Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Saving the Duck Republic, At All Cost


It's almost pathetic the way the Kaczynski Twins misplayed their hand in Poland's political poker. First, they bring in The Self Defense party and it's mercurial leader Andrzej Lepper (in all his glory in the photo), along with the so-rightwing-they're-wrong party, the League of Polish Families. Then they push Lepper to the wall and he bites back, leaving the coalition. Then our favorite brothers try to buy several Self Defense members to join the coalition without much success. Their whole dirty scheme comes into light when Polish TV station TVN plays exerts of the strong-arm sessions with one of the more colorful members of Self Defense. Got it all?

Well, the kicker is that the Kaczynskis are now trying to bring Self-Defense and Lepper back into government... I don't know if the twins could have wasted any more political capital. Their poll numbers are way down, so they had to come crawling back to Lepper, which will give him a much stronger hand when, as I fear, he comes back into the coalition. And so the Duck Republic continues its flight south, just in time for the winter.

On a different front, perhaps related to all those German kartoffel jokes, Poland's potato production is down this year...

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