Calendars

Maggie Oster's Herb Gardens calendar

For some unfathomable reason, I've always liked calendars. I appreciate their decorative aspect -- I like having nice pictures that change every month. Somehow, I must also like the time-monitoring aspect as well. Perhaps changing the page every month helps punctuate the increasingly relentless march of time.

The only place I've found for a calendar in our house is in the kitchen. Last year, I had a herb garden calendar by Maggie Oster that worked particularly well, so I got another one for 2013. There are pretty photos of herb gardens along with a seasonal recipe using herbs for each month and various little facts sprinkled through the days of the month, along with the usual holidays and other calendar items. I don't have available wall space in my office and it doesn't make sense to have a calendar in a room, like our finished basement, where I don't spend much time, so the kitchen is it.

In Europe, there was always a wide selection of very nice calendars in all shapes and sizes. Predictably, calendars have been standardized and commercialized here to the point that they come in more or less one size, so that they fit into the display racks in stores. They generally all follow the same format of unfolding with a photo on the top page and the calendar on the bottom page. So the beautiful big calendars I had in Europe, with large pictures and only a token listing of the days (who really needs a calendar to figure out the date?), are a thing of the past.

As I'm experimenting with Pinterest, I've created an "Ideal Calendar" pinboard with the idea of picturing one to four places where I would like to spend all or part of each month. I already have three for January and one for February. I'm beginning to think the year will be too short to put in all the places I'd like to spend time! I'm trying to divide the photos between places I've been in that month (and, it goes without saying, would like to revisit) and new places I'd like to visit.

In general, Pinterest, with its focus on the visual is a bit like a calendar of one's life -- big photos with few words marking the various interests you have.

Taking peace and democracy for granted

In my MarketWatch column yesterday, I quoted a speech from Jamie Galbraith about the risk of an "explosion of violence" in Europe. He said that Yugoslavia is a model for what could happen, as social and economic rivalries -- not age-old ethnic hatreds -- led to violence when that union disintegrated.

There wasn't space in the column to remind readers that the two countries hardest hit so far by the euro crisis -- Greece and Spain -- are also (coincidentally?) the two latecomers to democracy. Greece was ruled by a military junta from 1967 to 1974, and Spain transitioned to democracy only after Franco's death in late 1975.

This wasn't so long ago. One of the reasons the EU was created was to promote and support democratic rule in Europe and it is a condition for membership. The irony of the joint currency is that it seems to be subverting this overarching goal rather than supporting it. The New Dawn fascist party in Greece has links to the old junta, while in Spain the very concept of a unified nation is being challenged as a result of the economic crisis.

Galbraith goes on to say that another model for disintegration in Europe is the amicable divorce between the Czech Republic and Slovakia. "But I have to ask," Galbraith asks rhetorically, "does any country anywhere in the world enjoy the sane, secure, farsighted moral leadership that Czechoslovakia happened to have had at that time?"

The bloodshed and genocide that accompanied the dissolution of Yugoslavia into the 1990s is still the subject of prosecution in international courts. Merkel, focused so singlemindedly on getting herself reelected next year, takes peace and democracy in Europe for granted only at her peril and great risk to her country and the rest of Europe.

Starbucks propaganda

Ed Kilgore has a pointed blog post about Starbucks' disgusting and hypocritical "Come together" campaign, exploiting baristas to spread propaganda about reducing entitlements that counters their own best interests.

Like Whole Foods, Starbucks is headed by a CEO with decidedly paternalistic and borderline fascistic tendencies. It's disturbing to me that two companies that help make my life in Washington more pleasant are led by these ideological egomaniacs.

Washington unfortunately is lacking in a cafe culture, at least in Upper Northwest, that provides convenient alternatives to Starbucks. I do seek out what alternatives there are -- Marvelous Market, Politics & Prose, the little coffee place at Fessenden and Wisconsin, even the Avalon cafe -- whenever possible. I'm loath to suggest moving our Saturday morning kaffee klatch out of Starbucks because it works so well the way it is.

Whole Foods is harder, though their overweening arrogance in carrying only those products that meet some high-faluting standard they set, for letting a computer decide what products disappear from their shelves, and lately, I'm coming to suspect deliberately, leaving "sale" price signs posted while charging the full price at the register -- all these again are making shopping there less and less enjoyable.

