The Sludge Known As Conventional Wisdom-- From Bulgaria To The Cook Report

After college, I spent a couple years on the "Hippie Trail," the overland route from London to New Delhi and Kathmandu. There were places, primarily in western Turkey and eastern Iran where the idea of "road" was theoretical. But overall, a few hundred of us made it through every year from the late '50s into the mid '70s. Someone's coming over either this weekend or next weekend or soon-- I forgot to write it in my calendar-- to film me for a documentary biopic. I think this Hippie Trail stuff is mostly what the producer is interested in. So I've been thinking about it lately. The 2 years were fundamental to everything that has happened to me in the ensuing 5 decades. One lesson I learned early on-- first in Bulgaria and quickly confirmed in Turkey-- was about conventional wisdom. Forget it. It's not ever where you want to start.

One of my traveling companions was a hitchhiker, Joël, I picked up outside of Niš, then the biggest town in eastern Yugoslavia on the road to Sofia, now the third largest city in Serbia. Joël was following his older brother-- who had been back and forth a couple of times and was now in Kathmandu. So Joël had a lot of useful info about what was before us. But he also had, as it turned out a lot of useless conventional wisdom. Just because it was hippie convention wisdom, it wasn't any more accurate. "Let's just skip Bulgaria," was his advise. "Take the A1 straight to Svilengrad on to Edirne and into Istanbul... There's nothing in Bulgaria."

I thought that was strange. But it was absolutely conventional wisdom for the Hippie Trail: there's nothing in Bulgaria. I didn't come all the way from New York to not see places. It was my VW van and anyone was free to offer their advice, but I was the captain of the ship. A few miles outside of Plovdiv, the A1 offers you a choice, the southeast A1 goes to Turkey and the northeast A1 goes Burgas on the Black Sea. A lot of grumbling from the peanut gallery when I headed off to the Black Sea. I spent a couple fantastic weeks between Burgas and Varna with some kids my age I met in Burgas. We were a novelty and everyone wanted to meet us. There were no tourists back then. Everyone was on their way to Istanbul. But this was a beautiful, friendly area and we stayed at communal farms and in small towns and it was a great trip. The fruits and vegetables we were given by farmers lasted us through Turley, Iran and into Afghanistan. Conventional wisdom was wrong, wrong, wrong. But I didn't know it yet.

A couple of days ago I was having an endless kerfuffle with Google's advertising department. You know how hard Google makes it to speak to an actual human being on the phone? And when you finally break through it's invariably someone in India who can't help unless they can put you in a predetermined box. However... eventually I wound up with someone in Boulder. He solved the problem and it only took 3 days. He was 25 and his grandmother had once taken the family on a Mediterranean cruise that had included Istanbul, which he loved. Something we had in common. Istanbul in 1969, my first time there, and 2012, when he went is pretty different, But we were both attracted to the same part of town, Sultanahmet-- which includes the Grand Bazaar, the Blue Mosque, Hagia Sohia and Topkapi Palace. I told him to watch Midnight Express, a film made in 1978 about what happened in 1969. I was there-- in the Pudding Shop-- when it happened.



Part of conventional wisdom was that the Sultanahmet area of Turkey was fabulous and cool but that the rest of Turkey was horrible and should be gotten through as fast as Bulgaria. As usual-- ass-backwards. Imagine you're from Europe and you go to America... but never get beyond, say Times Square. And then say "America sucks." Like Times Square at the time, Sultanahmet-- and the Pudding Shop in particular-- was a place where hippies came to buy hash, where crooks came to rip off hippies and where the cops came to extort or arrest everyone.

That's when it finally added up to me. I realized how Sultanahmet was the worst place in Turkey to be-- it's gentrified and fine now-- and how every other place in Turkey was way better. I loved Turkey. I've been back a dozen times-- sans conventional wisdom.

I could write about Turkey for hours but I've done that for my travel blog and when I started writing today it was supposed to be about political conventional wisdom. So... let me get into that. Political conventional wisdom is created by the party committees-- like the NRCC and the DCCC-- feeding their versions of reality to David Wasserman at Cook. It gets worse from there, especially when the mainstream media starts regurgitating it as wisdom handed down from on high. The DCCC and David Wasserman are why Alexandria Ocasio's race came as such a surprise to everyone-- even to lunkheads like Joe Crowley, Ben Ray Lujan, Ann Kuster and Nancy Pelosi. Those 4 were charged with keeping Crowley in his seat but now of them knew this young woman who wasn't born when he first started "winning" elections had already eviscerated him. And if they didn't know-- believe me, David Wasserman didn't know. Didn't know, as in "never heard of." Is the Bronx north of Queens or is Queens on Long Island. NY-14, why I we never heard of that before?

