I had a lot of fun doing the crossword with a couple of other people last night. Just click the link to join

Good Game everyone. I think the puzzle only works if it's "-" rather than DASH but blame whoever uploaded it

We can do the LA Times Sunday crossword next.

https://downforacross.com/beta/game/6714578-phrist

FINISHED

I will keep adding Sunday crosswords I haven't done in this space, give me a moment

2016 Supermega

https://downforacross.com/beta/game/6714642-omp

This is an absolutely bombshell: the story about the cancelled elections in Romania is even far more sinister than previously thought.

A new report from investigative outlet https://t.co/b0c4sv4Xj3 (https://t.co/j2gt54H0F0) reveals that the TikTok campaign which was cited in the… https://t.co/ztQTGLRd5s

— Arnaud Bertrand (@RnaudBertrand) December 22, 2024

A month ago, November 24th, Romania held a presidential election.

The main parties running were the National Liberal Party (PNL) of Klaus Iohanis and the Social Democratic Party (PSD) of Marcel Ciolacu. Both Europhile, bureaucratic centrists. One slightly more pro-gibs. Imagine democrats and pre-Trump republicans but even more corrupt, stupid and incompetent. There were also other parties, some woke, others !chuds, but all tiny and boring.

Since Poomania has a multi-round election schema, the top candidates, Lasconi, Ciolacu, Simion, and Sosoaca, were angling for the top two spots and trying to kick their main rivals into third or fourth place.

Then election day came around and to everyone's chagrin all four got blown the frick out the water by a guy nobody'd ever heard of: Calin Georgescu, a far-right martial artist whose entire campaign was ran on tiktok. He would proceed to the second round and could potentially become the new leader of Romania (dubious honor)

This post is not about that.

After the election everyone panicked. Woke young romanians panicked because their favourite gibs and environmentalist causes were blown out the water. Geriatric bureaucrats panicked because the grift could end. Romania's European and American "allies" panicked because the last thing you want your puppets doing is voting in their best interest. In short, everyone chimped out and started flinging shit wherever they could to try to prevent Mr. Georgescu's further election.

The only people that didn't panic were the plurality of Romanians who'd voted for Mr. Georgescu. This is because they were too busy consooming tiktok reels.

On December 6nd, to nobody's surprise, a Constitutional Court made up of representatives of the loser parties overruled their earlier certification of the election because the Romanian president "declassified" some "information" that Calin Georgescu was - gasp -

A RUSSIAN AGENT

Somebody'd put together the equivalent of a Steele dossier "proving" that Tru- Georgescu was elected not thanks to savvy social media marketing and the stupidity, apathy and desire for change of Romanian voters, but LE HECKING EVIL RUSSARINOS

The EU, Western NGOs, CIA handlers etc. all hurriedly advised the immediate publication of this information and after some backroom political pressure the court made a mockery of the very concept of democracy by throwing out the election. NATO literally commanded them to do it, and the cucks complied, lmao. The only actual evidence was that Georgescu'd misreported his finances on some forms.

For comparison, the president elect of the United States misused or misappropriated over 500 times that in campaign funds. Nobody gives a shit because we're not kitties and no red-blooded American gives a shit about campaign finance contributions

Even in a shithole like Romania people mostly found the election annulment outrageous, except for this guy for some reason

Now the country will have a redo election in March or May or some shit and the Romanian glowies are busy raiding and harassing Georgescu so him and others like him will never again challenge the primacy of the unelected fаggots in charge of Draculand. No doubt they'll find he scratched his butt with his left hand instead of the right (contra EU directive 14[a]2.1) and needfully put him away for infinite lakh years.

This post is not about that.

@FourthEggnog's r-slurred gypsy butt made a couple of posts about these events swallowing the Russia hoax hook, line, and sinker.

