THE DEPARTMENT OF POINTING OUT THE OBVIOUS WORKS OVERTIME

DOPOTO, the handy acronym for the Department of Pointing Out The Obvious, has been busy as a teenage boy with a new copy of Playboy magazine. Reports of the Readily Apparent Variety keep flooding our inbox as we endeavor to remain in the forefront of pointing out the obvious. First up is the Roman Catholic Church weighing in on a subject that has no bearing whatsoever on anything that concerns them, the possible existence of extraterrestrial life forms. In a reversal of their public humiliation of the astronomer Galileo who had the unmitigated gall to point out that the earth revolves around the sun and not the opposite, the Catholic Church has admitted that there just might be other intelligent species out there. Not content to bow to mathematical probabilities, they further speculate that said beings could perhaps be without original sin, that their Adam and Eve never went apple picking on God's private orchard.

To further muddle their message in inimitable Roman style, they go on to speculate that these theoretical creatures could indeed benefit from a visit from Jesus Christ, except that his short sojourn on earth in the flesh and blood of an earthling was a one-time phenomenon never to be repeated. How's that? The good clergy at the Vatican have come up with some really dense reasoning, now declaring that their all-powerful God can't repeat the performance of sending Junior to some other species for the purpose of their redemption. DOPOTO salutes the Vatican for simultaneously embracing science and attributing magical voodoo to its application. As far as their belief in alien beings, has anybody taken a really close look at the new guy in charge over there, Pope Benedict? Do not attempt to resist, remain in your homes, we come in peace and brotherhood...

In an update of an earlier DOPOTO report on the new president-elect of the nation of Paraguay, Fernando Lugo, we are still unable to corroborate his claim that Paraguay was once a great nation. He promises to return Paraguay to its former greatness, perhaps figuring that no one outside of Paraguay would hear that statement. This is a flagrant underestimation of The Department of Pointing Out The Obvious, which knows no borders and leaves no stone unturned in our investigations into the readily apparent. Senor Lugo, a Catholic bishop, will be sworn in on August 15 of this year and will preside over the second-poorest nation in South America.

If he can improve that number to third or fourth poorest, he will certainly usher in A New Golden Age of Paraguay since exhaustive research thus far reveals that their previous Golden Age consists of having been handed a humiliating defeat in The War of the Triple Alliance in the 1860's. So perhaps Bishop Lugo has a pretty low bar set in the Paraguayan Greatness department. DOPOTO wishes him and his soon-to-be-great-again nation all the luck in the world. The world looks to Paraguay with bated breath as it tries its darndest to recall exactly where it is located.

DOPOTO has found numerous reports of various activities emanating from the city of Las Vegas, Nevada, thus refuting the widespread claim that "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas." Did they really think that they could hide a major American city from DOPOTO? Especially a city that specializes in relieving the residents of other cities of their money. Hey, we're all over the Paraguay story and the Vatican alien life form controversy. How could we possibly ignore a giant neon-lit circus in the middle of a desert? There's few things in the world more obvious than Las Vegas.

DOPOTO notes that President Bush The Younger is currently touring the Middle East in these, the waning days of his presidency. Isn't that sort of like Napoleon doing a triumphant tour of Waterloo before being ushered to his retirement home on the island of Elba? DOPOTO would recommend that a president wrapping up his term in office would do better to visit the sites of his greatest successes. Let's see, New Orleans is out of the question, as is the American base in Guantanamo, Cuba, so what's left for this man? That would be his extensive ranch in Crawford, Texas, as clear of brush as any ranch could possibly be. If you've ever seen Crawford, Texas, that's actually Bush The Younger's most impressive accomplishment. As to the actual national usefulness of clearing brush on a ranch where exactly no ranching activity goes on, well, we'll leave that judgement to the historians. Our job is merely to point out what everybody already knows.