Yesterday, Wasserman defined the big anti-red wave that's headed to DC by prognosticating that "Democrats remain substantial favorites for House control." You think? "A"-- at least he was smart enough not to say "the"-- big reason: Republicans are defending 42 open or vacant seats, a record since at least 1930. The retirements of Speaker Paul Ryan (WI-01), as well as powerful committee chairs like Reps. Ed Royce (CA-39) and Rodney Frelinghuysen (NJ-11) and popular moderates like Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (FL-27) and Frank LoBiondo (NJ-02), have given Democrats stellar pickup opportunities." No mention of why these gents and Ileans are retiring. Just a coincidence. Ryan's seat was already lost before he "decided." So was Royce's, LoBiondo's Ros Lehtinen's and, probably, Frelinghuysen's.

Wasserman would rather talk about hocus pocus-- like historical trends and fundraising. "Of Republicans' 42 incumbent-less seats, eight are in districts that voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, and an additional 13 are in districts where President Trump received less than 55 percent. History is working against the GOP in many of those seats: we found that since 1992, in situations when a president's party was stuck defending an open seat two years after the president failed to carry it, that party has batted zero for 23 keeping it in their column."

He's caught on to the Blue Wave-- just when smarter people have realized what's happening is more an anti-red wave than an actual blue wave. He'll get there... by January.

To some extent, the focus on a "blue wave" has overshadowed an equally important 2018 trend: the steady purge of Trump skeptics from the congressional GOP. Retirements are the single biggest factor, but so are GOP primaries. Not only did Rep. Mark Sanford (SC-01) lose his, but loyalty to the president has emerged as the dominant theme in primaries for dozens of safely GOP open seats. November losses promise to further thin the moderate herd.

Fundraising deficits are a growing GOP problem: in 20 of the 42 seats, the leading Democrat raised more than the leading Republican between April and June, including in seven of eight Clinton-carried districts (Rep. Dave Reichert's open WA-08 was the only exception) and 13 of 34 Trump-carried seats. That's especially problematic because the NRCC and Congressional Leadership Fund are already stuck defending dozens of vulnerable incumbents.

The most immediate open seat test is the August 7 special election in Ohio's 12th CD, north of Columbus. It's in the Toss Up column, and if Democrat Danny O'Connor defeats Republican Troy Balderson in a seat Trump carried by 11 points in 2016 (R+7 PVI), it would be another piece of evidence that Democrats are pushing the House battleground deeper into Trump territory.

Funniest lines in Wasserman's reports:

Unabashed

Talking about AZ-02 and carpetbagger Ann Kirkpatrick, one of the most far right Democrats running anywhere: "Kirkpatrick is an unabashed liberal, who proudly voted for Nancy Pelosi and Obamacare, and she's running with the support of former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and her husband Mark Kelly." Only in DC would anyone define "unabashed liberal" as someone who "proudly voted for Nancy Pelosi." Certainly in 2002. But in 2018? Uh... no. Obamacare? Kirkpatrick broke ranks with the Democrats and voted with the GOP to kill it, which is why she lost her seat and then lost a Senate race. And support from Gabby Giffords? I'm sorry Gabby got shot but she was a right-of-center Blue Dog before that tragic incident and to this day always bends over backwards to support right-of-center Democrats from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party, not progressives. Do "unabashed liberals" have A+ ratings from the NRA? How about being the only AZ-02 candidate to support ICE? Is that what Wasserman meant? Dave... today we use Medicare-For-All, Job Guarantee, free state universities, green energy transition, living wage... to define "unabashed liberals." It's 2018; you should give it a try. It won't hurt you.

His column is filled with DCCC/NRCC junk. Kansas-- Bernie and Alexandria were just in Wichita and Kansas City campaigning for James Thompson and Brent Welder, progressives who have caught fire. Wasserman instead sticks to the DCCC script, promoting the race with the DCCC's vomitous GOP-lite Blue Dog, Blue Dog instead. Wisconsin-01... maybe he was taking a crap and someone from the NRCC logged onto his computer and wrote that section of his post. Sure sounds like that. Anyway... warning about Wasserman: conventional wisdom is junk, whether if it's about Bulgaria or congressional politics.

