UPDATED: A New Award

OK. This award has been extended and accepted, with hesitation and a bevy of caveats.

It was all started by MW at Divided We Stand, who was (jokingly) miffed that we almost-but-not-quite tagged him with a Thinking Blogger Award.

Essentially, the new award MW created is granted by any blogger who "reflects" on other bloggers and appreciates several things about them. In my words, translating MW's ...

1. The award recipients are pissants – i.e., they're not the biggest bloggers in the 'sphere, they're not Kos or Hewitt, but their attitudes and proficiencies more than make up for their rankings.

2. They are provocateurs – i.e., they provoke other people into thinking about and responding to subjects they might not otherwise think about and respond to.

3. By virtue of the first two traits, they advance the intrinsic value of a government that is closely, evenly divided between partisans, so no one party has outright control of the outcomes, recognizing that (a) divided government honors the check-and-balance intent of the founding fathers; and (b) divided government tends to work better; reference the Reagan and Clinton years versus the Carter and Bush #43 years.

Accordingly, since we roughly fit that description – we are a middle-ranked blog that provokes dialogue and recognizes the intrinsic value of the give-and-take of (respectful) partisanship – we have accepted this award and in so doing agreed to follow its six rules.

Now, three of those rules require us to link to MW's original post, which we have already done. Another rule requires us to post the award icon on our site, which we've also already done. Finally, we must bestow the award on five others by writing a short paragraph about them; and then, drop those five others a note to let them know they've been tagged.

I don't know how my five choices will respond to receiving this award; it took me quite some time to get comfortable with it; but you only live once, so here goes. (I also don't know if any of these folks agree with MW's divided-government premise; still, their frequent provocations help support that premise, whether or not they intend to.)

1. Gun Toting Liberal: I only occasionally agree with his politics, but damn is he good at provoking me. And he's annoyingly smart about it, too. [Caveat: It can be argued that GTL is not a pissant; his blog is ranked in the top 10,000 by Technorati. But I've decided that anyone outside the top 2,000 is fair game, largely because I feel like it.]

2. The Impolitic: Libby and Jim (mainly Jim) make me grind my teeth on occasion, but it's almost always impossible to outright dismiss their arguments; they make you fight for what you believe.

3. Kiko's House: Shaun is a remarkable writer, making good reading out of everything from politics to love to friends to dogs. He also enjoys the occasional fire-bomb; he even suggested once that GWB made him want to take drugs. And then, as I demonstrated this morning, he'll turn around and surprise you.

4. Black Shards: Marc's politics are close to mine, though his particular approach to defending conservatism (attacking liberalism) is occasionally hard to take. Perfect. For both defending conservative values and refusing to make it easy, I hereby tag him along with the others.

5. Q&O: McQ is even closer to my politics than Marc. Yet he still, much like Marc and Shaun, Libby, Jim and GTL, manages to stretch the envelope to the edge of breaking. [Caveat: Q&O is another blog for which the "pissant" moniker is perhaps misplaced. But since it's still outside my randomly chosen top-2,000 rank (per Technorati) – though just barely, at 2,128 as of this morning – I've kept it on the list of award recipients.]

And there you have it. My list of pissant (and not-so-pissant) provocateurs. I respect you all. Please don't kill me for involving you in this meme.