Make Bloomberg gun czar

Chris Matthews has been touting Michael Bloomberg for a cabinet post like Treasury, arguing that a guy with his obvious talents and desire to serve should be put to use. I worked for Bloomberg and dealt with him from time to time. I have a lot of admiration for his good qualities, though I personally would not want to see him as Treasury secretary because he has some primitive ideas about government finance.

However, the tragic killing of Connecticut schoolchildren today makes some drastic action on gun control necessary and Bloomberg would be the ideal person to head up a special presidential task force bringing together federal, state and local officials to figure out sensible ways to keep automatic weapons out of the hands of unbalanced individuals.

Gun control per se is obviously a vexed issue in this country. But a starting point would be to figure out ways to enforce existing laws, to close the loopholes that allow unscrupulous dealers to sell guns in defiance of background check requirements, and to educate people about the proper use of firearms. This has been one of Bloomberg's biggest issues as New York mayor. He is passionate about it, he is savvy, and he is on the side of the angels on this one.

Someone else can finish out his term as mayor. President Obama should appoint him tomorrow with an executive order creating this task force.

Susan Rice's smart decision

Susan Rice made the smart move and got President Obama out of a bind. It was virtually impossible for her nomination to be confirmed in the Senate, leaving Obama the awkward choice of fighting a futile battle -- when he already has so many of those on his hands -- or be seen as caving to Republican opposition.

Liberals are quick to call this a smear campaign, but there's clearly more to this whole Benghazi affair than meets the eye and Rice may not be wholly innocent.

More to the point, however, is that she would have been a lousy choice for secretary of State. She has by all accounts been a bully and a remarkably undiplomatic diplomat throughout her career at State. Her version of Realpolitik with regard to African dictators hardly recommends her. She will doubtless do well in the private sector if she now chooses to leave public service.

This probably opens the door for John Kerry, after all, even with the risk that brings for his Senate seat. There's no reason to think he wouldn't be a very good secretary of State. A lot of us thought he would have made a good president.

Michigan

There's a lot of anguish over Michigan's new "right to work" law -- the one that allows workers not to pay union dues even if they are covered by the collective bargaining agreement reached on their behalf by the union.

I don't know the details of what has been happening in Michigan -- how it is that Republicans control both houses of the legislature and the state house. But it seems to me that you cannot blame the Republicans for this. They have always championed "right to work" and every other measure to restrict or eliminate union activity. It's like letting a fox into the hen house and then being surprised you have dead chickens. It's what foxes do.

Blame, if that's what you want to apportion, would seem to go first and foremost to Michigan voters, and particularly white working-class voters who voted against their own economic self-interest by giving the Republicans control of state government. You can be a single-issue voter at your risk, because you vote for a package of measures when you elect one party or the other. It may be that for whatever reason you don't like a black president who Rush Limbaugh has convinced you is going to take away your guns, so you can vote Republican. The next thing you know, the Republicans have gutted union rights and stripped you of a very helpful protection at work.

The unions are also to blame, of course. Now they say they are going to work "unceasingly" to turn Republicans out of office in the next elections. Again, I don't know how active or inactive unions were in the last round of Michigan elections, but the question does come to mind of where were you then. More basic, though, is the fact that unions have allowed the perception to grow that they are complacent and smug, more interested in protecting their members than fighting for the working class in general. This may be an inaccurate perception, but if so it needs to be combated more vigorously.

It is sad to see union rights eroded after all the heroic effort it took to win them. Hopefully, this will produce a backlash strong enough to turn the tide and lead voters to make choices in their own best interest.

Jim DeMint

Some people seem to think it's a smart move for the enfant terrible of the Tea Party, Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina, to quit the Senate and take the helm at the Heritage Foundation. The thinking seems to be it will give him a platform to be an even bigger enforcer of conservative purity than he can be in the Senate, where he rubs many of his colleagues the wrong way. Look at what Grover Norquist has been able to do outside public office.

Perhaps, but my take is different. I see little else but a cut and run. DeMint doesn't like the prospect of being in the minority without any of the privileges and power of a committee chairmanship. He does like the prospect of making a million dollars-plus. It's hard to see this as anything other than a sell-out. Ultimately, a senator has power that is very real. There are only a hundred of them and they make the laws, they shape the laws and they exert their influence in a myriad of ways because they can do that. It's not something to give up lightly.

