StupidiNews!

• Ukrainian border guards have stopped and are carefully inspecting a convoy fleet of Russian trucks supposedly carrying humanitarian aid, but which officials say may contain supplies for rebels.
• Ferguson, Missouri remains calm after State Highway Patrol Captain Ron Johnson, an African-American, was placed in charge of the police presence there.
• Former Iraqi PM Nuri Al-Maliki has finally stepped down as PM and will support his replacement, clearing the way for a new government in Baghdad.
• Islamic State's advances in Iraq and Syria are giving the group the clout to challenge al-Qaeda, according to US intelligence officials.
• Chinese PC giant Lenovo is setting its sights on the US smartphone market as it continues to dominate the Chinese one with its recent purchase of Motorola's mobile division from Google.

Last Call For Another Notable Miss For Brennan

Not only is John Brennan a terrible CIA chief, he was a terrible Counterterrorism Adviser to the President, as evidenced by this speech in 2011:

Our strategy is also shaped by a deeper understanding of al-Qa’ida’s goals, strategy, and tactics. I’m not talking about al-Qa’ida’s grandiose vision of global domination through a violent Islamic caliphate. That vision is absurd, and we are not going to organize our counterterrorism policies against a feckless delusion that is never going to happen. We are not going to elevate these thugs and their murderous aspirations into something larger than they are.

Yeah, about that whole "absurd" and "never going to happen" thing there, John...

Perhaps it sounds glib to talk about the branding of an extremist Islamist group responsible for the deaths and oppression of thousands. But the branding or, perhaps more accurately, the idea of the Islamic State is exactly what attracts recruits and funding to the group. And even if its techniques have sometimes been crude, the Islamic State has clearly gone out of its way to promote its brand. 

What's really worrying is that despite all the confusion over its name, the Islamic State "brand" actually seems pretty solid — and worryingly global. It's distinctive black-and-white flag was flown in London last week, and leaflets supporting it were handed out in the city's Oxford Street on Tuesday. An American was arrested at a New York City airport this month after authorities were tipped off by his pro-Islamic State Twitter rants. The group has began publishing videos in Hindi, Urdu and Tamil in a bid to reach Indian Muslims. There are credible reports that the group is hoping to target Asian countries — and Indonesia is so worried that it banned all support for the Islamic State. 

The list goes on and on. Whatever you call it — the Islamic State, ISIS, ISIL, or something else — its brand is potent.

They're taking over big chunks of land in Iraq and Syria as well.

Islamic State (IS) militants in Syria have taken control of several towns in the northern province of Aleppo, according to reports from activists. 

The group seized the town of Akhtarin, 50km (30 miles) northeast of Aleppo city, where Syrian rebels are holed up. 

The BBC's Rami Ruhayem says that if confirmed, it would be a significant expansion for IS fighters. 

The group holds large swathes of Syria and Iraq, declaring the creation of a caliphate, or Islamic state.

Now, let's be clear here:  this mess can all be laid at the foot of Bush and Cheney.  But Brennan is terrible and while he's not going anywhere because of politics, the guy really does deserve to be shitcanned.

The Really Silent Majority

Welcome to post Citizens United America, which is nowhere near a republic, or even a democratic government, but one ruled by corporations and the billionaires who profit from them.

The new study, with the jaw-clenching title of "Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens," is forthcoming in the fall 2014 edition of Perspectives on Politics. Its authors, Martin Gilens of Princeton University and Benjamin Page of Northwestern University, examined survey data on 1,779 national policy issues for which they could gauge the preferences of average citizens, economic elites, mass-based interest groups and business-dominated interest groups. They used statistical methods to determine the influence of each of these four groups on policy outcomes, including both policies that are adopted and rejected. 

The analysts found that when controlling for the power of economic elites and organized interest groups, the influence of ordinary Americans registers at a "non-significant, near-zero level." The analysts further discovered that rich individuals and business-dominated interest groups dominate the policymaking process. The mass-based interest groups had minimal influence compared to the business-based interest groups. 

For the corporate elite, by the corporate elite.

The study also debunks the notion that the policy preferences of business and the rich reflect the views of common citizens. They found to the contrary that such preferences often sharply diverge and when they do, the economic elites and business interests almost always win and the ordinary Americans lose. 

