fellow humans for eating meat, the substance proven to be most responsible for the evolution of our large brains, which DOPOTO researchers have indicated might explain the odd behavior of many of these “grazing” advocates. Further studies show that meat-eating animals have eyes in front of their heads, and possess far greater intelligence than the vegetarian animals with eyes at the side of their heads, the better to watch out for predators. Human beings fall into the former category; intelligent predators with eyes mounted front and center to keep our eyes on the prize, a juicy steak. This is no judgement on anyone’s preferred eating habits, merely a reiteration of the blatantly obvious, which is pretty much all that this Department does.

As far as finding a replacement for carbon-based petroleum, coal and natural gas, there is already a proven and readily available power source of even greater potential; nuclear power. Nuclear power, however, scares the bejabbers out of most of mankind, filling our heads with images of Hiroshima, Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. Even though there are a great many safe and efficient nuclear power plants in use worldwide, there is always the problem of what to do with the radioactive waste products of this process, a nuclear slag that will be highly dangerous for thousands of years, and no one wants glow-in-the-dark children, even if that proves to be a handy alternative to the mercury-filled light bulbs in their bedside night lights. Hardly seems a desirable trade-off to most parents.

So scientists continue their study, experimentation and field-testing of alternative energy sources, while activists remind us to conserve our limited energy resources. While corn was once thought to be the answer, growing our own gasoline, most experts say this will be just as dirty and expensive as fossil fuel, to say nothing of depriving our booming population of thousands of square miles of productive farmland. Renewable and sustainable as this might be, there are already 36,000 starvation deaths daily on earth, and another 10 to 20,000 deaths from impure water-related disease that will only be exacerbated by our continuing pollution. Few activists factor in the deaths of 20 million people a year (whose lives are every bit as precious to them as anyone else’s, perhaps even more so given the fact that they see them slipping away) in their Green Solutions.

While it is not for The Department Of Pointing Out The Obvious to suggest how anything should be run or to influence how any person conducts their life,  we here at DOPOTO respectfully suggest that the answers to these problems will most likely come from the scientific community, utilizing the very power sources they seek to replace. Towards that end perhaps the American government (the same organization that put a man on the moon 40 years ago) invests in scientific education and research on a far larger scale than it already does. A coordinated effort can be commissioned similar to the Apollo Project that not only put a man on the moon, but launched the Information Age with the byproducts of that effort.

Researchers here at DOPOTO have determined yet another obvious fact: that wishing for a greener, cleaner earth is a whole lot easier than the science required to make it so. Our studies indicate that human beings will not in any great numbers volunteer to scale back on their consumption of the only available energy sources and surrender even an inch of the progress that humanity has painstakingly won through the widespread use of carbon-based fuels. Our lengthened life spans, our more robust health, our lowered infant mortality rates and our enhanced access to information and communication are the modern realities of life in the 21st century.

We have found that people are more than willing to use these historically unprecedented advantages to seek solutions, but are not willing to surrender to fear and turn out the lights, kill the engines and unplug the computers. Most humans feel it is better to use the scientific and technological advantages petroleum has given us to seek its replacement than to abandon it before we find an alternative and just hope for the best. DOPOTO has discovered that humans love a challenge, but see no wisdom in discarding the tools they have at hand that will enable them to meet that challenge.

This is a report from The Department Of Pointing Out The Obvious.

The Department Of Pointing Out The Obvious (DOPOTO), in our only capacity, that of pointing out the readily apparent, has been following with interest the No-Impact movement. It is an environmental initiative, a Green thing if you will. People are encouraged to turn off their electric lights, stop using their cars, produce as little trash as possible and eat only locally produced foods. In short, to live as one would in a very poor and backward nation. Why insisting that a reverse cultural move helps the planet is anyone’s guess, as even a short glance at history informs us that the greatest benefits to mankind were obtained through the application of technology, and the failure and human misery of today’s poorest nations is due to their severe lack of modern technology.

Low Impact adherents have submitted the argument to DOPOTO that eating only locally produced food is what mankind did for 99% of our history, an obvious fact of the sort this Department can relish. Also obvious is that throughout 99% of mankind’s history, life expectancy was around 40 years, relatively mild diseases were fatal, childbirth was a leading cause of death in women, many children died before reaching maturity and malnutrition was an ever-present hazard. Illiteracy, superstition and tribalism stunted man’s social development and inbreeding harmed his genetic chances of producing successful, vibrant offspring during this 99% of our history. Sanitary conditions were abominable and primitive medical practices caused almost as much death as the pervasive filth. Would these Low-Impact campaigners care for humanity to revisit those aspects of our history as well as living in the dark, walking to every destination and barely subsisting on a meager diet of whatever scrawny specimens are native to the immediate vicinity?

The Department is all for cleaning up our environment and ceasing the waste of valuable resources. We also admire the earnest activism and unbounded energy of Green Movement participants. We would only respectfully suggest that perhaps these keen minds would be best put to better uses, like finding a replacement for the greasy remains of dinosaurs that we set on fire to make our engines go. If one can dream that first-world citizens would willingly give up the amenities so painstakingly won from this hard and unforgiving world because Green activists say it is wrong to be comfortable and well-fed, then could not those same minds dream a more practical dream of creating a fuel that does not pollute our water, earth and sky? That would be the easier task, by far.