To me it's a signal that DeMint realizes the game is lost. He is just the first rat off the sinking ship. It is the country's gain.

More scary Romney bubble

It turns out Romney wasn't the only one who was shocked, shocked that Obama won. According to Chrystia Freeland in conversation with Ezra Klein, many of his fellow plutocrats who supported him were equally shocked.

Chrystia Freeland: There’s a great joke on Wall Street which is that the bet on Romney is Wall Street’s worst bet since the bet on subprime. But I found the hostility towards Obama astonishing. I found the commitment to getting him out astonishing. I found the absolute confidence that it would work astonishing. On that Tuesday, the big Romney backers I was talking to were sure he was going to win. They were all flying into Logan Airport for the victory party. There’s this stunned feeling of how could we be so wrong, and a feeling of alienation.The Romney comments to his donors, for which he was roundly pounced on by Republican politicians, I think they accurately reflected the view of a lot of these money guys. It’s the continuation of this 47 percent idea. They believe that Obama has been shoring up the entitlement society, and if you give enough entitlements to enough people, they’ll vote for you. 

Lost week

Thanksgiving fell on the earliest date possible this year because Nov. 1 was a Thursday so the fourth Thursday was only three weeks into the month. Normally the holiday falls in the last week of November and the whole week is off limits for scheduling any meetings or conferences or interviews.

But this year, there was a full week in November after Thanksgiving week. My calendar, however, is blank, and I think it's because people never really put two and two together to realize they could schedule events without the holiday interfering. The week kind of got lost in the shuffle.

Talking heads

I'm almost saturated with MSNBC for this campaign cycle and still watch it only for the long denouement. What bothered me yesterday was their willingness to equate talking heads like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly with Bobby Jindal and Marco Rubio as spokesmen for the Republican Party.

Limbaugh for sure, and I suspect O'Reilly as well, are simply entertainers -- cynical entertainers -- who spin their foul ideas simply to make money. They are equivalent to Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, who at least admit they're comedians, not to elected public officials. It may be true that politicians quiver in their shoes at the prospect of Limbaugh or O'Reilly banishing them from the circle of acceptable conservatism, but until someone with enough courage to call their bluff finally prevails, they will continue to have real power of censorship.

The most ridiculous statement of the week, though, obviously belongs to Marco Rubio, dodging a question about the earth's age by saying I'm not a scientist, man. This is a dispute for "theologians," a "mystery" we may never know the answer to. Patent nonsense. I was suspending judgment on Rubio, but no more. He is dishonest and hypocritical in this response and now I tend to believe he deliberately burnished the false history of his parents' flight from Cuba. Hopefully his lies will catch up with him before he becomes a serious candidate for president.

The Petraeus Affair

Robert Ludlum could hardly come up with a better title. It's no surprise that someone with Petraeus's drive and ego, separated from his wife for long periods, would have an affair. That Broadwell's subsequent biography, most commonly described as "fawning," would be a bestseller is just par for the course in our uncritical media and publishing world.

The most interesting factoid to emerge is that Petraeus's wife, Holly, was the daughter of the general who headed West Point when Petraeus was a cadet there. What better way to fast-track a military career, cynics might ask.

National security is not my bailiwick, but it seems clear there's more here than meets the eye. I've never been a fan of Petraeus, who seemed like a relentless self-promoter who was at times disloyal to his commander in chief. The only justification for Obama appointing this Republican general to a sensitive administration post is to keep your enemies nearer. At least this whole brouhaha distracts from the endless media dribble about the fiscal cliff.

The scary Romney bubble

The post-election story about how Romney and Ryan were "shell-shocked" as returns came in showing an Obama victory is scary enough in itself and makes the overall fact that these men did as well as they did scarier than ever.

It shows that this rampant Republican sense of entitlement to their own facts, their denial of any truth that is inconvenient for their ideology, is not some harmless little quirk of character -- it is a menace to the body politic. The idea that anyone as out of touch with reality, as willing to consider only the sources of information that cater to his idea of the world could have had any significant power is frightening.

There was a lot of talk in the Romney campaign about finding a Republican Nate Silver, on the premise that Silver's models showing an Obama edge were deliberately skewed for partisan purposes. Silver promptly said that he might well be the Republican Nate Silver himself -- if the polls and his models ever showed an edge for that party.

