Quote of the Day, Stupid Gun Control edition

Sean Sorrentino brings clarity to the "do it for the children" debate:

How many years in Federal PMITA prison does AOC, ‘The Squad,’ Douche Nukem, and the rest of the Left think should gun owners get for ordinary gun owning behavior?

Make them defend sending Uncle Andy to the Federal slammer for loaning his turkey gun to his neighbor. Make them defend sending Cousin Mike to the Big House for teaching his friend’s wife to shoot. Make them defend it in public and on the floor of the House of Representatives.

Yup.

What the heck is up with Joe Biden's eye?

This is weird:

Former Vice President Joe Biden appeared to have a blood vessel burst in his left eye while participating in CNN's town hall on climate change.

A broken blood vessel in the eye, also known as a subconjuctival hemorrhage, can be caused by several things, including high blood pressure, bleeding disorders, blood thinners, or even excessive straining.

"Can be caused by several things"?  Hmmmm:

How a Mayan volcano caused bubonic plague in Constantinople

Via Judy Curry's climate science web site, we find this:

The ices of Greenland and Antarctica bear the fingerprints of a monster: a gigantic volcanic eruption in 539 or 540 A.D. that killed tens of thousands and helped trigger one of the worst periods of global cooling in the last 2,000 years. Now, after years of searching, a team of scientists has finally tracked down the source of the eruption.

The team’s work, published in Quaternary Science Reviews, lays out new evidence that ties the natural disaster to Ilopango, a now-dormant volcano in El Salvador. Researchers estimate that in its sixth-century eruption, Ilopango expelled the equivalent of 10.5 cubic miles of dense rock, making it one of the biggest volcanic events on Earth in the last 7,000 years.

We actually have quite good sources from the Roman Empire about this event.  Procopius wrote:

And it came about during this year that a most dread portent took place. For the sun gave forth its light without brightness, like the moon, during this whole year, and it seemed exceedingly like the sun in eclipse, for the beams it shed were not clear nor such as it is accustomed to shed. And from the time when this thing happened men were free neither from war nor pestilence nor any other thing leading to death. And it was the time when Justinian was in the tenth year of his reign [536/37]. (Procopius, Wars, IV.xiv.5-6, Tr. Dewing).

This was 536 or 537 AD.  The temperature dropped, harvests failed, people starved.  But something much more sinister happened:

In terms of the historical consequences of all this, some have theorized that the climatic shift caused a migration of a certain breed of rats into the ports of Upper Egypt, which subsequently led to the Justinianic plague.

The rats were adapted to a cooler climate in the upper Nile river valley, but the cooler weather allowed them to migrate all the way to the Nile delta.  They brought with them fleas which brought Yersinia Pestis - the bacterium that causes bubonic plague.  William Rosen has a very interesting book titled Justinian's Flea: The first great plague and the end of the Roman Empire.  It describes the plague and how it put an end to Justinian's attempt to reconquer the western provinces that Rome had lost to the barbarians.  5,000 people a day perished in Constantinope, hollowing out both the tax system and army recruitment.  After the plague finally burned out, the Empire simply didn't have the strength to complete the reintegration of the west.

The excellent History of Byzantium podcast has a (typically excellent) episode on Justinian's plague.

The moral of this story (and of others, like how the eruption of Mt. Tamboura gave rise to the "Year without a summer") is that the danger from climate change is not warming - and especially not gradual warming.  Rather, it is sudden cooling that can (and has, repeatedly) killed millions.

Quote of the Day, Wal*Mart edition

Heh:

But hey, TrailerParkTrashMart, thanks for opening the market up for every other brick-and-mortar firearms retailer in the country, and eliminating your loss-leader negotiating position to sell firearms below cost just to drive littler guys out of business. Firearms makers can now tell you to kiss their ass when you want their product cheaper year-over-year. That just ended too, whether you figured it out or not. Sam is probably spinning in his grave, and his half-wit kinfolk heirs clearly haven't the wits to run a roadside chicken stand. If he were alive, he'd kick their asses, then disown them all.

... 

I'll still visit your stores though.
Just to use the bathroom.
80-20 my turds land in the middle of the floor though, or in the sink bowl, every time.
Have fun with that. I sure will.
Be a real shame if something that simple caught on nationwide.

Remember, guys, the enemy always gets a vote. ;)
And I'll be eating a lot more ethnic foods, and voting often.
Got a hankerin' for some Panda Express broccoli beef today...

"Cleanup on Aisle 2..."