The only way they will get people to reduce their carbon footprints is to replace carbon-based fuels like petroleum, natural gas and coal. Long observation of humanity has convinced DOPOTO that once humans have attained a certain level of progress, success and comfort, they will fight tooth and nail to keep it. Human memory is long, and oral and written histories even longer. Hard evidence (one of the Department’s favorite things) also tells us that the way to solve a serious a problem is unstinting study, research, experimentation and application of one’s findings, all very modern notions developed in the past 1% of mankind’s history. Such methods have improved our diets and general health, doubled our life spans, eliminated many deadly diseases, created automobiles and aircraft that eventually led to putting a man on the moon, all things once considered impossible.

None of these exciting breakthroughs were wrought by encouraging humanity to live as our ancestors did, who, by the way, did a great deal of polluting and left very large carbon footprints during their short lives with all their wood burning, forest clearing, destruction of fragile eco-systems, wasteful agricultural methods and species eliminating. While modern humanity is far from perfect and a lot of our technology is unnecessarily dirty and hazardous to our health, it is far less dirty and hazardous than the technology of 50 years ago. Many of the improvements were due to the scientific response to the work of environmental activists, so the Department has a great respect for those who would safeguard the only home humanity has, Planet Earth. Which is not to say that every idea they come up with is astounding. The eat-only-local-food idea, for example, has been just as big a monumental waste as some of the waste the Green Movement rails against. DOPOTO urges them to take human nature into account when formulating human solutions.

Another curious development that has caught the eye of the Department is the current Democratic administration’s inertia when it comes to enacting what was announced to be an ambitious social and political agenda. President Obama was handed an almost unprecedented majority in both Houses of Congress, an obvious advantage when one wishes to pass a law. Yet for some unexplained reason, this Administration and Congress acts as if it has all the time in the world to do their work. DOPOTO’s long experience in observing humans and reporting the obvious tells us otherwise. It is approaching a year since they took power, leaving only another year before the mid-term elections could possibly erase their overwhelming Democratic Congressional majority, making it a precarious enterprise to pass even the most innocuous bill if it has been sponsored by a Democrat.

Recent history is plain (obvious!) when it informs us that few Republicans will consider any idea on its merits, only its source. If the Democrats lose their majority, one of them could introduce a bill simply declaring that every American citizen is allowed to breathe, and a dozen Republicans will denounce the idea as a communist left-wing conspiracy to hire Devil-worshipping transvestite cannibals to teach every kindergarten class. Researchers here at the Department have concluded that if the Republicans held this electoral trifecta, that not a day would pass without another law being enacted designed to bestow the last bit of America’s remaining wealth on the richest 1% of Americans and to rename The Bill of Rights “The Bill of Suggestions.”

So, what are the obvious conclusions to draw from the recent activities (or non-activity) of these two groups of political activists, one set elected and one set self-appointed? That, when dealing with humanity and its most pressing problems, it is always best to take reality into consideration and to heed the obvious always. The most difficult problems to overcome are generally not the physical realities confronting us, but the human realities. After all, man has stood on the surface of moon, but mankind has never embraced the view of Planet Earth as seen from the moon; a beautiful, tranquil blue sphere with no borders visible and no sign of strife or animosity of any sort. Sometimes the obvious is hiding in plain sight. The forest for the trees…

This has been a report from The Department Of Pointing Out The Obvious

The Department Of Pointing Out The Obvious (DOPOTO), as part of our ongoing mission to (what else?) point out the obvious, has stumbled across various small news tidbits that bear closer examination. One would be the closing down of an ambitious solar energy project in the State of California for its potential negative environmental impact. The location of this supposedly harmful installation? Downtown Los Angeles or on the outskirts of San Diego, two populous regions? No, the location was in the middle of The Mojave Desert, as sun drenched a locale as one could hope for when engaged in collecting the sun’s energy. The human population of the site is zero, thus exposing no human beings to whatever risks are inherent in collecting sunlight, even though those risks are so low as to allow solar panels to be installed on the roofs or in the gardens of human homes, to say nothing of the fact that people walk in sunlight pretty frequently.

So, why the cancellation of a project designed to alleviate California’s dependence on foreign oil, the state most dependent upon internal combustion? It seems that the site is to be declared a national monument. To exactly what is anyone’s guess. Perhaps a monument to vast wastelands sitting idle? A scorpion refuge? And if the national monument were declared to be the piece of broiling desert right next door to the solar energy collection apparatus, would anyone have noticed? The 5,130 acres that the solar collection farm occupies closely resembles the remaining 22,000 square miles of the Mojave. Could it just be possible that the environmental groups that succeeded in killing this important project were funded in large part by corporations whose interest in maintaining the energy status quo were threatened by solar power? To reject this possibility outright would be to ignore the obvious, a cardinal sin in The Department’s view.