Silver deals with reality. The Republicans apparently don't. The joke making the rounds before the election -- a caricature of George Washington saying "I cannot tell a lie," of Richard Nixon saying "I cannot tell the truth," and of Mitt Romney saying, "I cannot tell the difference" -- is not so funny in retrospect.

Romney and Ryan were not dissembling. They are not just pathological liars -- they are psychologically disconnected from reality. And they got 48% of the vote.

Adieu, Paul Ryan

I'm amazed that so many people seem to think Paul Ryan still has a future in politics. As the MSNBC commentators noted last night his contribution to the campaign was a big, fat zero, and since he couldn't even carry his home state Romney might have been better off with Rob Portman to help tip the scales in the all-important Ohio.

Ryan's serial mendacity on the campaign trail before his handlers enforced a virtual media blackout should have completely discredited his claims to be a serious expert on anything, even though Paul Krugman had long since unmasked him as a fraud.

Unsuccessful vice presidential candidates as a rule have not had great post-election careers in recent times. The only example I could find in the past century of a losing VP nominee coming back to win high political office was a guy named Franklin Roosevelt, who at 38 was the running mate with James Cox in an election that they lost to Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge. This was before he was struck with the paralytic illness diagnosed as polio in 1921 and before his election as governor of New York in 1928.

But honestly I can't see Paul Ryan as a Franklin Roosevelt. If a much more formidable thinker and politician like Jack Kemp went nowhere after losing a national election, I don't see how Ryan will muster support for a new national campaign. The Republicans are going to have to tack more to the center represented by Chris Christie and the diversity represented by Marco Rubio.

I'm betting Ryan will even have trouble as Budget Committee chairman. He will be faced with the dilemma either of maintaining his reputation as a principled deficit hawk or heeding his baldfaced campaign lie that he is bipartisan. No prizes for guessing which way he will go, but it will definitively put the lie to any bipartisan pretensions.

In general, I expect a backlash in the Republican Party to a campaign based on lies. If the party has any hope for the future it will have to break the grip of the Roves and Norquists and find its way to the center with a good deal more integrity than it has shown in recent years. Again, for all the serious reservations I have about Christie, he seems well-positioned to lead the party in this direction.

Nate Silver nails it

Election night held virtually no surprises for those of us following Nate Silver's 538 blog at the New York Times. The poll aggregator and analyst had for a long time tracked the probability of a decisive Obama victory among swing states and an equally decisive result for Democrats to retain control of the Senate.

So the Romney supporters who profess to be sincerely stunned by the 11:15 announcement calling the race for Obama, or Eugene Robinson's surprise at the extent of the Obama swing state sweep on Morning Joe, just means they weren't paying attention.

There was simply no reason not to believe that Silver's models were doing anything other than following sophisticated statistical techniques for weighing and analyzing poll data to predict the result. There was no reason not to accept the evidence he provided that state polls on the whole were going to be more accurate than national polls, or in any event, given the Electoral College, more significant.

So Silver had put the probability of an Obama victory at 87% before the first debate, then tracked the plunge after that debate down into the 60s, only to end up yesterday with a 90% probability of an Obama victory and a conservative estimate of 303 electoral votes. More venturesome poll analysts who predicted 332 votes are more likely to be right once problem child Florida gets around to the unbelievably complicated process of counting their votes and those 29 electoral votes go into the Obama column.

Anyway, a big thanks to Silver for providing evidence on a daily basis that this country was not going off the rails and falling for the deceptions of two of the most dishonest politicians ever to head a national ticket.

The Electoral College chimera

Every four years there's a slew of opinion pieces about finally getting rid of the anachronism of the Electoral College. I've played that game myself, but it's one you can never win. We will never get rid of the Electoral College. In fact, we will never again make any substantive change to the Constitution.

Getting rid of the Electoral College, as argued once again in this post by Ryan Cooper at Washington Monthly, is one of those desirable but chimerical goals in American politics, like DC statehood. It will simply never happen.

So get over it, live with it. The article in Sunday's Times about the "The Vanishing Battleground" pointed out that in 1960 Nixon and Kennedy campaigned in virtually every state, whereas now the candidates only visit a handful of swing states -- and fewer are swinging all the time. That's OK with me. I don't need to see my candidate to vote for him (maybe someday her). And I don't mind missing out on all the mendacious campaign ads.