We're just inconveniences to the richest people on earth.  If you want to know why billionaires like the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson are so callow and dismissive of Americans, it's that they really do see us as vermin to be exterminated.

The authors also say that given limitations to tapping into the full power elite in America and their policy preferences, "the real world impact of elites upon public policy may be still greater" than their findings indicate.

Ultimately, Gilens and Page conclude from their work, "economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence."

The best Congress money can buy.  Even when we do get a decent person in the Oval Office once in a while, the laws that make it through Congress are so awful that the rich always win.  But there's this:

Rich individuals and business interests have the capacity to hire the lobbyists that shadow legislators in Washington and to fill the campaign coffers of political candidates. Ordinary citizens are themselves partly to blame, however, because they do not choose to vote.

A thousand, million times this.  When we don't vote, the machine wins.

Every time.

The War In Our Backyard

The situation in Ferguson, Missouri is heartbreaking.  Michael Brown was shot and killed by police and left for dead in the street for hours.  When the black community protested his senseless murder, the cops used military grade hardware and tear gas to disperse the crowd.

Wednesday, the fourth night of protests, got visibly ugly.  Jelani Cobb was on the scene and posted this recount in the New Yorker this morning:

Nothing that happened in Ferguson, Missouri, on the fourth night since Michael Brown died at the hands of a police officer there, dispelled the notion that this is a place where law enforcement is capable of gross overreaction. Just after sundown on Wednesday, local and state officers filled West Florissant Avenue, the main thoroughfare, with massive clouds of tear gas. They lobbed flash grenades at protesters who were gathered there to demand answers, and, at times, just propelled them down the street. That they ordered the crowd to disperse was not noteworthy. That the order was followed by successive waves of gas, hours after the protests ended, became an object lesson in the issues that brought people into the streets in the first place. Two journalists, Wesley Lowery, of the Washington Post, and Ryan Reilly, of the Huffington Post, and a St. Louis Alderman, Antonio French, were arrested. (The journalists were let go without charges; the alderman, as his wife told reporters, was released after being charged with unlawful assembly.) What transpired in the streets appeared to be a kind a municipal version of shock and awe; the first wave of flash grenades and tear gas had played as a prelude to the appearance of an unusually large armored vehicle, carrying a military-style rifle mounted on a tripod. The message of all of this was something beyond the mere maintenance of law and order: it’s difficult to imagine how armored officers with what looked like a mobile military sniper’s nest could quell the anxieties of a community outraged by allegations regarding the excessive use of force. It revealed itself as a raw matter of public intimidation.

Which was the point.  You give a police department military hardware and the authorization to use it, and American citizens, in this case the black population of Ferguson, looks like an insurgency that requires "counter-terrorist" measures to "contain".  The language the police have been using sounds like the kind of strategy deployed in Afghanistan:  "reaching out" to the population, working with "leaders" in order to identify "unethical actors in the theater" that may require a "rapid response".

The theater is suburban Missouri, not Anbar province or Fallujah or Balochistan.  The people there are not Kurds or Sunni or former Ba'athists.  They're Americans.

And this is war being waged upon us.

StupidiNews!

• Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel says any mission to evacuate Iraqi Yazidis from the country's besieged Sinjar Mountains is now "far less likely" due to improving conditions.
• A fifth day of unrest in Ferguson, Missouri ended with heavily armed police arresting several reporters and dispersing peaceful protesters using tear gas and military grade weapons.
• Sanctions against Russia over the annexation of Crimea has resulted in an exodus of capital and the people running it to Europe.
• The latest Israel-Hamas cease fire in Gaza has been extended for five days, prompting hope that a more lasting cease-fire agreement can be reached.
• The FBI says facial recognition software played a major part in finding a wanted fugitive on the run for 14 years who was arrested in Nepal.

Last Call For Boehner's Big Backfire

The logic here is that House Speaker John Boehner doesn't want to impeach President Obama, but that the 100% politically motivated lawsuit to stop President Obama from taking executive action will motivate his base to vote in November without all the messy impeachment bits.