Another series of political criticisms aimed at trade unions has caught DOPOTO’s attention. Conservative commentators cannot attribute enough evil to these organizations designed to protect workers. Unions are blamed for the de-industrialization of America and the prohibitively high prices of American goods and services, as well as the lowering of standards for certain jobs like teachers, police officers and other civil servants. Never in these observations is it reported exactly why unions were formed in the first place. It was certainly not because workers desired to pay union dues on top of all their other monthly expenses.

It was a natural reaction to the callous treatment they received at the hands of greedy employers who would have gladly worked them to death at poor wages and discarded them to poverty and suffering when their backs were too bent or broken to work anymore. Sweat shops, unsafe conditions and poor wages in exchange for skilled labor were not the workers’ ideas, but those of ownership and management. Collective bargaining was the only tool available to workers, and the union movement is responsible for today’s 40-hour work week, overtime pay, safety rules, pensions, medical coverage and countless other benefits enjoyed by every working American, whether or not they are union members.

These benefits were hard won by suffering and an actual war that was fought on American soil when ownership hired private armies of goons to beat and kill striking union workers. In other cases the industrialists prevailed on various state governments to attack American workers with National Guardsmen and State Militias. Blood was shed on both sides and the war was fought to an uneasy standstill. These things actually happened and are hard history, too often ignored or made light of by glib revisionists. Like all history, however, these facts are written down and can be easily accessed by anyone more interested in truth than in general impressions.

General impressions are soft and malleable, but facts are hard and immovable, which is why few demagogues have extensive backgrounds in fact checking and honest assessment. When truth is at odds with theory, an honest man will alter his theory. That is how science works, and no theory gets to be declared a fact until proven beyond any doubt, reasonable or otherwise. Politics and business are not branches of science, however, and as such rely heavily on false assumptions. The spotty results of political and business history bear this out, with no shortage of calamities on both fronts resulting from wishful thinking and false assumptions being championed as hard truth. This is as obvious and the name of this Department. The recommendation here is research and study, or as a sign in an obscure but beloved Brooklyn candy store once sagely advised: “Be sure brain is engaged before putting mouth in gear.”

This has been a report from The Department Of Pointing Out The Obvious.

The Department Of Pointing Out The Obvious (DOPOTO) welcomes former President of The United States James Earl Carter to our world. In a question and answer session at The Carter Center in Atlanta, our former president responded to a question about the verbal attacks on our current president, Barack Obama, specifically the large number of Nazi and Adolph Hitler comparisons being bandied about. Mr. Carter’s response was: “There is an inherent feeling among many of us in this country that an African-American should not be president,” thus identifying the 800 pound gorilla in the national living room; racism. His comments naturally resulted in a torrent of denials of a character similar to one where William Shakespeare once noted how a certain party “doth protest too much.”

Kudos to Jimmy Carter, a man of honesty and integrity. The cynical and careful ways racists operate these days fool few Americans, yet even fewer of us are willing to point out the obvious, perhaps out of fear of being smeared with the same brush, or unwilling to revisit the national agony that is race relations for the entire history of the United States. Many would love to pretend that the election of a black president has waved a magic wand over the issue of racism and made it disappear. They would also like to pretend that the Wall Street titans who made all the money disappear will one day make it magically reappear with a “Presto, Change-O!” and tell us that the whole financial collapse was “all part of the show, ladies and gentlemen.”

The Department Of Pointing Out The Obvious, however, cannot let such illusions stand. Our mandate is a simple one: separate the wheat from the chaff, a duty that we take quite seriously. And so the firestorm over Mr. Carter’s candid observation begins. It will be interesting to see how President Obama’s critics justify their comparisons of the man to Adolph Hitler and his party to the Nazis, comparisons that should be saved for only the most heinous of mass-murdering dictators and their tyrannical state apparatus. So far it is an empty bag of gas, otherwise there would be no public voices of opposition or anti-government rallies permitted, as anyone with the slightest familiarity with The Third Reich can attest.

And exactly what element does the opposition appeal to when they spread lies about Mr. Obama being a Muslim of Kenyan birth? Certainly not to Rainbow Coalitionists. To be perfectly clear, that would be the racist elements of American society. Never before in the history of this Republic has a movement been launched to impeach a president before he has even been sworn into office. Generally those efforts are reserved for when a sitting president commits a crime against the Constitution he has sworn to uphold. Thus far in Mr. Obama’s 8 months as president he has yet to propose any legislation or practice any executive policies that would violate the United States Constitution. So, while impeachment is not a realistic option, it seems that thinly disguised racial attacks on his character are the way to go, those being far easier than formulating actual ideas and workable policies as an alternative to the president’s own agenda.

When Republicans brand Mr. Obama a Marxist and a Socialist, are they not purposely omitting the Republican Corporate Welfare System they created and maintained for decades? Taxpayer-funded direct welfare payments and tax relief to wealthy corporations have far outstripped the subsistence level welfare payments to underprivileged individuals by trillions of dollars and always have. They prefer that our nation abominates the poorest recipients of social benefits while ignoring the wealthiest beneficiaries of government handouts. The recent massive bailouts of America’s financial industry by both the Bush The Younger and the Obama Administrations were merely automatic extensions of an extensive Corporate Welfare State long established and rarely questioned.