At a Washington dinner party recently, the host raised the speculation du jour about whether a victory by Obama in the Electoral College even if he loses the popular vote -- an outcome suggested by some of the polling at the time -- would prompt both parties to demand an end to the indirect vote for president. I said I didn't think it would and I, personally, have no problem with that scenario. After all, we lived with Bush for eight years and all the havoc he wreaked, and it's doubtful that he even won a legitimate Electoral College victory, let alone a popular vote.

We're stuck with the Electoral College, a Supreme Court that has way too much power, and an increasingly sclerotic set of political institutions (think of the anti-democratic obstacle of the Senate, exacerbated by the abuse of filibuster!). European countries by and large are much more flexible in adapting their institutions -- look at how France easily and quickly shortened the term of the president and aligned it better with the parliamentary terms.

But change has become virtually impossible. It's a situation that future generations will have to deal with.

Time to scrap or change presidential debates

There has been a lot of criticism about media focus on the "theatrics" of the presidential debates rather than the issues. But that's because the current format of naming one almighty moderator who "alone" decides on the issues and questions (even, apparently in the Town Hall debate) means that many issues -- and most of those that are important to people -- get ignored.

Inconceivable that a "domestic policy" debate doesn't cover immigration or that a "foreign policy" debate ignores the crisis in Europe. What planet do these moderators live on? And why did we have to listen to vice presidential candidates discuss Syria for 15 minutes just because it's something Martha Raddatz wants to know more about?

Raucous and comical as they were at times, the Republican primary debates, with a much better mix of moderators and formats, at least covered the issues and gave voters a chance to see where these candidates really stood.

The stifling format of these more formal presidential debates reflects the desire of the campaigns and the "presidential debate commission" to tightly control events. With these septuagenarian moderators and their astonishing self-censorship, they get what they want and the voters miss out on an opportunity to nail down these candidates on issues that matter.

Deficit deception

This post at Firedoglake pretty much expresses my frustration with the Democratic arguments about the deficit. Citing a statement from Rachel Maddow's Steve Benen, David Dayen titled his post "Democrats Bragging on Their Deficit-Cutting Skills Helps Nobody, Hurts America."

Benen defends Democrats by saying Bill Clinton and Barack Obama have been the biggest deficit cutters. Not only does this ignore the fact that Republican are playing a cynical game of bait and switch, it is also bad economics and arguing that his what the public expects defeats the purpose of politics. As Dayen writes:

The public has come to believe the wrong thing, and if Democratic partisans refuse to straighten them out on it, there’s no way to change that mentality. Partisans who use the deficit data to bolster the case for their party consign the country to continuing austerity and will make it impossible for government to carry out the functions of progressive policy, or to stimulate the economy when the need arises. It’s an extremely dangerous game.

Is Ryan ready to be president?

President Ryan. Try that on for size.

If the Republican ticket wins in November, Vice President Paul Ryan would be the proverbial heartbeat away from the presidency.

While former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin faced a storm of criticism about her qualifications to succeed to the White House when John McCain picked her as his running mate in 2008, there has been virtually no debate in this year’s campaign about whether Ryan is ready to be president.

Presidential nominee Mitt Romney appears to be in good health and if he is elected there is no reason to think that his running mate would succeed to the presidency during his term of office.

There hardly ever is. And yet it has happened more than 20% of the time, with nine vice presidents out of our 44 presidents succeeding to the White House in the wake of death or resignation of the president.

In 2008, critics attacked Palin as not being ready for the presidency when gaps in her knowledge of world affairs and general lack of political experience became evident.

Commentator Bill Kristol and other conservatives had championed the charismatic Alaska governor for the vice presidential nomination because they thought she would bring “energy” to the campaign.

And it was Kristol who led the push this year to make Ryan the vice presidential nominee – again to tap into that youthful conservative energy. Kristol, in fact, would have preferred Ryan at the top of the ticket with Florida Sen. Marco Rubio as his running mate.

Conventional wisdom has it that vice presidential candidates don’t really tip the scales in voters’ choice of president. And yet the VP selection seems to be an important part of the mix and Romney’s choice of Ryan has generated a lot of debate and discussion, not least because of the Wisconsin congressman’s reputation as a fire-breathing fiscal hawk.

