And industrial strength long-johns are what I'm wearing!! I live in them this time of year... it's been at least -10F every night since last Tuesday and I'm not even in the coldest part of the polar vortex.

You could also have pointed out that he was always rabidly anti-union(this from a former union leader)as president.

None of the democratic-socialist ideals of Solidarity in the Gdansk shipyards ever came close to being applied by the so-called "Solidaraity" government.

Meaning he wanted unions to exist within capitalism / the markets. People demean trade unions but in reality they are all that exist now, as a response to the industrial revolution. So I think you're being unfair with that characterization.

He was against government managed unions which is what the Soviets brought to the table. Gdansk , the state owned company, was the epitome of Soviet controlled industry which failed due to government control. FYI, before it became run by a trade union it was a military focused industry. This is unsustainable.

That said, I am merely responding to the poll options. Rosa Luxemburg would be a far better option.

since she mainly worked there(having been exiled from Poland at a fairly early age).

And what I was saying about Walesa was that, even though the Solidarity program called for workers' control and management of the factories, once in power he was no friend of even independent trade unions, using his time in office to push a right-wing austerity agenda that did Poland no good at all. His program led to former Solidarity supporters losing their jobs in Western-imposed layoffs(which should have been something he would refuse to do).

BTW, while I deeply respect your views-you're taking this poll a bit too seriously-it was meant to be a comic poll, based on the similarity in sounds between "Poll" and "Pole". That's why the choices were five random Poles from history.

I was merely giving my opinion on the "hilarity" of putting an anti-gay/choice ideologue in the options.

I didn't vote for him for those reasons.

He didn't serve a long enough term for one to credibly say he was against trade unions, because most Baltic states underwent massive, repressive, detrimental austerity. By design. They were completely obliterated by the former USSR before they became their own states and were literally at the whims of Russian oligarchs. This is uncontroversial.

If you look at every single Baltic state's economic status and health status after the breakaway, you could have called them failed states, but with western economic efforts, many of them managed to do even better than Russia. Most if not all at this point, since Russia has become a petrostate.

(actually,that would be the "Poll Poll&quot .

Get it? Totem Poles? Sometimes I crack myself up!

Also, as mentioned already, no Chopin?

Mislead all these years by a line remembered from an old Physics textbook: "The Curies named the new element Polonium in honour of their homeland."

Bugger.

Nice choice.

Glad to help.