Republicans walk on thin ice indeed with the Socialist accusations, so perhaps that explains the shift to Nazi comparisons, where no embarrassing corollaries can be pointed out, except perhaps for their torture and domestic spying policies. Perhaps they feel that impugning the man’s character and doing everything short of openly calling the president “a Nigger” will disguise their appeals to racist America. Not on DOPOTO’s watch, or Jimmy Carter’s either. The American people are not stupid, at least not many of them. Racists are are a dying breed, running in packs and howling that the sky is falling, and perhaps it is. On them. On their evil philosophy. On their day in the sun.

As for the rest of America, they have elected progress and turned their backs on racism. The results of the 2008 elections were obvious. Whether President Obama is a great president, a lousy president or somewhere in the middle of the pack has no bearing on the choice made in 2008. A man was judged by the content of his character and not found wanting. He was handed an overwhelming majority in both Houses of Congress and expected to govern according to his own lights within the Constitution of The United States of America. If that exposes the racists for who and what they are, so much the better. The Department Of Pointing Out The Obvious likes things to be clear and unambiguous. Frankly, we are uncomfortable with deceit.

This has been a report from The Department Of Pointing Out The Obvious.

The Department Of Pointing Out The Obvious (DOPOTO) has been observing the anti-government rallies aimed at President Obama’s policies and have come to the conclusion that many of his enemies have severe trouble distinguishing mosquitoes from hand grenades. Others among their ranks have trouble seeing the puppet strings attached to them and often believe they are expressing original ideas, an impressive and masterly performance by right wing demagogues and corporate lobbyists not previously heralded for their subtlety. When left to their own devices, however, the lunatic fringe always tends to go overboard, such as the unbelievable anger expressed over a president who wants to provide his nation with health care.

Researchers here at DOPOTO have thoroughly examined the Obama proposals and are hard pressed to understand the many Adolph Hitler and Nazi comparisons being put forth. While the Department studies people extensively as part of our only mission, pointing out the obvious, the Hitler comparisons come as a surprise because they seem to soften the actual Nazi atrocities in many minds to the level of civil debate over zoning laws, rather then the mass-murdering, rapacious invaders that was the Third Reich. A brief study of the matter reveals that it took a lot more than a series of town hall meetings to stop the Nazis and their Fascist partners in the Axis, at the cost of 65 million lives and the fruits of many centuries of work building the cities and factories of Europe and Asia.

And so DOPOTO feels compelled to inform that segment of the public that Hitler and Nazi comparisons ought to be reserved for only the most extreme acts of genocide, totalitarianism and brutal aggression. Wanting to provide one’s nation with health care benefits hardly qualifies for the Monstrous Dictator Hall of Fame. Nor does a president’s desire to address his nation’s schoolchildren, something other presidents have done with almost no pubic comment. As far as charges from the opposition that President Obama plans to brainwash America’s children into becoming his socialist puppets with this single speech to the nation’s children, well, if we were not called The Department Of Pointing Out The Obvious we would feel silly pointing out that this is an exercise in unprecedented stupidity. Pointing out the 800 pound gorilla in the room is, however, our mandate and our sacred duty.

Civil protest in America is a time honored tradition and a healthy exercise of our democratic rights and privileges. In the United States, no person is prevented from speaking their mind about anything, the key word here being mind. When protest becomes mindless and done for its own sake it becomes meaningless. How can any thinking person take anyone seriously who lends equal weight to petty concerns and major issues? The obvious answer here (our specialty!) is that it can’t be done. When protest is lodged by thinking people with solid logic and irrefutable moral authority behind their arguments, minds and the nation have often been changed for the better, starting with the founding of America itself in 1776. When inane fools constantly cry wolf they are easily dismissed, and their puppet masters do themselves a disservice by rendering any legitimate complaints they have to the realm of the ridicuous. A valuable civic tool for real debate and positive change is rendered a sad joke, and America becomes less American, and a little sillier for a nation that doesn’t mind being refreshingly silly every so often. Just not this silly. DOPOTO respectfully suggests that Nazi comparisons be reserved for actual potential monsters leading totalitarian political movements, and major anger for major issues.

This has been a report from The Department Of Pointing Out The Obvious.

The Department Of Pointing Out The Obvious (DOPOTO) has spent a leisurely summer doing what we always do; spotting trends, analyzing worldwide news reports and cultural shifts and then pointing out the obvious (we take our name seriously) to interested parties, albeit in a more relaxed way than usual in deference to the season. This has been an especially rainy summer in the Northeast, where DOPOTO headquarters is located, but plenty hot as usual, the odd weather indicative of nothing more momentous than just one of those things. Others would have the world believe that the inordinate amount of rainfall is indicative of some coming ecological or climatological apocalypse, but our dedicated research staff has found that to be as reliable as when many people complained that the moon landings 40 years ago changed the weather forever. Which is to say, unreliable.