This is because he, like every Romanian, is dumber than the darkest, stupidest !dixie swamp !BIPOCs

His hypothesis (to put it generously) was that Romania was not actually a failing regime of bean counters, incompetent narcissists, subverted and bribed traitors, etc. In fact, all of these were but a front for the actual power behind the throne, a shadowy decades-old cabal of commie spooks

This form of "reasoning" is common among the severely r-slurred. 310+ dramatards upmarseyd and presumably believed his schizophrenic ramblings, despite the fact they made no sense.

...

I was going to go through both posts and link all the shit he said that contradicted itself or was batshit r-slurred but it's literally both giant posts. Seriously, read them. They're entertaining (in the @kaamrev neurodivergent-on-amphetamines way) but 180 degrees diametric to the actual situation. It's insane that someone can have this tenuous a connection to reality while still being able to type.

BREAKING NEWS

Couple days ago a Romanian investigative outlet published a bombshell investigative report into who ACTUALLY funded Georgescu.

To the SHOCK of !nooticers it was... the ruling party itself

A new report from investigative outlet snoop.ro reveals that the TikTok campaign which was cited in the declassified Romanian intelligence documents (summarized in my post below 👇) as evidence of foreign interference - and used as grounds to cancel the presidential election - was actually paid for by the ruling National Liberal Party (PNL), the very party that supported cancelling the elections!

According to the investigation, the campaign called "#EchilibrușiVerticalitate" that the intelligence services claimed was "identical to Russian operations in Ukraine" was organized by a marketing firm called Kensington Communication, hired by PNL (the ruling party), who paid Kensington over 1 million RON for it (about $210,000). Kensington then used a platform called FameUp to coordinate 130 influencers with specific scripts and messaging guidelines.

This puts the declassified intelligence documents in an entirely new light. What they presented as evidence of foreign interference was actually a campaign paid for by the ruling party. The same party that then supported using these allegations of "foreign interference" to cancel an election they were losing.

Even more bizarrely, confronted by journ*lists, Kensington Communication initially denied using the hashtag but later admitted to creating the campaign for PNL, claiming it was meant to be called "#echilibrusiseriozitate" and was changed to "#echilibrusiverticalitate" without their knowledge. Yeah, right...

This means that either the Romanian intelligence services didn't know this was a PNL-funded campaign when they used it as evidence to cancel the election (which raises huge questions about their competence), or they did know and didn't disclose it (which raises even bigger questions about their integrity).

In any case, it seems to indicate that something extremely sinister happened in Romania: a ruling party used intelligence services to cancel an election based on "foreign interference" evidence that they themselves paid for!

Followup:

Also, interestingly, Politico is completely misrepresenting this bombshell investigation: Report ties Romanian liberals to TikTok campaign that fueled pro-Russia candidate

Let me show you how they're trying to spin it.

Politico claims that the investigation shows that "a campaign from a governing center-right party may have been hijacked to benefit far-right candidate." They're framing PNL as being a victim here, seeing their TikTok campaign "hijacked to benefit Georgescu".

But the snoop.ro investigation demolishes this narrative with hard evidence because they found Kensington's (PNL's contractor) original brief and proved influencers were following their exact scripts. The investigation shows exact matches between the script and influencer videos. How is that "hijacking" when the influencers were doing exactly what the brief told them to do?

Most importantly, Politico completely buries the lead: a ruling party paid for a social media campaign that was then used by intelligence services as evidence of 'foreign interference' to cancel an election. That's not a 'hijacking' - that's an explosive scandal about potential abuse of intelligence services for political purposes.

This isn't sloppy journ*lism - it's active misrepresentation. Politico has access to the same snoop.ro investigation we're reading. They chose to ignore the documented evidence of word-for-word script following and instead push this 'hijacking' narrative that the evidence explicitly contradicts.

Instead of investigating how a ruling party's campaign ended up being used as evidence to cancel a democratic election, Politico is helping construct a cover story. They're turning what appears to be potential intelligence service abuse into a story about campaign "hijacking".

Which means we potentially have another major scandal on our hands here: major EU media outlets - the same EU media outlets that regularly lecture about threats to democracy - appear to help obscure what might be the most serious abuse of intelligence services for political purposes in recent EU history.``

I called it as not being the Russians two fricking weeks ago

But this dumbass doubled down on the Russian collusion shit. Fricking tard.

