The Department of Pointing Out The Obvious (DOPOTO) has, as always, been monitoring the news and general trends in America and the greater world beyond. It seems that being an incompetent executive is a safe career path only if you are in charge of gigantic banks. If you mess with the nation’s cars, however, the president puts out a hit on your career. This is, after all, America, and we’ve always been all about the cars. The banks? Not so much. This is not the first time American bankers have brought our economy down in flames. The suggestion here is that the president bring in some members of the Rothschild family to straighten things out in the banking industry. They’ve been doing the international banking thing for centuries pretty effectively.
In sewage treatment news (there is such a thing), it seems that some enterprising scientists are trying to make clean auto fuel from human sewage. DOPOTO applauds this brilliant idea for this plentiful and ever-renewable resource and expresses our gratitude that we are not the ones who have to deal with it. Sewage treatment is not for the faint of heart. It seems that the methane we humans produce in great amounts is a cleaner-burning gas than most and in just a few chemical steps our body wastes can be made to run cars and trucks. Which leads one to wonder what the new emission standards will be. For cars, that is.
In psychology news, a new study indicates that arguing in front of one’s children isn’t as harmful as once thought so long as knives, pistols and heavy blunt objects are not involved. This news comes as a relief to everybody everywhere who has ever raised any children, ridden with guilt that their incessant bickering has scarred their kids for life. Popular wisdom used to be that this sort of behavior was wrong and that parents should adopt a united and calm front for the sake of their children. For years our television shows reflected this Stepford Parent approach, showing perfect, well-adjusted parents who never let a cross word pass between them in front of the tykes.
Well, it seems this fantasy only led most of the child stars of such shows to lives of substance abuse and crime, and these were only fictional families. So imagine every parent’s relief when it was revealed that their ordinary human natures were a better role model than the TV automatons! It seems that kids learn from watching their parents resolve conflicts, but the psychologists warn that only fair fighting is allowed, which just goes to show that they are still not in tune with reality. Maybe if people were preparing their little ones to enter a perfect world this would hold true, but DOPOTO’s own independent research has shown that it’s best for kids to learn about human treachery, duplicitousness and underhanded tactics at home. No sense sending naive fools into a world that will chew them up and spit them out.
In weather news, the Northern Plains States are considering a class action suit against Al Gore to make him cease and desist in his efforts to halt global warming. After two early Spring blizzards dumped about 4 feet of snow on them and caused the near-flooding of several cities and farming communities, their thinking is that a couple of degrees warmer next winter sounds pretty good. When told that the price of doing nothing about the melting polar ice caps would lead to a rise in sea levels that would turn Florida into an extension of the Gulf of Mexico, western residents responded that 49 states is plenty enough for any country. Some of the more enterprising among them even got busy with a new flag design.
In New York State, the governor and legislature have been busy trying to wrest back their title as the Most Corrupt State from Illinois. After the headlines involving Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich attempting to sell the president’s old Senate seat to the highest bidder and getting himself impeached for his trouble, New York legislators have responded admirably in a series of back room deals and public malfeasance that have only added to the state’s considerable problems and solved nothing. In a refutation of President Obama’s theory that government should be on the level, New York politicians have gone on record as being the lowest of the low, the most self-serving and the least concerned about the public good. The thinking in Albany is that fair and open dealing is for wimps. They don’t want change, they want folding money, and lots of it. When told that Obama is using his own money to redecorate the White House, several prominent State Senators and members of the House wondered where he stole all that dough and if they could get in on the action. So, the Department Of Pointing Out The Obvious gives this week’s Not Getting It Award to the Government of The State of New York.