The whole thing is as good.  The Raconteur Report: purveyors of quality rants since 2008 ...

This is why you go to the shooting range

I posted this ten years ago and it still makes me laugh.

This is why you go to the range

This guy is such a terrible shot, he can't even hit the dumbest creature that the Lord ever put on His good earth.



So go practice your marksmanship. Don't be That Guy. Besides, the deer won't wait around for you.

A bad day for Empire

Today in 476, the last Roman Emperor in the west was deposed by the barbarians.  Romulus Augustulus was aptly named: the "Little Augustus" was only 16 years old at the time.  Emperors had been figureheads for some time in the Roman west, and the Little Augustus was derisively called "Momyllus" ("Little Disgrace") rather than Romulus.  It seems that he lived out his life in some comfort - there is a letter from the Ostrogothic King of Italy Theodoric the Great in 507 to a "Romulus" granting him a pension.  Still, while the Roman Empire survived another thousand years in the east, it was not a great day for Empire.

Also on this day in 1870, Napoleon III abdicated as Emperor of the French.  Confusingly there were only two French Empires but there were three Napoleons.  Only numbers one and three actually reigned, though.  I believe that it was Marx (or possibly Engels) who, when looking on the ascension of Napoleon III remarked that history repeats itself, first as tragedy and then as farce.  But Napoleon III took on the Prussians and had his hat (err, and his Crown) handed to him.  Again, this date was not a good one for Empire.

Today's Transnational Empire is going through the same wrenching changes.  Britain shuffles towards BREXIT, after 3 years of increasingly desperate rope-a-dope from the imperial Powers That Be.  Last night the imperial hangers-on ignored the quite sensible advice of former Prime Minister Tony Blair:

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is laying an election “elephant trap” for the opposition Labour Party that it should avoid, former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair warned on Monday.

You see, the British people are seemingly fed up with the delays and want their will - democratically expressed in the BREXIT referendum - honored.  Parliament at this point may even be less popular than our own Congress, and that's saying quite a lot.  The House of Commons (led by a number of Johnson's fellow Tory party members) took control from the Prime Minister yesterday:

Remainers have won the vote to usurp the Government’s role to control the Parliamentary timetable. To this end, they will use tomorrow to table their anti-No Deal bill (termed by Number 10 ‘Corbyn’s surrender bill’).

Blair was perhaps the smartest politician of his day, and he saw what the Commons couldn't.  Not only has the House of Lords shown up vowing to basically filibuster anything that the Commons passes, but Johnson is springing his trap:

From: Government Whips Admin Unit
Sent: 04 September 2019 11:55
Subject: Today’s Business

Dear Colleague

Thank you very much for your support on what was a difficult day yesterday.

We are on a three-line-whip today from 12.30pm. At midday we will have PMQs, followed by the Chancellor’s Spending Review statement. Your continued support in the Chamber is appreciated.

No later than 3pm we will move on to the Second Reading of the European Union (Withdrawal) (No 6) Bill. The Government will be opposing this bill. Should the bill pass its Commons stages today, we will be moving the motion for an early general election at 7pm and we will be voting aye. It is therefore possible that business will run late this evening.

Best wishes

Mark
Rt Hon Mark Spencer MP
Government Chief Whip

It looks like they dug a Heffalump Trap and fell right in.  Today is a bad day for the Transnational Empire.  The Globalists are in retreat all across the globe and do not know what to do about it, any more than the Little Augustus did.  And these numbskulls think they're smarter than everyone around (especially in Flyover Country).  So how's that working out?

Man, the Ninth Circuit court is out of control

That's harsh.

Remember how they used to say that George W. Bush was so incredibly stupid?

Yeah, well about that:

[blink] [blink]

I really don't know what to say, other than John Kenneth Galbraith and Daniel Patrick Moynajan are spinning in their graves.

Johann Pachelbel - Chorale Preludes

Today is Johann Pachelbel's birthday.  He is famous today for his Canon in D, which has eclipsed Wagner's Wedding March in popularity at weddings.  It has become the subject of parody (I have a few examples at the end of this post for your amusement).  While it's not the point of today's post, I embed it here (mostly because it's a beautiful Sunday morning and because The Queen Of The World thinks it's pretty).  It's an unusual version, with full orchestra.



But Pachelbel wrote a lot of music.  He was one of the great Baroque composers, and had a huge reputation in his day.  He knew most everybody who was anybody in 17th Century Europe - he gave music lessons to J. S. Bach's order brother and was godfather to his sister.