While 40 years ago those reports were generated mostly by old ladies just for something to complain about or to make enough noise so that people would realize they were still alive so hold off on the funeral plans already, today’s ecological apocalypse Paul Reveres all seem to have some sort of psuedo-scientific axe to grind. Some were saying that the planet has been subject to more hurricanes, typhoons and other violent tropical storms than ever before and that their severity is increasing every year. It turns out there is really no way of knowing that for sure since measuring these things is only a fairly recent phenomenon and a process that has improved very quickly in the past couple of years, just like every other technical aspect of modern society. The Digital Revolution and the Information Age brings us amazing new devices and sources of information more rapidly than our ability to process them can adjust. So naturally conflicting schools of thought emerge as we struggle to keep up with the dizzying pace of our own inventions.

The only thing that hasn’t changed is human nature in this constantly changing world. We are a curious race of beings, eager to know what’s what about everything under the sun. And so we often take this quest to extremes and jump to conclusions that are not always justified. The only real reason we are aware of so many storms is that we only very recently gained the ability to count so many of them that previously blew themselves out without the benefit of human detection and measurement. The Department has long since established that trees that fall in the forest without people there to hear them do indeed make a sound. It is not always about us. There is no concrete reason to believe that we are subject to more or fewer storms than 200 years ago, when the method of remote storm detection for humans was having your flimsy wooden sailing ship sunk to the bottom of the deep blue sea with all hands and no one the wiser until Jaques Costeau came along in the 20th Century and put Davey Jones’ Locker on television.

But, as DOPOTO researchers and analysts have learned during our tenure as pointers-out of the 800 pound gorilla in the room, there are those people who cannot stand not to know about every mystery that has puzzled mankind since the dawn of time and so latch onto any theory that seems to explain these things, no matter how unrealistic or even outlandish, or worse, at least in this department’s admittedly biased view, contrary to the obvious. And so they gravitate to an explanation of why the sky is blue according to their personal bent, either religious, scientific or just for the sake of being a know-it-all-blowhard uninterested in actual truth as long as he or she is perceived as an authority in possession of knowledge above and beyond their peers.

Unfortunately, the rapid dissemination of information and the dizzying pace of technological advancement has produced no shortage of people who fall into the blowhard category, usually lazy minds that latch onto a piece of valid information or revealed truth but are too lethargic to explore a subject any further once they have formed a theory. They completely discount any new insights into their pet idea that might serve to contradict their notions. On such practices are built many fine religions and impressive political theories, but no valid science. Science (at the risk of being too obvious even for an organization that specializes exlusively in obvious) is the discipline of seeking provable truth. A true scientist always bows to the obvious and to solid proof, even though that proof may have just wiped out their life’s work and long-held theories, rendering their “knowledge” null and void. Plausibility cannot be confused with fact. That’s the risk a person takes when they enter any branch of scientific study.

Which is why science is a rare calling, since by definition the scientist is required to be the ultimate realist. A person with the most extensive knowledge is the person most aware of how little they really know for certain. The finest brain surgeon in the world cannot cure the common cold, a humbling realization. True scientists don’t leap to hasty conclusions, using terms like “tests indicate” or “results are consistent with” or “field study and experimentation points to” and avoid making definitive pronouncements until proof positive is obtained. True scientists don’t have the luxury the rest of us have, to be so certain of something without really knowing why. Which explains why there are so few true scientists. In this lighting-fast age of technology and information, at least human nature is our Rock of Gibraltar for unreasonable assumptions. Nothing much new to report under the sun in that regard. Besides, it’s late August, it’s hot as blazes, it’s sticky and humid and here at DOPOTO we are compelled to admit that we are just as brain-fried as anyone else at this point.

This has obviously been a half-baked speculative lazy-ass summertime doldrums report from The Department Of Pointing Out The Obvious.

The Department of Pointing Out The Obvious (DOPOTO) has been toiling in near-obscurity for long years in an effort to point out the forest for the trees. In today’s modern society, oral and written languages are too often used as tools for obfuscation rather than as a means for the clarity in communication for which they were designed. Indeed, new terms are constantly being invented for the sole purpose of muddying the waters of human communication, a tendency that inspired the creation of The Department. Here at DOPOTO our mission is to decipher these confounding codes and, literally, point out the obvious. While that might seem like a simple task, think of the legions of spin doctors (liars), press agents (liars) and pubic relations personnel (liars) employed by the wealthy and powerful to mask their real intentions and their actual deeds by calling them something else.

Quite often their efforts result in the popularization of made-up words or phrases that either have no meaning at all but sound good, or contain built-in contradictions that render them open to any interpretation, thus allowing liars to deny they lied. For example, how many “wars of liberation” can there possibly be? If you listen to those who start wars, that would be all of them, even though the truth is that most of them are intended only to liberate some valuable assets and territory from their rightful owners. In business, what is a “write-down” but flushing a whole lot of money down the toilet due to incompetence? “Outsourcing” is a genteel phrase for selling the jobs of the people who made the corporation fabulously wealthy to nations who pay their workers in soybeans. And in military campaigns, “government contractors” is a fancy term for highly paid mercenaries with no national loyalties and bound by no law or code of ethical conduct, aka: “The-not-so-few, the-not-so-proud.”

