Hear here.

How many Pollocks did it take to change their government?

Good luck fellas - you will not regret it.

My cousin is an electrical engineer with Poland's largest telecom company AIR. He is buying a home in Gdansk using a zero interest loan from his employer. His dad, my uncle, recently retired from this loose shit guv-ment job and is the third generation to be living in the same home. Needless to say dad and son don't see eye-to-eye economically.

Ask anyone in Poland, and they will tell you they HATE communism. But ask anybody about the loss of those sweet lazy-ass jobs with subsistance wages and retirement, and everyone over40 just shits.

I'm glad to see the movers and shakers are finally in charge over there. I think I'll e-mail my cuz in celebration and have myself a shot of Wiborowa.

Na zdrowia!

Maybe they can start making a few more little Polish people now?

I admire the electorate of Poland. But really they've been dumping every government they get, one after another. The last one was especially scandal plagued. No Polish government has been reelected since communism fell. Maybe this one will be different?

But really they've been dumping every government they get, one after another

Not a big thing in europe. What's the historical average lifespan for any given Italian government? 18 months maybe? Some never make it that long.

Some countries just change governments like underwear. Its better than having a bunch of messy coups.

What does it tell us when Poland institutes a flat tax but Republican Senators (admittedly a sorry bunch) won't get behind the Fair Tax proposal in the good ol' USA? For those who are uninformed about Fair Tax, ( Libby Dole, John Sununu, et al., I'm talking to you), check out http://www.fairtax.org or read the book on the subject by Neil Boortz and John Linder.

Long live a free Poland!

I heard this joke once: A Pole finds a bottle with a genie inside it, who informs him he was 3 wishes
"As my first wish...I wish for a mongol horde to ravage Poland"
The genie is taken aback but it is granted. The country is in a mess. The genie then says, "what is your second wish?"
"I wanta mongol horde to ravage Poland"
The genie then says "you do know that you have only 3 wishes and this one is the second?"
"Yep. Mongol horde."
What little is left from the first raid is destroyed in the second. Now it was time for his third and final wish. The genie figured this one was going to be good. And it was the same as the first two. The genie shrieked "LAST WISH". "You going to give me my wish or not?"
Reluctantly, after protestations, the wish was granted.
As they stood in the rubbled rubble the genie asked him why he did it, did he hate his countrymen, did he lose a great love?
"Nope," the Polish man explained, "everytime they attack Poland they have to cross Russia and go back across Russia when they are done"

"...they HATE communism....But ask anybody about the loss of those sweet lazy-ass jobs with subsistance wages and retirement, and everyone over40 just shits."

Uhh, I was trying to put it more diplomatically in the post, but yeah, that seems to be the size of it.

'Give us the freedom but not the responsibility'
or
'I want to get paid but I don't want to work for it.'

It is funny, because there is a sizeable Polish community near where I live, and they're known to be hard workers and good savers.

Again, America draining the best instincts from Europe and leaving the ossified and surly over there.

Lauraw:

Forty years of imposed communism can make a people a bit nuts. And suck the drive right out of them when every hard working person gets no more pay than the slacker, but will get a higher quota.

I know, I see it happen to union workers all the time.

They start out as high producers and then get the initiative dragged out of them by their Union brothers and management.

Then they turn around and beat the spirit out of the new guys too.

I remember working part-time at a Ford stamping plant while I was in college. Not long after I started, I was getting really frustrated during one shift because defective parts kept coming down the line. One of the senior workers actually pulled me aside and told me my "problem" was that I actualy cared about the work, and I needed to get over it.

I'll never forget that incident. During the '80s when foreign (especially Japanese) auto companies were seriously kicking Detroit's ass and massive layoffs ensued, it was hard for me to feel bad about it.

I think they've got a flat tax in Ukraine now too.