Turns out that as with nearly everything else, Orange Julius has miscalculated badly on that front.  Greg Sargent:

As I reported the other day, Dem leaders are planning an aggressive effort during the August recess and beyond to draw attention to the House GOP lawsuit against President Obama and turn it into a positive in the 2014 elections. The idea is to cast the GOP as extreme and committed to destructive governing — and contrast that with Dems’ concrete economic policy agenda, to lure disaffected swing voters and get out Dem voter groups to offset that hideous “midterm dropoff problem” Dems face. 

The new McClatchy-Marist poll finds that the lawsuit may help Dems do just that. Aaron Blake finds a gem in the poll — the lawsuit motivates Dem voters more than GOP ones:

Americans say 58 percent to 34 percent that the GOP should not sue Obama, and moderates agree 67-22. Moderates also say by a 50-25 margin that the lawsuit makes them more likely to back Democrats in 2014. 

What’s even worse for Republicans when it comes to both impeachment and the lawsuit is that they don’t even have the effect you might think on the GOP base. They do, however, motivate liberals…on the lawsuit matter, liberals are 9 points more motivated to back Democrats (72 percent) than conservatives are to back Republicans (63 percent).

Oops.  Nobody could have guessed that Orange Julius's latest political plan would be a loser, right?

The poll also finds that 88 percent of Democrats say the lawsuit would make them more likely to vote for their side, while 78 percent of Republicans say the same. What’s more, only tea party-aligned Republicans support the lawsuit, while even non-tea party Republicans tilt against it. So this effort may scratch the hard-right GOP base’s impeachment itch, but it could end up motivating Democrats more.

Thanks, John.  We knew you could find a way to screw up yet again and in the Democrats' favor.  Keep up the bad work!

Like A Kansas Tornado, Con't

Kansas GOP Gov. Sam Brownback is trapped in a storm of his own making, and the forecast doesn't look good at all for his political career.

Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback (R), trails Democratic challenger state Rep. Paul Davis by 10 percentage points, according to a new Rasmussen Reports poll.

The poll, released Tuesday, found Davis, the state House minority leader, leading Brownback 51 percent to 41 percent. Another 3 percent said they preferred another candidate and 5 percent said they were undecided. The poll, by the Republican-leaning Rasmussen, is the latest in a series of signs showing Brownback in serious trouble in his re-election campaign. 

Brownback's little-known primary challenger, Jennifer Winn, did surprisingly well in the primary against the governor, despite her long odds. 

Before this Rasmussen poll, the TPM Polltracker average gave Davis a 6 point lead over Brownback.

A Republican incumbent losing by ten in a Rasmussen poll probably translates closer to 12 or 13 in reality. Brownback is in brutal amounts of trouble politically.

Oh, but Brownback's legal troubles, well that's a whole new tornado.

The Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday said it would file charges against the state of Kansas, alleging that bond documents failed to disclose just how much of the state’s pension system was underfunded. 

The SEC said a series of bond offerings from 2009 and 2010, which raised $273 million for the state, did not disclose the unfunded liabilities owed by the Kansas Public Employees Retirement System. The documents required by the SEC also failed to disclose the amount of debt service payments those unfunded liabilities would require. 

The commission blamed a lack of communication between the Kansas Development Finance Authority, which issues the bonds, and the Department of Administration, which provided the information required in the filings. 

“Kansas failed to adequately disclose its multibillion-dollar pension liability in bond offering documents, leaving investors with an incomplete picture of the state’s finances and its ability to repay the bonds amid competing strains on the state budget,” LeeAnn Ghazil Gaunt, who heads the SEC Enforcement Division’s Municipal Securities and Public Pensions Unit,said in a statement.

Which means if all this is correct, Kansas's economy is way, way deeper in the hole than previously thought. Brownback's massive tax cuts, combined with the state's billions in pension liabilities, means the state is going to be hemorrhaging cash, and Kansas taxpayers are going to be on the hook for a whole hell of a lot of money.

Maybe Brownback should give California Gov. Jerry Brown a call, so he can see how to actually manage a state's finances.

Make no mistake though: if you thought Kansas austerity was bad before, just wait.  Meanwhile, Brownback's caught in the rain with no umbrella in sight.

PS:  this is what happens when Republicans run your economy:  they destroy it and blame the Democrats that get elected afterwards for not fixing it fast enough.