But by sheer tenacity The Department Of Pointing Out The Obvious has made steady inroads in helping people cast off their blinders and see the Emperor’s new clothes. When governors explain they are quitting their jobs because they are “not quitters” or “for family reasons,” most people now realize what a bunch of baloney they are being handed and that either ambition, greed, criminal indictments or extramarital sex are the reasons why these people broke their oaths of office. Of course not all people refuse to drink the Kool Aid, but enough so that we are being fooled less and less by the rich, the powerful and the devious. Indeed, many people prominent and otherwise have been jumping on the DOPOTO bandwagon, pointing out the 800 pound gorilla wherever he rears his ugly head. And so DOPOTO is proud to announce its Obvious Hall Of Fame. And The Golden Duuuh! goes to:

Derek Jeter, baseball player: “If we play well we can beat anyone, if we play poorly anyone can beat us.” Can’t be any more obvious than that, no?

Anonymous Wildlife Official: “All fish need water.” Argue with that logic!

Ayatollah “Shotgun Dick” Cheney, former Supreme Leader of America: “… there was never any evidence to prove that.” – referring to Iraq having possession of weapons of mass destruction or having been involved in any way with the 9/11 attacks. Not exactly a timely admission, coming as it did 7 years after he sent in the Marines to crush their armies, blow up a whole lot of expensive stuff and hang their leader by the neck until dead, but a step in the right direction for America’s only dictator ever. DOPOTO’s decision to include him in the Obvious Hall of Fame is meant as an incentive for old Dick to open up a little more, maybe let us know where the rest of the bodies are buried.

Lisa Randall, Harvard Physicist and architect of the Large Hadron Collider: “The fact is, it’s likely to take a while to get the results we want.” Ms. Randall wins in the Understatement Bordering on Honesty Category for her explanation of the repeated failure of the 9 billion dollar, largest ever, 15-years-in-the-making particle collider to collide anything together except the plans of physicists everywhere to study dark matter. Like Shotgun Dick’s inclusion in the hall, her induction is meant as a gentle prod to admit the complete truth, that this thing was an albatross from the get-go and will never provide any scientific data to anyone other than psychiatrists studying stubborn fools who keep doing the same things over and over and expecting different results.

Suzanne Brown, high school student: “It’s so popular that Google has become a verb. Why would anybody use a different one?” – describing the unlikelihood of Microsoft and Yahoo’s johnny-come-lately search engine BING of unseating Google as the internet’s most successful and popular web site. If you don’t believe her, just Google the results. From the mouths of babes…

George W. Bush, former Assistant President of America: “You teach a child to read, and he or she will pass a literacy test.” Well… yeah? Not exactly what we had in mind, but an exhaustive study by researchers here at DOPOTO found that to be Bush The Younger’s only recorded instance of having uttered a viable complete sentence, such as it was. It was only his status as former Assistant President that prevented us from awarding his Golden Duuuh! in a special Head Scratching Obvious Statement Category, or handing him our consolation prize, The Silver Whaaat?!?

Mamoud Abbas, Palestinian President: “We have made mistakes.” This admission represents another first from the leader of a quasi-nation that has spent most of its existence trying to gain recognition by hurling stones and rockets at Israel and sending suicide bombers in lieu of ambassadors, then claiming to be under orders from God. Now if any Israeli leader wants to step up to the plate and admit that they have in turn been pretty rotten to what amounts to a captive population in Palestine, maybe they too can be inducted into the Obvious Hall Of Fame. DOPOTO is not holding its breath.

Yogi Berra, former baseball player, Lifetime Achievement Award: “It ain’t over ’til it’s over.” An often overlooked American original truth teller, Mr. Berra is famous for his “Yogiisms” (gems like “it gets late early around here” and “if you see a fork in the road, take it”), some of America’s most beloved examples of convoluted word play, many of which would also qualify for a DOPOTO award in The Head Scratching Obvious Statement Category. Yogi Berra, in his own entertaining way, has been calling them like he sees them for his 65 years in the public spotlight. Perhaps his best insight was: “If the world was perfect, it wouldn’t be,” while his most thought provoking truth just might be: “In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.” For the same candor and dedication that earned him a first ballot berth in the Baseball Hall of Fame and a place in America’s heart, DOPOTO proudly salutes Yogi Berra for his continuing colorful quest for simple truth with the Diamond Doozy Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of a one good man’s lifelong dedication to pointing out the obvious.

DOPOTO: “What is, is.” What, we can’t be in our own Hall of Fame? We invented this stuff!

This has been a report on The Obvious Hall Of Fame from The Department Of Pointing Out The Obvious. Thank you, thank you very much.

We here at the Department Of Pointing Out The Obvious (DOPOTO), like much of the rest of humanity, read the newspaper and internet news and hear radio and television news reports just about every single day. Our highly skilled research team has long since concluded that the reports are often incomplete, and that certain phrases or words are code for something else entirely. For example, what is a “highly placed source” but a disgruntled employee who’s input has been rejected and has found a reporter to publicize their agenda? Those who do have the ear of the boss sure won’t risk their position by going behind his back to the press anonymously. And doesn’t “former beauty queen” always seem to mean vengeful wrinkled old hag? And there are a thousand more examples of newspeak that say something other than the obvious, an anathema to an organization like ours dedicated to pointing out the Emperor’s new cloths. Consider the following:

When the leader of a nation or his spokesperson says “our position is clear,” invariably that means they are sticking to an unreasonable policy and won’t listen to reason for all the cheese in Wisconsin.