But Ryan has run into credibility problems, in weighty matters such as the inscrutable math of his budget proposals to less important questions like misstating his time running a marathon or staging a completely artificial photo-op washing pots in a soup kitchen.

Some of this may seem harmless, but when you’re the punchline for comedians – one joke last week said that after the 90-minute vice presidential debate, Ryan would claim he did it in 60 minutes – it can distract from your more serious message.

Peppering your convention speech with numerous fuzzy statements that require clarification from fact-checkers can also distract from your message.

But the main distraction from Ryan’s message of fiscal conservatism in this campaign has been his shyness in talking about it in any detail.

Remember that famous debate on Medicare that Ryan declared he welcomed and wanted to have and would win? Now he rarely brings up his plan for voucherizing Medicare and when asked just retreats into a mantra that nothing will change for those currently in or near retirement and his plan will “save” Medicare for the next generation.

None of that necessarily disqualifies him to run as vice president. But does it give voters confidence that he would be suitable as president if the need should arise?

It’s not something we like to talk about because it generally means a calamity of some sort has occurred. And yet, critics didn’t hesitate to fault Palin for being unsuitable for the White House.

Romney himself has no doubts about Ryan's readiness for the presidency. He told CBS's "60 Minutes" when he announced Ryan's selection in August that it was his first priority in choosing a running mate and that the Wisconsin congressman has the judgment, character and capacity to become president if necessary.

Perhaps because a seven-term congressman seems prima facie more qualified than a half-term governor, there has been little questioning of Ryan’s readiness for office, even though he would be one of the youngest vice presidents ever.

Ryan, who would be nine days shy of his 43^rd birthday when he took office on Jan. 20, would rank as sixth youngest behind John Calhoun, who took office 14 days before he turned 43.

Youth, however, is not in itself a disqualification. Richard Nixon, after all, was second youngest vice president at 40 and Dan Quayle third youngest at 41 when they took office in 1953 and 1989 respectively.

In recent times, vice presidential candidates have generally either won statewide office or served in a high administration position. George H.W. Bush, for instance, ran for vice president after serving as director of Central Intelligence, and Dick Cheney was defense secretary during the first Gulf war.

Those who ran directly from the House of Representatives have not been on successful tickets – New York Congressman William Miller was Barry Goldwater’s running mate in 1964 and Geraldine Ferraro, also from New York, ran with Walter Mondale in 1984.

Voters seem to prefer that candidates for president or vice president have a wider purview than that gained by a congressman representing his or her district. Also, standing the test of a statewide contest is valuable seasoning for a national campaign.

Although Ryan had clearly cribbed well for foreign policy questions in last week’s debate, he was left floundering against Vice President Joe Biden, a former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in a lengthy discussion of Afghanistan.

In general, some of Ryan’s missteps in the campaign could be attributed to lack of experience outside the cosseted environments of Congress and his Wisconsin district. While not exactly jejune, he often does not come across as having the maturity or gravitas to take charge in the White House.

Of course, if the Romney-Ryan ticket wins the day Nov. 6, he probably would never have to. Unless he does.

Nobel Peace Prize

I need to revive this blog because some things that don't fit in my other blogs just cry out for comment -- like today's announcement of the Nobel Peace Prize for the European Union.

It is an Orwellian decision, equal to giving the award to Kissinger after bombing Cambodia or to Obama before he has a chance to do anything to earn it. Coming just days after Merkel needed 7,000 policemen, tear gas, water cannons and stun grenades to protect her for a six-hour visit in Athens, it is especially ironic. My column on the visit earlier this week included the headline "Euro was supposed to bring peace, not riot police."

It's clear that the Nobel committee often wants the prize to be monitory but in this case it's likely to encourage Merkel and other leaders to persist in their disastrous policy of ruining millions of lives in southern Europe to preserve low unemployment and easy prosperity in northern Europe. The euro has turned the European Union, as Soros has compellingly explained, into an imperial enterprise. And now it has gotten a Good Housekeeping seal of approval.

The role and record of the EU in fostering peace and integration has been historic, but now the ill-advised adoption of a common currency is undoing much of that good work. It is spectacularly bad timing to make the award with the current crew running the show.