The Latest Poll Arising Position In Kentucky

Public Policy Polling's latest poll here of the Bluegrass State finds Mitch The Turtle up four points over Alison Grimes, 44-40%, with Libertarian gadfly David Patterson getting a non-trivial 7% of the vote. (Without Patterson, it's a 47-42% McConnell lead.)

In early April we found Grimes leading McConnell 45/44. The main thing that's changed since then is McConnell seeing some consolidation in his base. At that point, in the middle of his primary fight with Matt Bevin, he had only a 49 point advantage with Republican voters at 69/20. Now in the two way contest he is up 67 points with GOP voters at 78/11, and when you include the Libertarian his advantage is 63 points at 72/9. That unification of Republicans accounts for most of the change we've seen over the last four months. 

This is the first time PPP has looked at approval and favorability ratings for McConnell and Grimes since December, and although he remains unpopular McConnell's seen improvement on that front as well. Then he had a 31/61 approval spread, but now it's improved to 37/54. That shift is also largely a function of movement among Republican voters- he's gone from having just a 47/41 approval rating with them up to 58/30 now. Grimes has seen her name recognition increase from 68% to 86% over that period of time but there's been little shift in her net favorability- she's gone from -6 at 31/37 to -4 at 41/45. 

Barack Obama's unpopularity in Kentucky continues to make the landscape difficult for Democrats- only 32% of voters approve of the job he's doing to 63% who disapprove. 38% of the voters who disapprove of McConnell also disapprove of Obama, and among that group McConnell is receiving 20% of the vote, which is how you get to 44% of the vote with only a 37% approval rating. 

All said the race remains close and McConnell remains unpopular- and among the undecided voters McConnell has just a 10% approval rating to 66% of voters who disapprove of him. So Grimes should at least have a chance with those folks.

Looking ahead to 2015 and the race for governor, Democratic frontrunner and Secretary of State Jack Conway leads all polled Republican challengers anywhere from 3-12 points, which is good because if this state elects Matt Bevin to replace Dinosaur Steve, I'm moving over the river to Ohio.  I'm not even joking.

But here's the kicker:

Finally we asked voters their opinions both about Kynect and the Affordable Care Act. Each finds 34% support, but while 51% of voters say they're opposed to the Affordable Care Act only 27% say they're opposed to Kynect. Even the Affordable Care Act numbers are a little bit better than you would expect for Kentucky given the conservatism of the state, suggesting that Kynect's success has helped some with the overall image of the ACA.

I'm surprised the number of ignorant, "I hate this because I hate Obama" voters here is only 24%.

StupidiNews!

• Film leading lady Lauren Bacall passed away Tuesday at the age of 89, having married Humphrey Bogart in 1945 and having two children before Bogart's death in 1957.
• Archaeologists in Greece has unearthed a massive burial mound from the era of Alexander the Great, but are unsure as to who may be buried in it.
• Current Iraqi PM Nuri al-Maliki says the appointment by the Iraqi parliament of Haider al-Abadi to replace him "had no value" and is unconstitutional as he refuses to leave the position.
• New LA Clippers owner and Microsoft co-founder Steve Ballmer is among several large donors to Washington state's campaign for gun control.
• Sony's PlayStation 4 has reached the 10 million consoles sold mark in under 9 months, beating its predecessor PlayStation 3 by 4 months in reaching the milestone.

Last Call For Another Rand Paul Flip Flop

Looks like Sen. Rand Paul is back to outlawing all abortion in America if elected President.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) appeared to return to his hardline stance on abortion in a recent interview, after suggesting in April that he had softened his position. 

Earlier this year, Paul upset his social conservative allies by saying he wouldn’t try to outlaw abortion if he became president. 

But in an interview with the American Liberty Association, the potential 2016 presidential candidate said he believes human fetuses deserve personhood rights — a move that would completely outlaw abortion.

“It is a big issue for me. I tell people that really it is all about when life begins,” Paul remarked. “You know, I’m a physician. One of the things I would do in my job is to go into the pediatric nursery and I would examine babies that are one-pound babies, looking in their eyes to try to make sure they didn’t suffer from blindness from being born prematurely.” 