When huge banks announce that they have bounced back from the grievous self-inflicted hemorrhages of last year so quickly and are reporting huge profits once again, what they really mean is that it’s okay again to transfer billions of their shareholders’ dollars (read that: someone else’s money) to the wealthy elite executive corps in the form of obscene bonuses.

And when these princes of high finance announce they have found another Golden Goose called “High Frequency Trading,” they are letting the cat out of the bag that they are cheating again and will move heaven and earth, fielding legions of attorneys and lobbyists, to find a loophole in any law or regulation designed to level the playing field and punish unfair insider trading.

When scientists worry that the machines they build may soon have the ability to outsmart man, they seem to have forgotten that VCRs, DVD players, phone answering machines and home computers have been doing this for decades. Who worries about robots and drone airplanes when you can’t even figure out what the hell the F12 key really does?

And speaking of scientists, when archaeologists uncover some new dinosaur skeleton or ancient human implement and say that this “probably” or “almost certainly” was this particular kind of creature that lived and ate this particular way or this specific tool was used for this or that exact purpose, what they are really saying is: “Your guess is as good as mine.” Nice work if you can get it.

When savage killings and open warfare breaks out between Muslims over the proper practice of the Islamic faith and Christians smugly announce how barbaric a faith Islam is, what they are saying is that they cut every single history class in school. No faith has been responsible for more bloodshed, torture, brutal oppression and widespread warfare than that of the followers of The Prince of Peace. Islam has a way to go to catch up to Christianity’s body count. To a whole lot of Muslims’ credit, however, they are trying their best in the critical Tyrannical Oppression and Senseless Killing departments, so there’s still hope for them entering the mainstream. Special kudos from The Department go out to them for the innovative and diabolical twist of talking young men in the prime of their lives into blowing themselves and others to smithereens in the name of a religion that means “Peace.”

When Charles Taylor, former brutal dictator of Liberia now on trial for war crimes in Sierra Leone (where he tried to conquer their diamond mines) pleads not guilty to the many charges against him, he is especially vehement in denying the charges of cannibalism. Which doesn’t look good for his prospects of acquittal on all the other charges of diamond smuggling, gunrunning, war making and the murder and mutilation of half a million human beings. When your only defense is: “At least I’m not a cannibal!”, your case is problematic at best and your chances of winning quite slim.

When China and Taiwan approach one another though official diplomatic channels, what that means is that China has finally given up the ghost of reclaiming the island, figuring, “Do we really need another 23 million citizens to go with our 1.3 billion, especially when those pesky Taiwanese are used to voting and having all those decadent Western human rights and liberties? They’ll just fire everyone else up and we’ll be having another Tiananmen Square incident every six weeks. That darned tank ammo is very pricey!”

When a species of frog previously thought to have been extinct is found somewhere, that means that nature has been pretty thorough in producing enough varieties of frogs so that their functions overlap and when one kind disappears the world doesn’t notice they are gone. Perhaps they take turns disappearing and reappearing to spread the frog workload equitably. What that also tells us is that there are people in this world who are on the ball with keeping tabs on frogs so that the rest of us are pretty much off the hook with frog counting. Reassuring, that.

When you read about billionaires still wheeling and dealing well into their 70’s and 80’s, your realize that the accumulation of that much wealth is as often as not an all-consuming compulsion rather than a means to an end. At an age when most men their age have relinquished the running of the world to younger hands and are enjoying the fruits of their labors in the restful and  leisurely pursuits of retirement, what these obsessive control freak geezers are telling you is that they are Ebenezer Scrooge, afflicted with a severe mental infirmity and unable to help themselves. And as any first year intern at DOPOTO can confirm, there are no Ghosts of Christmas Future handy to save these poor wretches from themselves.

When Republican Party operatives mount an intensive campaign to remove President Obama from office because he was really born in (!) Kenya, what they are really saying is “We’ve got nothing, not a damned thing in our pointy little heads.” Calling the followers of their movement “Birthers” isn’t helping their lost cause either, conjuring up images of inbred, isolated religious cults or Nadya Suleman, the Octomom. Calls to Birther headquarters in Brainfreeze, Idaho from The Department Of Pointing Out The Obvious have gone unanswered due the Birthers’ fear of the “witchy voices” emanating from their telephones, which they have declared to be instruments of Satan.

When sport writers and cycling fans gush over bicyclist Lance Armstrong’s 7 wins in the Tour de France, they never mention that bicycle riding is something that most of us master completely at around the age of 7 or 8, and yet receive no accolades for our advanced skills or athleticism. It’s pretty much an unspoken assumption that someone who rides a bicycle 10 hours a day will get giant thighs, deep lungs and not much else. Which researchers at DOPOTO have discovered is why the Tour de France was originally invented, as a consolation prize devised by social scientists to boost the self esteem of French people whose only skill was bike riding and were starting to feel inferior to people who won accolades for actual athletic prowess or winning their wars. Somewhere throughout the ensuing decades it got out of hand with the Yellow Jersey that was originally the entire jackpot for the race becoming a symbol of actual achievement. One result is that Armstrong is a wealthy international star.