HIs "explanation" goes on and on, increasingly unhinged. Blueanon on the Danube.

To conclude, I am now convinced - as you should be - that the Romanian Constitutional Court was correct in cancelling this election. Where it erred is in not cancelling every future election as well, as Romanians are too stupid to self-govern. Instead, American viceroys must be appointed, to guide the ignorant and wayward vlach peasant into a comfortable, pleasant and thought-free life licking NATO's taint while selling his country and resources to our benevolent corporations.

Ford Motor Company must have been hacked by the Free Palestine movement. pic.twitter.com/4VOk1nPy0n

— Ritchie Torres (@RitchieTorres) December 30, 2024

https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/ford-motor-cos-x-account-posts-israel-terrorist-state-calls-free-palestine

She. Has. A. PhD. In Literary and Cultural Studies. She is 👏 literally 👏 an 👏 expert 👏 in 👏 "Hanging Out." Are you questioning the experts yet again, Jarvis? Have you ever gone "Hanging Out" yourself?

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) December 31, 2024

The grooming gangs trial summary transcripts are utterly grotesque. It’s incredible we haven’t had mass civil unrest. Media reporting guidelines helped bottle it up. Some of these people are going to walk free soon. https://t.co/nz2O0OKPwS pic.twitter.com/e3TtyWkYsv

— max tempers (@maxtempers) December 30, 2024

Wignat reactions

So true Whites and Muslims are basically brothers. United against the idolator menace. 💪💪💪

The vast majority of living matter is plants, not animal, therefor the vast majority of oil derives from plants.

That said, this is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of what veganism is. Veganism is about avoiding animal "exploitation" to whatever extent possible. Being turned into oil after dying in tar 100 million years ago has nothing whatsoever to do with human exploitation of animals.

I hear you, but whenever I hear the phrase "to whatever extent possible", it seems like a cop-out for "to whatever extent I deem convenient". If all of a sudden some component of veganism becomes too inconvenient, would they just change the rules?

"Possible" isn't really that weak of a condition. You'd have to be very disingenuous to interpret that as "convenient". I don't know why anyone would do that, since there aren't any social advantages to being vegan.

If there were some sort of mandate to be vegan, then I'm sure people would invoke all manner of excuses. That's not the world we live in, though.

"Possible" is a really strong condition. The reason I replace it with convenient is because I don't think anyone takes the word "possible" seriously.

It's possible to live in a world without plywood, glue, and dyes derived from animals, but I don't know any vegans who are willing to go that far. It's just not very convenient.

Vegans that are vegans for ethical reasons aren't opposed to animals dying naturally and their bodies finding other uses. They're against killing animals that would otherwise be alive.

Are they ok with using leather, furs, or something like an ivory tusk from animals that died naturally? I thought those kinds of animal by-products were against the rules no matter what

Probably, assuming they felt confident that they died naturally.

Let us remember that these people, by not eating meat, do not usually think clearly.

fishb-word you can have sloppy fourths, take a number

!the_donald !project2025 !trump2024 !trump2028 !metashit !alligatorfrickhouse

i haven't seen twitter say anything about this fedex ad and i really think more people need to see what they're doing on tv pic.twitter.com/zcjIMguiAf

— jori (@JorianneFM) December 28, 2024

Also this same Spiderverse/Arcane/Nimona animation style is getting me , getting more tired of it than the pseudo-anime artstyle that The Last Airbender and Legend of Korra spawned in the 2010s animation sphere.

This ad is still good tho!

!anime !burgers !fellas

For every mid white guy who loses his job to an Asian guy on an H1B visa, there is another mid white guy who goes to Asia and bangs like 30 of their women.