But fashion is fickle, and tastes change.  The high baroque style gave way to Handel, Tellemann, and Haydn.  Pachelbel's music was basically forgotten for two centuries.  Canon in D was forgotten until around 1970.  It was recorded by an artist interested in historical musicology and a radio station in San Francisco played it out of more or less academic interest.  They were flooded with calls requesting it, and the song was saved from obscurity.  It was included in the film Ordinary People, and so we can thank Hollywood for the world-wide resurgence of interest.

But like I said, he wrote a lot of works.  Perhaps half of those were Chorale Preludes - he was employed as organist at various churches and cathedrals (including St. Stefan's in Vienna).  Note that the term is "Chorale", not "Choral" - there are no sung parts here, rather they were a popular form of church music from the day.  As church organist, Pachelbel was expected to write new examples of this regularly.  This is the "real" Pachelbel, assuming that there is such a thing.



Here are some Pachelbel Canon in D takeoffs that are pretty funny.  Rob Paravonian's Pachelbel rant is hilarious, and has gotten 15 million views on Youtube:



And the Piano Guys have a fabulous version (20 million views):



Lastly, who knew that Procol Harum had gotten back together?  Their "Sunday Morning" song from their 2017 album Novus is based on Canon in D.  Rather appropriate for a Sunday morning.

Twitter CEO's twitter account hacked

HAHAHAHAHA!

I wonder what his password was ...

Travis Tritt - T-R-O-U-B-L-E

This is Labor Day weekend here in the States.  Everyone have fun!



T-R-O-U-B-L-E (Songwriter: Jerry Chestnut)

Well, I play an old guitar from a nine till a half past one I'm just tryin' to make a livin' watchin' everybody else havin' fun Well, I don't miss much if it happens on a dance hall floor Mercy, look what just walked through that door Well, hello T-R-O-U-B-L-E Tell me what in the world You doin' A-L-O-N-E Yeah, say hey, good L double O-K-I-N-G Well, I smell T-R-O-U-B-L-E... Yeah I was a little, bitty baby when my papa hit the skids Mama had a time tryin' to raise nine kids She told me not to stare cause it was impolite She did the best she could to try to raise me right Cause mama never told me 'bout nothin' like Y-O-U Bet your mama musta been another good lookin' honey, too Yeah Hey, good L double O-K-I-N-G Well, I smell T-R-O-U-B-L-E... Yeah Yeah Well, you're a sweet talkin', sexy walkin', honky tonkin' baby The men are gonna love ya and the woman gonna hate ya Remindin' them of everythin' they're never gonna be May be the beginning of a world war three Cause the world ain't ready for nothing like Y-O-U I bet your mama musta been another good lookin' mama, too Hey, say hey, good L double O-K-I-N-G Well, I smell T-R-O-U-B-L-E... I said hey I said hey I said hey I said hey I said hey (Hey) Oh, I smell T-R-O-U-B-L-E...

How do you say "This vehicle protected by Smith & Wesson" auf Deutsche?

A post from ten years ago:

From Adventures in Deutschland:

We saw this on our way out of town Saturday. On a Texas highway, I would not have even looked twice. On a German side road, my jaw dropped. So many things about this vehicle screamed mis-placement to us but none more-so than the bumper sticker, "This vehicle protected by Smith & Wesson". Nice.

There's a picture, too. As Lissa would say, "That's a Big Ol' truck!"

I know that I shouldn't joke about the hurricane

But it's kind of ironic that all those Florida liberals are buying generators and gasoline insteam of windmills and solar panels.  Just sayin' ...

Well that's your problem right there ...

Yesterday we talked about how a jihadi made himself go all 'splody when his drone-bomb ran low on battery power and automatically returned to where it left from.  Today's tip of the dunce cap goes to some British Army drone pilots who watched the wrong screen, crashing the thing.  Apparently the drone has a rearward facing camera and they were watching their selfie while the drone was flying into the ground.

You can watch Trump's wall being built

Well, you can see on the map as new bits get completed.

So why hasn't Dr. Michael Mann been fired from his job?

My previous post talked (at rather hideously extended length) about climate scientists - and especially Dr. Mann - hiding their data.  The Silicon Graybeard left a comment that others are asking:

And another question: why is Michael Mann still a professor at Penn State? Doesn't the fact that he has been found guilty (in at least parallel legal cases) of fraud, why hasn't he been fired?

