That's one dismal conclusion when a country accepts wholesale slaughter in ghetto streets, then gets outraged over the murders of three foreign tourists in Florida.

I was at Bats' Cave when I reached this dismal conclusion.

"The desired improvement in new orders failed to materialize in June, resulting in a decline in the manufacturing sector and a dismal conclusion to the second quarter," said Robert J. Bretz, director of corporate purchasing at Pitney Bowes Inc. and chairman of the National Association of Purchasing Management's business survey committee.

As the jaundiced, disjointed, drug-infested story heads toward its dismal conclusion, its reputable actors vainly struggle to infuse the goings-on with a deadpan psychotic zaniness.

A Michigan State University survey of 464 employers in business, industry and government came to the same dismal conclusion as the Northwestern study.

Reyes's strikeout was a dismal conclusion to a loss that put the Mets on the brink of elimination.

Kirk frowned even as he reached that dismal conclusion.

Similarly dismal conclusions come from a study for the British government by ERL, an environmental consultancy, which calculated that meeting the government's official goal of recycling half the reusable waste in household bins could cost roughly £50 ($10) a household - or twice as much as ordinary rubbish collection.

A recent study by the United States General Accounting Office also drew dismal conclusions about bilateral anti-narcotics efforts in Mexico.

And another study in 2010 from Stony Brook University drew a dismal conclusion that while some areas are overharvested and other fishing grounds are being restored, because of ocean acidification it may be impossible to bring back many previous shellfish populations.