Zero information statement

I hope I never hear the phrase, "It is what it is," so often that I start using it myself out of sheer familiarity.  I know that it has become shorthand for, "This is a situation that we can't do anything about, so we're just going to have to accept it," but every time I hear it I think about Robert DeNiro in The Deer Hunter: "This is this!" Both are like saying, "1 = 1".