We've had this answered, in Hal Lewis' spectacular resignation letter to the American Physical Society:

Hal Lewis [was] one of the Senior Statesmen of American Physics.  He's been a member of the American Physical Society for 67 years (!).  His bio lays out his bona fides:

Harold Lewis is Emeritus Professor of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, former Chairman; Former member Defense Science Board, chmn of Technology panel; Chairman DSB study on Nuclear Winter; Former member Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards; Former member, President’s Nuclear Safety Oversight Committee; Chairman APS study on Nuclear Reactor Safety Chairman Risk Assessment Review Group; Co-founder and former Chairman of JASON; Former member USAF Scientific Advisory Board; Served in US Navy in WW II; books: Technological Risk (about, surprise, technological risk) and Why Flip a Coin (about decision making) 

Hal Lewis thinks that Global Warming is an anti-scientific, money-grabbing scam by scientists, and says so in a brutal resignation letter sent to the president of the APS:

It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist.

His letter is long, and damning for today's scientific establishment.  And he specifically discusses Dr. Mann, and why Penn State did not (and will not) take any action against him:

Some have held that the physicists of today are not as smart as they used to be, but I don’t think that is an issue. I think it is the money, exactly what Eisenhower warned about a half-century ago. There are indeed trillions of dollars involved, to say nothing of the fame and glory (and frequent trips to exotic islands) that go with being a member of the club. Your own Physics Department (of which you are chairman) would lose millions a year if the global warming bubble burst. When Penn State absolved Mike Mann of wrongdoing, and the University of East Anglia did the same for Phil Jones, they cannot have been unaware of the financial penalty for doing otherwise.

Institutionally, the scientific field as practiced today is rotten to the core.  It consumes huge amounts of money with at best modest output.  The field of climate science in particular is feeding destructive governmental policies, but you have to say that the gravy train is good for those who are on it.

Most particularly for Dr. Mann.

I closed my post about Dr. Lewis with words that, looking back from almost a decade in the future, I would not change:

As background on ClimateGate, you might want to look here:

• The science story of the Century?
• ClimateGate 101
• Why CRU is so important
• How you create a "consensus"
• Filthy lucre
• Thoughts on how the Scientific Establishment wandered into the desert
• Whitewash
• General Global Warming background
• The Climate Science "Napkin Presentation".

For those of you who were, like me, trained as scientists, this scandal is infuriating.  For those of you who, like me, grew up liberal and care about the further impoverishment of the poor, this is infuriating. 

The Iron Law of Bureaucracy touches all establishments, including the scientific establishment.  In all honesty, we could cut scientific research by 80% and not be any worse off.  Heck, we might even be better off.

Why do Climate Scientists keep hiding their data?

Dr. Michael Mann - the most famous climate scientist in the world - has lost a lawsuit.  He sued another climate scientist (Tim Ball) for libel:

Dr. Ball was sued because he said, of Dr. Mann's seminal "hockey stick" work, "he belongs in the state pen, not Penn State." While others came to the same conclusion about the hockey stick, Mann sued Ball for libel. After eight years, Mann refused to provide a single document under the court-ordered discovery.

Dr. Mann has been in the news for a long time.  He was the lead author on a paper that turned climatology on its head.  In the 1990s the consensus view was that climate changed over time, that the Medieval period was as warm or warmer than today and that it was followed by the Little Ice Age that was so cold that millions died.  The Little Ice Age was followed by today's warming that dates back to around 1860 or so.  The UN IPCC wrote this up as the best scientific understanding of climate in the first Assessment Report.

But Mann's paper said this wasn't so - that climate was stable for a thousand years before suddenly spiking upwards in the 20th Century:

1998 saw the publication of a blockbuster scientific paper, one that showed that a climate that had been stable for a thousand years had suddenly begun to overheat.  Dr. Mann was the lead author, and this is the famous image from the article: 

 

This picture was not only used in Al Gore's movie "An Inconvenient Truth", it was sent to every household in Canada by the Canadian Government. 

As my post from 2008 says, it was a fraud, and Mann knew it was a fraud.  But he's done it twice more since then.  I'd like to explain how so you see just how deep the rot goes.

Click through to get the background of Dr. Mann's repeated scientific shenanigans.

But that's not the end of the list of dodgy science for Dr. Mann, oh no.  Remember the ClimateGate emails?  One in particular became moderately famous because it has a memorable phrase ("hide the decline"):

I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.