— molson 🧠⚙️ (@Molson_Hart) December 29, 2024

Being pissed that Jews dominate their capitals and making fun of them

https://instagram.com/reel/DEDW6yFoD3t/

Where the GOP abandons the old southern strategy republicans over time and transforms into a diverse technocrat bro party, while the Democrats return to being the party of racism, the KKK and sexism and icky mayo white bios and abandons wokeism, DEI, black people, and their old base. Would be hilarious lmao.

rip @sadreturn bloody chode fricking bastard bloody

unreal pic.twitter.com/kj7aKoWUBx

— Dark Reject ☦︎ (@saddestreturn) December 27, 2024

Heeeere we go.

Who is /u/Remyraccongirl? Transgender furry who posts to /r/Defeat_Project_2025 and other similarly cringe subs.

Here's a bit of xir insanity:

Frick that evil orange clown.

And frick this pick me b-word, Blaire, Who will sell out her entire community just so she can be the last in line for the death camps.

https://old.reddit.com/r/millenials/comments/1e4o0sc/donald_trump_i_took_a_bullet_for_this_country_i/ldg80r1/?context=8

That got a warning from Reddit it seems.

Is anyone else tired of being tired of this kind of shit...

I will never understand how the 21st century fascist movement could be so obvious and apparent and yet so many people gleefully join in.

I guess oppressing others must be a really intoxicating feeling for these fricks.

Oh come on already go to fricking Palestine and tell me how bad it is to live in a country where you can actually walk on the streets as a creepy tranner. Oh wait that's the US.

This is the world they want, not safe to use any public facilities. They just want us in the closet or dead.

Frickin fence sitters and "centrists" and their excuse making is what allows extremists to pervert the law and society into what we're seeing play out across the nation and abroad.

Neighbor thems fighting words. Be careful who you piss off

Xir is also a "writer":

https://medium.com/@aubryrpg/the-genocidal-fascist-ideology-of-maga-886a1eca5917

All two articles, one of them being a fanfic or something.

Speaking as someone who's been trying to combat online radicalization for many years. It is a very good idea to help young people understand the conservative ideology that is driving the current fascist hate movement. They thrive on projection, Repression, Intuitive disgust responses, gaslamping, and especially d.a.r.v.o. it seems. I am not very well versed on therapy, but I am extremely educated in political ideologies and policies. The rise of individuals like Andrew Tate, sneako, Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh, and many, many others. Is a symptom of the ideology they are peddling.

Try to combat online radicalization.... Screeches mildly innocuous people.

I'm far more concerned with his open screeds calling for death camps, mass deportations, banning the existence of certain types of humans, dismantling the entirety of the bureaucratic system designed to prevent megalomaniacs from engaging in the most depraved acts known to humanity.

But yea... also, everything will cost more.

literally worried about mean words.

Some adults feel this way too. Myself included. I'm so existentially disappointed in America and humans in general.

Something has to change.

These kids deserve to be able to live their lives.

Talking about trans kids. Literal fricking libertarianphile.

A literal psycho on every level.

One more psychotic redditor documented.

!chuds !transphobes

God invented the ocean just for me. 9/10

caught a few fish nothing to big. Just wanted to flex the ocean.

pic.twitter.com/2aznGsy4zt

— Kurogane ''John Retаrd'' Yuuji ☄️|📗|🔌🐰 (@KuroganeYuuji) December 31, 2024

New poo game

2024 was an incredible year for @Kalshi

From 1.3 million new users to beating the political polls.

Here’s our 2024👇 pic.twitter.com/xwCm7GjoBK

— Tarek Mansour (@mansourtarek_) December 31, 2024

Recruiting for a very small number of full-time salaried HR, IT, and Finance positions.

If interested, please DM us your resume and a few bullet points about why you are interested in DOGE.

— Department of Government Efficiency (@DOGE) December 28, 2024

cc @cyberdick @Fresh_Start

Mention that you are not American and will work 90 hours for 40 hours of pay every week and it will buy your family back home the nicest hut in the slum.

!gayporn !gaystapo !builtfor !bbc 8 WERE BLACK 10 ASIAN 6 LATINX 9 WHITE

Hello

Are you enjoying the last days before the gym becomes virtually unusable for 3 months?

!fitness