Charles' posts are way better when he doesn't state his opinions, i think he has a bright future if he keeps this up. Thanks for sharing this info though, quite interesting.

He didn't deserve to die. He deserved to fade into obscurity, scorned, with his ideals becoming irrelevant and Poland prospering without him. Now he's a tragic figure, which is a shame.

If I was a nasty person (which I'm not) I just might have exceeded my RDA of schadenfreude...

But he was such a good Catholic.

karma, even in former Eastern Bloc areas....is a bitch, sometimes.

Obama should still go to the funeral out of respect for Poland, the way the Polish president would have come to the funeral of President Cheney had he died in a plane crash.

polish girls are hot

So why was the entire top echelon of the Polish political, military and financial class on the same goddam plane?

very interesting, thank you for mentioning this.

Kaczynski and his twin brother, the former PM, were/are psycho right-wingers, though the article's a bit harsh on him for the 90s economic policies; today, Kaczynski's party is the party of government subsidies for farmers and the "traditional" Poland. Tusk, the current, nominally liberal PM, is much more free market. Whatever the case, the Kaczynskis represented a rear guard that's hopefully on its way out. I think it was a member of their party who decried the gay elephant at the Poznan zoo, which got a bunch of attention last year--he said something like, "We didn't build the biggest elephant house in Europe to house a gay elephant." That's the sort of people Law & Justice Party are. But their politics are fading; the part of the elephant story that didn't get reported as much was the huge gay rights party they threw for him in Poznan. That's the future, that's why Kaczynski's brother is no longer PM, and that's why Kaczynski was going to lose the presidency.

It's also important to keep in mind that part of the shock is over all those people dying at once on the way to commemorate Katyn. I think even the crane operator whose firing kick-started Solidarity died in the crash. It was a big deal in a really emotional place.

Charles,
"De mortuis nil nisi bonum" "Of the dead, say nothing but good"

I find it in poor taste to criticize Pres. Kaczynski right now. Poland is going through hell. Even Pres. Obama is to attend the funeral. We should show solidarity (not contempt of this particular President) with the Polish people. We most certainly wouldn't want this kind of commentary (obviously from the other side of the political spectrum) for Pres. Obama should this kind of horror have happened to him and the USA. This is a tragedy of greatest magnitude. Let's show a tad of respect. To all the victims RIP.

BTW, here's an interesting take on the disaster:

http://www.opendemocracy.net/adam-chmiel…

@11 in europe liberal=libertarian

But was he a bag of chips?

Sounds like the kind of candidate SLOG's resident trolls could get behind.

His identical twin (and equally homophobic) brother was outed as gay a few years ago. It would have been great if they both were on the plane.