The email is from the head of the University department that suffered the Climategate data disclosures.  "Mike" refers to Dr. Mann.  "Nature" refers to Nature magazine, one of the 2 or 3 most prestigious scientific journals in the world.  Specifically, this refers to a paper by Dr. Mann that was published there.

So what was Mike's "trick"?  He was studying long term (1000+ year) climate, and so relied on non-thermometer data (we call these "proxies" because they are closely related to temperature but are not specific temperature measures;  tree rings, ice cores from glaciers, etc).  Dr. Mann removed the proxy temperature data after 1960 and replaced it with thermometer readings.  It's not because he didn't have proxy data up to the present day - he had complete proxy data).  So why replace some of it?

Hide the decline.

This is a short (the first 3 minutes from where this begins playing) and very accessible explanation of what the Climategate crowd did with Mike's trick.  The speaker is Dr. Robert Mueller, a climate scientist and head of the Berkeley climate science team.  Dr. Mueller is not one of those beastly Deniers like me, but he is really shocked at all this manipulation.



This is also a pretty interesting example of how Big Tech is trying to sweep this under the carpet.  There used to be a short clip of just this segment from Mueller's talk, but Youtube has dissappeared it.  So there's the whole hour (which gives a lot of background on climate science shenanigans) but we start at the Climategate bit.

So that's Dr. Mann - the only thing left to add is that he is notoriously thin skinned (he sued Dr. Ball, after all) and also a hypocrite - he sued Judy Curry, then a climatologist heading the Georgia Tech school of earth sciences.

But pride goeth before a fall.  Dr. Mann lost his court case because he refused to release his data to the court.  Even now he's hiding the decline, or whatever it is.  He will be paying some of Dr. Ball's costs.

So what is it with climate scientists and this refusal to release data?  I posted about this ten years ago on this day, but will hide all that below the jump.  The thing to keep in mind is that things have not gotten better in a decade.  Climate science is still diseased in how it is performed, by the lead scientists in the field.

The War On Drugs takes down Oklahoma

I've been very vocal for a very long time about how the stupid War On Drugs is destroying much of this country.  Now we can add Oklahoma to the list.  The Oklahoma State Attorney General sued Johnson & Johnson because (a) there are a lot of Okie opioid deaths and (b) J & J make and sell prescription opiods.  Never mind that science has shown that overdose deaths do not result from prescription medication, an Okie judge awarded the State a half billion dollars in damages.  There are something like 1,000 other lawsuits lined up on the taxiways as other States are salivating for all the shake-down dough.

Buh-bye, Johnson & Johnson.

Aesop has a fine rant about this and you should go right now and read it.  I particularly like this part:

It will start with J&J ceasing all opiate sales to Oklahoma, in perpetuity.
(Hint: they should institute that policy tomorrow. Then refer the howling from hundreds of thousands of agonized senior citizens to Judge Fucktard, and post his home phone number and that of the OK AG on the J&J website for complaints.)

Then every other drug company should follow suit, and will.

His point that this will end up driving firearms manufacturers out of business hits center mass as well.

The one thing that I would add is that this is the modus operandi we should expect from the government: they are incompetent to do their assigned task (win the stupid War On Drugs; sure, it's unwinable but they're the ones who want to fight that battle so this is on them).  Rather than get better at their job, they look for someone innocent to blame while they shake down cash and prizes that is fed right back into their patronage mill.

Pretty sweet scam, right there.  It would have a medieval robber baron taking notes.  Of course, the problem is the same as that faced by the robber baron: you steal half of the merchant goods passing by your castle and soon there won't be any merchant goods passing by your castle.  It's killing the goose that lays golden eggs.

The price of prescription opioids is fixin' to skyrocket, just like the price of cigarettes skyrocketed after the tobacco settlement of the 1990s.  Poorpeople will have to choose whether to eat or to live in pain.  Some will decide to go to the local dealer for the street fare because it will be a penny on the dollar compared with the script their Doc writes.  Some of these will OD.

Nice going, Oklahoma.  You've just about fucked up the situation in every possible way imaginable.

So Aesop, can we now declare victory on the stupid War On Drugs and bring the troops home?  Or should we keep burning the village down to save it?

The inevitable failure of Red Flag laws

It is said that the Wheels Of Justice grind slowly, but exceedingly fine.  Probably lawyers say this, because everyone else who looks at it thinks it's pretty messed up.  Some of the failure is due to incompetence, but some seems to be due to malice.  We can expect to see this with Red Flag laws, because we see this with capital punishment:

[UPDATE, August 22: After the Supreme Court rejected his last-minute appeal, Larry Swearingen was injected with a lethal dose of pentobarbital last night at 6:35 p.m. He took his final breath at 6:47.] 

