Think Tank Memorial End-of-Day Miscellany

According to the Kubler-Ross model, there are five discrete stages people go through when dealing with grief or tragedy:

• denial (“No…no…this isn’t happening! Lalalalalala, I can’t hear you!!” /sticks fingers in ears),
• anger (“ARGH! Me smash things! Stupid grief!!! /punches wall),
• bargaining (“Ok, God, look…just let me live long enough to see the Indians win the World Series…please?” /looks skyward with unrealistic hopes),
• depression (“Guh.” /looks guh-ish), and
• acceptance (“Fine. Fine. Whatever. Fine.” /shrugs, sighs).

Why do I mention this?  Because the departure of Blake Rutherford and the corresponding death of the Think Tank forced many a blogger and blog reader to go through whatever the online, not-actually-dealing-with-a-death version of these stages would be.  Having now reached the acceptance stage, I decided the best way to deal with it would be to revive one of my favorite Think Tank features, the End-of-Day Miscellany, as a tribute.  So, with no further ado — and, honestly, was that all that much ado? — [/clears throat, does Blake impression] here are the things I didn’t get to today:

• Blue Arkansas says that a big reason the Timmy! Griffin caging story hasn’t resonated in Arkansas is because the Dem-Gazette has turned a blind eye toward it.
• Disenchanted former Huckamaniac, Jason Tolbert, points to the former Gov’s featuring of a website for would-be adulterers on his Fox show as proof that the ex-Arkie will do anything for a dollar. I don’t recall “found himself a trollop on a website that Mike Huckabee pointed him to” as part of the covenant marriage statute.
• John Brummett takes on teachers, snarkiness ensues.
• Proof that the the more things change, the more they stay the same: Mike Ross is trouncing Beth-Anne Rankin in AR-04 according to Talk Business.
• Blanche Lincoln attends Drew County Farm Bureau meeting tonight. No word on whether she’ll continue to try to make “Boozman won’t debate!” her more-than-slightly-ironic rallying cry.
• Nationally: Paul Krugman (correctly) takes issue with the idea that “nobody” knew in January 2009 what kind of stimulus was needed; more stimulus stuff — Atrios points out the incongruity of the current “best case” outlook; Phil Plait has an amazing NASA photo of hurricanes Danielle and Earl (and, speaking of Phil, his new show aired last night).
• Sports: Countdown to NFL Season — 13 days until the Texans take on the Colts and the Rams take on the Cardinals ; Countdown to NCAA Football Season — 5 days ’til UConn comes to the Big House; Baseball — Cardinals trail by 5 games in NL Central (3 in W.C.), and Indians trail by roughly 3398023 games (I’m still at stage 2 in the Kubler-Ross model on this one).

Until tomorrow…