Ben at The Observer found out he will be having competition soon from Newsday. [via The Politicker: Competition?]:

Well, I hate to blow Newsday's cover, but I hear preparations are underway for a new city politics blog and Politicker rival to be run out of the Kew Gardens Death Star. The more the merrier, I think.

Heh. I guess races are all the rage these days. For one, did y'all notice there's another "open-source" NYC blog called, onNY turf. I noticed the other day --and yes, they seem to have opened after us. It gets better. Guess who is diversifying his political portfolio and starting a ... ahem ... [ cough, cough ] ... and I quote : [via how open is the source | CivicSpace]:

By the way, you're the target competition of my coming site, and I'll be sure to steal ideas from your site regularly :)

Mr. Scott Sala of SlantPoint, which seems to be the only NYC Republican blog worth reading, is starting a CivicSpace run community site for NYC Republicans. And given I am active in the CivicSpaceLabs community, trying to find ways to simplify the use of the technology for grassroots organizing, yours truly here will be actually giving some open-source love to Mr. Sala. Yup. You heard it here : I will be helping out a fellow Republican, and my competition, nonetheless, get his site off the ground for the sake of non-partisan open-source cooperation. As I wrote back at CivicSpaceLabs : [via Re: Pathetic Territoriality | CivicSpace]:

To claim to be working for social justice and then expect software to be released under one definition of social justice is counterproductive at best; fascistic at worse. That way of thinking is more aligned with, for example, the dominionists zeal for turning the US government to the service first of god and then of country --and their definitions of both, btw-- than progressive values. The practices have to be aligned with the values for them to have actual moral weight. I do believe though that the practices involved in developing and supporting open-source software is an expression of liberal and progressive values. I do believe as well that the cooperation and tolerance that is needed for an open-source volunteer community to thrive is the kind of democratic practices we are missing in our day-to-day lives. We need tolerance for a true democracy to thrive. You can't just speak tolerance. You have to practice it.

So, for the sake of keeping our democracy alive, what would you suggest Mr. Sala do with his site? Do you have any words of wisdom for him? Remember, this is about keeping a diversity of opinions alive for the sake of our democracy. It does not mean you just have to give up on what you believe. What was my response to his "you're my target" comment? : BRING IT ON BABY! I sprinkle Republicans on my granola. And yet ... and yet ... I think this would be an awesome opportunity for the political bloggers here in NYC to talk tech, talk NYC, talk politics and share in the spirit of bi-partisan cooperation. Don't you think?