A little after 6 p.m., the state of Texas will execute Larry Swearingen for a crime experts believe he was unable to commit. 

Journalist Andrew Purcell detailed the events leading to Swearingen's impending death in a thorough investigation.

So Texas very well may have executed an innocent man.  Kamala Harris - who is running for President - suppressed DNA evidence that could have exonerated a man on Death Row when she was California Attorney General.  Why would any gun owner believe that a President Harris would instruct the Justice Department to diligently and fairly enforce hypothetical Red Flag laws?  Quite frankly, there is every reason to believe that the Harris Justice Department would gleefully abuse these laws.

Oh, and the same thing applies to "Universal Background Checks" which, while the government is not supposed to use this to create a back door registration database would do exactly that (same link, above).

UPDATE 27 August 2019 16:06: And another: Man convicted of killing college student found innocent after 40 years behind bars:

RALEIGH -- A three-judge panel found a convicted murderer innocent of the 1979 murder that sent him to prison.

James Blackmon was convicted in 1988 of the murder of Helena Payton at what is now Saint Augustine's University. Payton was fatally stabbed in her neck in a dorm bathroom in 1979. The case went cold until detectives received an anonymous tip in 1983.

But the Courts will absolutely protect gun owners' rights.

UPDATE 27 August 2019 17:47: Here's another example of the justice system failing.  Houston Police Officers charged with murder for falsified "No-Knock" drug raid.

How the Media slants the news, example MCVIII

Oh noes, a Trade War!

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — U.S. lobster exports to China have fallen off a cliff this year as new retaliatory tariffs shift the seafood business farther north.

...

Meanwhile, business is booming in Canada, where cargo planes are coming to Halifax, Nova Scotia, and Moncton, New Brunswick, to handle a growing bump in exports. Canadian fishermen catch the same species of lobster as American lobstermen, who are based mostly in Maine.

The loss of business has brought layoffs to some Maine businesses, such as The Lobster Co., of Arundel, where owner Stephanie Nadeau has laid off half the 14 people she once had working in wholesale.

“They picked winners, and they picked losers, and they picked me a loser,” Nadeau said. “There is no market that’s going to replace China.”

America has exported less than 2.2 million pounds (1 million kilograms) of lobster to China this year through June, according to data from the U.S. federal government. The country exported nearly 12 million pounds during that same period last year. That’s a more than 80% drop.

This story caught my eye, since I grew up in Maine.  Lobster fishing is a hard business, and the government has in the past done any number of bone headed things that have damaged Maine's seafaring economy.  For example, George H. W. "Read My Lips" Bush imposed a tax on yachts that raised no revenue at all while putting boat builders out of business.  So yeah, this could potentially be another example.

But I'm suspicious of the press, and was on the lookout for numbers that would put the situation into context.  Are Maine lobstermen selling fewer lobsters?  All the article dished up is breathless prose:"fallen off a cliff", "they picked me a loser", "80% drop".

Well, the 80% drop is the drop in exports to China, not in total sales.  So what's going on up in Maine?  Are the lobstermen all going out of business?

We're never told.  We're also never given any numbers to establish context - how much was sold last year vs how much sold to date this year.  Until the tenth paragraph, where we see this:

Lobster prices paid by American consumers have remained fairly steady during the trade dispute and there remain many buyers for U.S. lobster.

Oh.  You'd think that if a major market "fell off the cliff" then lobster prices would drop.  Supply, meet demand.  We don't see that here.

Actually, I fibbed here in this post.  If you click the link to Boston.com (the Boston Globe web site) you don't find the last quote at all.  The Globe edited it out of the AP story (I guess to save newsprint costs on their website or something. /sarc).  But the same AP article is available all over, even at Canada's CBC.

So the whole story is a nothingburger.  It's a tale told by an idiot, filled with sound and fury but signifying nothing.  Actually, it's not so much told by an idiot as told by a liar.  Burying the lede is an old and infamous journalistic trick; the Globe "improves" on the trick by eliminating the lede.

I do like the local paper here because it has started focusing on local news.  That's something that's valuable to me - what's going on around these parts - and I'm happy to pay for it.  But this nonsense from the AP is worse than useless to me; they tell a story that simply isn't true and I'm uninterested in taking the time to get to the bottom of things (unless, like here, I just want to point and mock).

No wonder nobody trusts the media and they're all going out of business.