in the interest of openness, I should note that I’m not Jewish, just a plain old formerly-Christian white boy.

Scott: If Charley Johnson can get his LGF into the competiton there’s no reason a “plain old formerly-Christian white boy” shouldn’t be allowed too. Though I do think that Aussie Dave might have a problem with your lack of sufficient fervor for the Israeli cause or for yr ‘excessive’ fervor for the Palestinian cause.

But it sure would be interesting next year to test what the limits are & nominate you & these others. I’m guessing you might be thrown out on your tush, dear boy. But then again, maybe the JIBA overseers will surprise me and be more open-minded.

Elderly? I thought Richard was under 50.

Dan: Geez, if 50 is ‘elderly’ a lot of us are in a lot of trouble! Your guess about my age was just about right.

Bret Stephens is a very well know person. He was editor of the Jerusalem Post and worked for the Wall Street Journal previously. If you are interested, all you need to do is open up another browser and google for him.

I don’t know all the personalities on the right, but I know of a lot of them & he never hit my radar screen. If you want to provide a link to something you like that he’s written I’d take a look at it. I do so much googling & online research for my blog posts that I’m not eager to start new searches for this fellow.

My point about comments (albeit unclear) is that it is impossible to know how widely a blog is read without either a hit counter or comments.

Lawrence of Cyberia (see link in above post) has no comments. I don’t know whether 100 or 1,000,000 people read it. But I read her posts and I know there is a serious mind at work which agonizes over the Mideast conflict and feels the suffering of those involved. The author is also a former British intelligence official & so one knows she has a serious mind. I don’t care whether she has a comment section or not. She’s good. You only have to read her to know that.

By the way, I’m almost certain she would NOT want to be in the JIBA competition (though I haven’t asked her). But if I was running a competition I’d do my best to see she was included because she and Head Heeb are perhaps the most articulate progressive blogs going on the I-P conflict.

Now, that being said, you’ll prob. hate her point of view. But I shouldn’t prejudge. If you’re interested take a look at see if you can sense what I do. If not, that’s OK at least you took a look.

Correcting factual errors is how you define snark??

CK: No, if you’ll recall, I replied to you: “Thanks for the correction.” I meant that.

This is what I interpreted as snark:

*sigh*

If it wasn’t I stand corrected & apologize. I think Gib interpreted that as a dig as well though I certainly wouldn’t rely on his interpretation of anything being the last word on the subject.

Of course I don’t define correcting mistakes as snark. I welcome corrections. I freely admit to making mistakes though I take great pains not to.