This has been a report from The Department Of Pointing Out The Obvious.

The Department Of Pointing Out The Obvious (DOPOTO) has, as always, been scouring the globe for the readily apparent. Also as usual, the Department has many rivals for pointing out the forest for the trees. The latest DOPOTO impersonator is one Steve Schmidt, the campaign manager for Senator John McCain’s failed presidential bid in the 2008 election. While trying to get a grumpy old man elected president is an unenviable task, especially when said grumpy old man picks as his running mate a decidedly bizarre and ignorant bimbo from Alaska, Mr. Schmidt did his best. The man is a professional and a talented political operative who has the misfortune to be working within the framework of a dying political party.

The Republican Party was coming off eight years in power under President Bush The Younger, during which time they failed to make even one correct decision and made a bigger mess of America than was thought to be humanly possible. By the time the 2008 elections rolled around, the American people had their fill and overwhelmingly delivered the White House and both houses of Congress to the Democrats. These things happen from time to time in American politics, and the defeated party retrenches and eventually bounces back. This time, however, the Republican Party is in such disarray that it may split into one or more new political parties, one for the religious right wing, another for the corporate thieves, perhaps yet another for the simply power mad.

Which is where Steve Schmidt entered the business of pointing out the obvious. In a speech before the Log Cabin Republican convention, Mr. Schmidt declared that religion is ruining the Republican Party. He stated that a political party is no place to formulate policies based on religious faith, figuring that people with differing religious beliefs would be driven away, and others reluctant to join. This has been a serious problem for Republicans for many years, but only Steve Schmidt has been willing to talk about the 800 pound gorilla in the room. He reasons that if the party announces itself to be ordained by God, only zealots, professional killjoys and would-be Messiahs will remain in the fold.

And so DOPOTO, being experts in the field of pointing out the obvious, is more than willing to share the results of our research into the matter. It seems that around the time of Ronald Reagan, Jesus Freaks started getting themselves politically organized. Prior to that time, Jesus Freaks were basically mentally imbalanced and very disoriented individuals that others went to great lengths to avoid, so they decided to clean up their acts, band together and go mainstream. Unfortunately for the Republican Party, that is where the Jesus Freaks gravitated. Even more unfortunate, their new status as respectable citizens did not temper their extremely annoying personalities or their odd tendency to condemn most of humanity to the eternal damnation of Hell Fire, as if that was within their power.

At first they organized a local election here, a statewide victory there, and gradually became a national presence, sending Congressman and Senators to Washington and Governors to state capitals. And like any zealots who get a taste of power, theirs went right to their pointy little pin heads. Before long they were announcing that anyone who disagreed with them were in an open alliance with Satan and they finally got one of their fellow dimwits elected president, the aforementioned Bush The Younger, the black sheep of the very wealthy and powerful Bush family. Himself a lifelong failure, a complete idiot and a born-again Christian, he set records as the Governor of Texas for executing retarded teenagers and clearing brush at his ranch, a never-ending obsession in dry and brushy Texas. His presidency not only put America in dire straits, but left the Republican Party in a shambles.

Such is their disarray that the current capo-di-tutti-capo of the Republican Party is now Rush Limbaugh, the ignorant radio buffoon most famous for his addiction to Oxycontin (hillbilly heroin) and wishing failure for his nation’s president. A warmonger who never wore a uniform, a self-proclaimed intellectual who failed out of college after two semesters (failing even a ballroom dancing class!) and a serial marrier, Mr. Limbaugh is himself not a religious man but is an expert blowhard adept at pandering to religious weirdos. His only rival for the title of Republican Head Honcho is the disgraced former Speaker of The House, Newt Gingrich, a man who changes religions as often as he changes wives. Newt is best known for obsessing over President Clinton’s penis and handing his wife divorce papers while she was in the hospital sick with cancer so he could marry his trophy wife (who he has since traded in for a newer, presumably trophier, model).

So, Mr. Schmidt, the God Squad is only one of your party’s problems. The party that in recent times was the home of smart people like Jacob Javits, Margaret Chase-Smith, Everett Dirksen, Henry Cabot Lodge, Dwight D. Eisenhower and John Foster Dulles, the Republicans haven’t had a leader of any political talent or intellectual substance since Richard Nixon, and he was a paranoid crook who resigned in disgrace. While they still proudly call themselves “The Grand Old Party” and “The Party of Lincoln,” many people figure it was all downhill after Honest Abe and that the only thing “Grand” about them is larceny. 

None of these former Republican leaders would qualify for inclusion in today’s GOP, not being anywhere near unreasonable or insane enough, even Nixon. The Christian Fascists currently running the show at the GOP are the final nail in the coffin of the Republican Party. Naturally Mr. Schmidt’s speech was received about as well as the Captain of The Titanic greeted that news that his unsinkable ship was taking on water faster than Rush Limbaugh washing down a few fistfuls of Oxy. Some even banished him to Hades for the sin of describing the emperor’s new clothes. This has been a report from The Department Of Pointing Out The Obvious.