Pestiside 1, Soros 0 in Online Election-Throwing Contest

In a stunning upset likely to send shockwaves throughout the so-called "blogosphere," recently-launched Hungarian-American website Pestiside.hu yesterday beat recently-launched Hungarian-American website www.georgesoros.com in the race to be the first Internet weblog, or "blog," to successfully throw a significant electoral contest.

At roughly 7:00 p.m. last night, the American Chamber of Commerce in Hungary announced on its website that investment advisory executive Les Nemethy (top left) had been elected its new president. Nemethy's victory followed the publication of a piercing investigative account in Pestiside earlier in the day containing heaps of trash about his principal opponent, niche publisher and electronic do-dad wallah Peter Freed. The article, which observers said was "spot-on" if "maybe a bit too long," was read by hundreds of people in the hours leading up to the election, and, according to several participants, may have been the deciding factor. Meanwhile, a full week after George Soros launched his blog, the billionaire financier and philanthropist has yet to throw a single major election anywhere in the world.

"We are delighted to be the first to prove that you can throw an election just by sitting at home and posting nasty stuff about the person you want to lose," Pestiside editor/publisher Erik D'Amato said in a written statement. "And we are especially thrilled that we beat George bácsi [Uncle George] to the punch."

The Hungarian-born Soros is famous for using complex, billion-dollar financial transactions to bankrupt countries and then using the proceeds to overthrow governments and replace them with people more to his fancy. Pestiside, which was launched on Sept. 7, is known for providing pithy news items, gossip and bar and restaurant tips for the Hungarian capital, Budapest.

While Soros is promoting his new site with via an unprecedented advertising campaign, including the posting of so-called "blogads" on dozens of influential amateur and professional websites, Pestiside has limited its promotional activity to sending out emails to friends asking them to check it out.

Because of the great disparity of resources, D'Amato said Pestiside will not focus on throwing the upcoming US presidential election, a goal that seems foremost in Soros's mind. While refusing to rule out a role in the tightly-fought contest between incumbent George W. Bush (above, right) and challenger John Kerry, he said Pestiside will instead concentrate on intervening in smaller and more manageable contests.

"We are looking at upcoming national elections in Togo, the Cook Islands, and a local contest in the Promyshlennovsky district of Russia's southeastern Kemerovo Oblast," D'Amato said. "But our overriding concern right now is the race for senior class president at Glenbeulah High School in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin, where the favorite of the popular "in" crowd, a football player named Chad, looks set to win even though everyone knows he is, like, a total, total turd."