As Bulgaria Elects A Pro-Putin Populist President, Trumpists Here Warn Obama To Stay Out Of Foreign Affairs

Americans don't think much about Bulgaria. There are less than 100,000 Americans of Bulgarian ancestry-- and we've never fought a war there. Most of the Bulgarian-Americans that there are live in 4 cities where hyphenated Americans don't stand out: New York, L.A., Chicago and Miami. After the collapse of communism in 1989, over a million Bulgarians left their homeland, but most scattered through Europe, especially Greece and Spain, but also to Canada, Germany, the U.K., Italy and Latin America. Most Americans would be hard-pressed to point to Bulgaria on a world map.

In the summer of 1969, I was driving a shiny new VW camper van to India from London. The conventional wisdom along the Hippie Trail was to drive straight through Bulgaria without stopping-- from the Yugoslavian border crossing at Dimitrovgrad through Sofia and then straight down the A-1 motorway to the Svilengrad border crossing west of Edirne (historically, Adrianpolis) in Turkey-- and then immediately on to Istanbul. It was a 2 or 3 day drive from Dubrovnik on the Adriatic Coast... and I was having done of it. I was eager to explore Bulgaria and not just Sofia. And it was my first lesson about the worthlessness of Hippie Trail conventional wisdom. When the A-1 forked north to the Black Sea, I was on it-- while my passengers all eager to get to Istanbul, complained noisily. We were soon in Burgas where I met some random Bulgarian kids. We took a 2 week tour of the country and months later I was still eating dried and canned fruits and vegetables we had gotten on communal farms in the part of the country few American tourists ever went to. So... I for one have fond memories of Bulgaria.

I was sorry to see that on Sunday they elected a Trumpist type-- a pro-Putin, right-wing populist, Rumen Radev-- as president. And he won big as the anti-establishment, anti-immigrant, anti-corruption, pro-Putin candidate. Yesterday the pro-NATO prime minister, Boiko Borisov, resigned. Awkwardly, Bulgaria has been a member of NATO since 2004.

Radev, who has never held political office and who was educated in Alabama, is outspokenly pro-Putin and pro-Trump. Borisov told the media after his party was pulverized at the polls that "in this election, the people showed us that something is not as it should be. That our priorities may be good, but obviously there are better ones. So the most democratic thing, the right thing to do is to (resign)."

Coupled with political instability, Bulgaria's tilt toward Russia is a blow to the country's western European allies and underscores Moscow's growing influence in southeastern Europe.

In Moldova, another ex-communist state near the Black Sea, voters were expected to install a pro-Russian candidate as president and slam the breaks on seven years of closer EU integration in an election also held on Sunday.

While most of the key decisions in Bulgaria are taken by the government, the president, who leads the armed forces, can sway public opinion and has the power to send legislation back to parliament.

Radev is not advocating NATO member Bulgaria abandon its Western alliances, mindful of the financial impact of EU aid and the country's long history of divided loyalties.

But he has called for an end to EU sanctions against Russia and said Sofia should be pragmatic in its approach to any international law violations by Moscow when it annexed Crimea.

"We listened (to the voters') concerns. We said that we will work for Bulgarian national interests, that's what gave us broad support," a jubilant Radev told reporters.

Many in the Balkan country are keen to see restored trade with their former Soviet overlord, hurt by economic problems and sanctions, and to protect vital tourism revenues.

Speaking on Sunday evening, Radev said he hoped for good dialogue both with the United States and Russia and expressed hopes that with a new president in Washington, there will be a drop in confrontation between the West and Moscow.

"In his election campaign (Donald Trump), already elected, said clearly that he will work for a better dialogue with Russia. That gives us hope, a big hope, for a peaceful solution to the conflicts both in Syria and in Ukraine and for a decrease of the confrontation," Radev said.

Although Bulgaria's economy is expected to grow at a relatively healthy rate of about 3.1-3.3 percent this year, having shaken off recession, it remains the EU's poorest member, with average wages about 470 euros per month.

Rampant graft in public administration is seen as a key factor slowing the small Black Sea state's progress in catching up with its wealthier EU peers.

According to a report in Politico yesterday, Trump aides are telling Obama to immediately stop interfering in any foreign policy and that its all up to Putin Trump and his crew of misfits now.

The "Tide Of Citizens" Washes Over Spain... As Italians Elect A New Government

Every corner of Spain was the scene of angry but still mostly nonviolent protest over the weekend-- students, doctors, unionists, young families, pensioners... all pissed off about political corruption inside the neo-fascist government of Mariano Rajoy and inside the so-called "royal family," privatization of public services, and the exact same kind of failed Austerity Agenda Paul Ryan and the GOP are demanding for our own country. Over half of Spain's young workers are unemployed. It's a familiar theme-- bailouts for the banksters paid for by massive cutbacks in healthcare. The right-wing government has very tepid support and is starting to panic.

Europe, whose elites largely bought into the Austerity bullshit, is in an economic tailspin, with recession getting deeper and deeper across the Continent. Moody's downgraded the U.K. after George Osbourne's Austerity program went bust again while he and other advocates of more pain to the people are drowning in a river of denialism.

The eurozone will remain mired in recession in 2013 and leading nations such as France and Spain will miss debt-cutting targets, the European commission has admitted, backtracking on forecasts that the 17-country bloc will grow this year.

The European Union's executive body blamed a lack of bank lending to households and businesses, and record joblessness, for delaying the recovery. Unemployment in the eurozone is set to peak at 12% in 2013, or more than 19 million people, it said. Greece and Spain will be the worst-hit countries, with jobless rates of 27% this year.

The estimate highlights the widening chasm between Germany and France, the two largest eurozone economies, amid warnings this week that France is drifting closer to the bloc's periphery than its main economic rival. The commission predicts that Germany will grow by 0.5% this year, while France is expected to eke out just 0.1% growth. Joblessness among the French is expected to hit 10.7%, compared with 5.7% in Germany.

Bulgaria's right-wing government fell last week and the economic news in Portugal, Greece and Ireland is dismal. Over the weekend, with very low voter turnout,  Cyprus elected-- and by a landslide-- a conservative, Nicos Anastasiades, campaigning on an Austerity agenda. They already agreed to German demands that they cut salaries and pensions for public workers and hike the regressive sales tax and are well on the way to replicating the failed plans destroying Spain, Greece, Italy, Portugal, etc. They'll be whining for help as they flush themselves down the toilet. And yesterday Italy had national elections-- which conclude this afternoon at 3pm, that's 9am EST. (Results are expected by tomorrow morning but right now European markets are reacting to leaked reports of a Bersani victory.) With 5 of the 7 main parties pledging to kick Austerity to the curb, the election really is being seen as a referendum on the much-hated system of pain to working families.

Berlusconi, who has still managed to evade prison while appealing his guilty verdicts, has been sounding more and more like Mussolini as he accused Pier Luigi Bersani's center-left Democratic Party (PD) of fomenting jealousy against Italy's job creators. Ironically it is Berlusconi-- who will say anything-- who is the harshest critic of Austerity, and it has made him a plausible candidate again. Bersani makes the left sound kind of... safe and conservative, insisting that Italy stick to its European commitments and urging internal reform that shifts the emphasis away from Austerity and towards investment and growth.

And while Europe writhes in agony from the failed Austerity agenda, Paul Ryan and John Boehner and the rest of the GOP are still pushing it 24/7. The latest installment of the pain they have in store for America is called Sequestration and yesterday Rob Zerban, the progressive Democrat who nearly defeated Ryan last November spoke about it to the annual Wisconsin Democratic County Chairs Association in Stevens Point. Rob sounded a lot like what many in Europe fighting back against Austerity sound like. Only the names change:

"Paul Ryan and his right-wing colleagues don’t understand the importance of investing in the American people.

"He recently tried to pin the blame for sequestration on President Obama, but we all know he has been a longtime supporter of these mandatory, arbitrary caps that would be so dangerous to the middle class and our economy.

"Paul Ryan wants to cut, reduce, downsize, marginalize. And that is somehow supposed to make America great? I think America needs to grow, expand, prosper. We can do that by investing in the things that will help our economy grow and making sure that every kid in this country has the same opportunities that I had growing up. Because it sure paid off for me.

"America is supposed to be a place of opportunity. Our country doesn't just exist for the wealthiest people in our nation. It should be a place where those who come from modest means can learn, grow, and contribute to making this country stronger than it is today."

UPDATE ITALIA

What a mess! The lower House went left (not really left, just kind of establishment-left) and the Senate looks like it went right. And the tiebreaker is the party started as a protest movement by a comedian, Beppe Grillo. The EU-- and, perhaps more important, Germany-- want a governing coalition headed by Bersani (the "leftist who isn't) and Monti, the guy the Germans installed last time to implement their Austerity agenda. Italian voters were less sure. So now the operative word is "deadlock," punto morto.

With returns from almost all districts processed, Mr Bersani's centre-left bloc had won 29.57% of the vote for the lower house (Chamber of Deputies) to 29.15% for Mr Berlusconi's bloc.

Mr Grillo's Five Star Movement had 25.54% and the centrist list led by Mario Monti 10.57%. "We've started a war of generations," Mr Grillo said in an audio statement on his website which taunted the leaders of the mainstream parties.

"They are all losers, they've been there for 25 to 30 years and they've led this country to catastrophe."

Mr Bersani was projected initially to win a majority in the Senate, where seats are decided region by region. However, as the results came in, Mr Berlusconi's bloc moved ahead in three of the four key swing regions.

He was set to win in the northern region of Lombardy, as well as the central region of Campania and Sicily.

Mr Bersani has pledged to continue with Mr Monti's reforms but suggests current European policy needs to do more to promote growth and jobs.

The election was called two months ahead of schedule, after Mr Berlusconi's party withdrew its support for Mr Monti's government.

EU Suspends Aid For Bulgaria-- Corruption, Graft, Conflict Of Interest... Hmmmmm

How different are Paulson and Bernanke from Bulgarians?

As Obama and the lame duck Bush Regime make a show of working together to stave off complete economic paralysis and financial collapse, is anyone watching to see where the billions and billions of dollars-- taxpayer dollars-- are winding up? I don't know if you noticed but the last time the Bush criminals got their hands on this kind of money, immense amounts "went missing." I'd feel a lot better if newly elected Florida congressman, Alan Grayson, were sworn in and hunting the profiteers. He's one of the people in government we can trust to not have sticky fingers-- or friends with sticky fingers-- or be bamboozled by banksters and slimy lobbyists with sticky fingers.

Meanwhile, across the Atlantic a not unrelated kind of corruption scandal is unfolding. The EU just stripped nearly $300 million in rescue aid from Bulgaria, the poorest of all the EU countries. It's also the most corrupt, or at least the most blatantly corrupt. (Corruption usually follows the big money and I'm guessing that if you strip away the niceties you'd find the most corruption in the richer countries like England, Germany, France and Italy where they're more practised at covering it up.) Anyway, the stunning announcement that Bulgaria isn't getting the much-needed dough would be like if Bush were to say, that he'd handing out all this cash to stave off disaster but because one of our own most backward and corrupt states-- say Louisiana, which is very similar to Bulgaria when it comes to corruption-- isn't getting any.

Like Louisiana, the Bulgarian government hasn't done anything to fight the systemic corruption that pervades their society. And, like Louisiana, it is widely suspected that that is because the entire government, from top to bottom, is in on the scam. Another $400 million is also is suspended until Bulgaria can show that it is addressing the problems. Does this sound like Louisiana or what? (Or maybe Nevada?)

The fate of a further 340 million euro, which have been contracted and payment of which has been frozen at the request of the European Commission, remains unclear.

The EC suspended the accreditation of the two agencies in July, saying that Bulgaria's administrative capacity was weak and that there were strong suspicions of fraud and conflict of interest in awarding the funds. Furthermore, the EC said at the time, there appeared to be no political will to eradicate fraud, while the lack of tangible results in the fight against corruption was causing serious concerns.

Bulgaria's Cabinet answered with a bloated action plan that comprised more than 350 pages of measures it would undertake to address the issues highlighted by the EC, which now appears to have fallen of the Commission's expectations.

AP is reporting that "the action against an EU member state is without precedent in EU history." The money was meant to aid farmers and go into infrastructure projects which has been a source of fraud, conflict of interests and graft. Bulgaria responded last month by setting up a special investigation unit to look into "mismanagement of E.U. money" and Sofia also passed the country's first conflict-of-interest law. No one took these moves any more seriously than the Bush Regime's investigations into the mismanagement and theft of billions of dollars in Iraq War funds.

So who's watching the Citi Banksters again? Let's hope it isn't Paulson or we're all likely to end up living like Bulgarians.