“And the interesting thing is when you’re in the neonatal nursery and you’ve got a one-pound baby, everybody acknowledges that that baby has rights, the Bill of Rights applies to that baby and nobody can hurt that baby,” he continued. “It’s a one-pound baby. But a week before, even a full-term seven-pound baby has no rights, according to the way people are looking at it, and I think that is a big mistake.”

So now the "libertarian" hero is not only fully on the forced birth train, but he's on the ridiculous "personhood" issue as well.

But please, explain to me again how he's not a Tea Party Republican.

The New Koch Tastes Suspiciously Like Old Koch

Just a reminder that Charles Koch has enough money and power to buy an op-ed in USA Today to tell us lesser schlubs that the real problem in America is that poor people have it too easy, and that to fix the economy we're going to have to make some sacrifices.  And by "we", he means "you."

Too many businesses focus on getting subsidies and mandates from government rather than creating value for customers. According to George Mason University's Mercatus Center, such favors cost us more than $11,000 per person in lost GDP every year, a $3.6 trillion economic hit. 

Compounding the problem are destructive regulations affecting whether and how business invests and employees work. Federal rules cost America an estimated $1.86 trillion per year, calculated the Competitive Enterprise Institute. At Koch Industries, we've seen how punitive permitting for large projects creates years of delay, increasing uncertainty and cost. Sometimes projects are canceled and jobs with them. Meanwhile, 30% of U.S. employees need government licenses to work. We need a system that rewards those who create real value, not impedes them.

Now this math only works if you believe that A) government contracts add no value to the country's GDP and B) the $1.86 trillion per year in federal rules has no benefit whatsoever, unless you basically want to get rid of every federal agency in the US: Education, the EPA, the SEC, the Treasury, the Federal Reserve, our intelligence agencies, the FDA, and pretty much everything else.  That price tag is the cost of being civilized.

When I was growing up, my father had me spend my free time working at unpleasant jobs. Most Americans understand that taking a job and sticking with it, no matter how unpleasant or low-paying, is a vital step toward the American dream. We are in for more trouble if young people don't find that all-important first job, which is critical to beginning their climb up the ladder. 

Finally, we need greater incentives to work. Costly programs, such as paying able-bodied people not to work, are addictive disincentives. By undermining people's will to work, our government has created a culture of dependency and hopelessness. This is most unfair to vulnerable citizens who suffer even as we say they are receiving "benefits." 

I agree with Dr. Martin Luther King. There are no dead-end jobs. Every job deserves our best. "If a man is called to be a street sweeper," King said, "he should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, 'Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.'"

Don't you love it when a man dedicated to destroying wages, unions, and the dignity of being able to support a family without having to take a second job quotes Dr. King?  Only a truly awful man, a man worth so much money that he has become a sociopath, would look at our safety net and declare it's "paying able-bodied people not to work."

What a great Master of the Universe to serve, eh?

Meat Depressed

Well, just when you thought NBC's Meet The Press couldn't get worse, dismal ratings with host David "Fluffy" Gregory have the peacock network planning to replace him with the even worse Chuck Todd.

Chuck Todd, a political obsessive and rabid sports fan, is the likely successor to David Gregory as moderator of “Meet the Press,” with the change expected to be announced in coming weeks, according to top political sources. The move is an effort by NBC News President Deborah Turness to restore passion and insider cred to a network treasure that has been adrift since the death in 2008 of the irreplaceable Tim Russert. Although Todd is not a classic television performer guaranteed to wow focus groups, his NBC bosses have been impressed by his love of the game, which brings with it authenticity, sources, and a loyal following among newsmakers and political junkies.

Because NBC really needed more insider baseball Villager crap on MTP, and not someone intelligent enough like any number of MSNBC hosts.  Maddow has the gravitas to do the job, but she's also smart enough not to take it because it's the political equivalent of masturbation.  If I had to listen to Sen. John McCain, RNC chair Reince Priebus, and columnist David Broder discussing Iraq and I was unable to hit any of them in the face with an engine block, I'd pass on being considered too.

Oh, and Tim Russert wasn't that great, guys.  He still helped the Bushies sell Iraq.

StupidiNews!

• Legendary comedian and Oscar-winning actor Robin Williams is dead from an apparent suicide at age 63, as he was found in his home in California.
• A Texas court has ruled against a family of homeschoolers who expected the Biblical Rapture to occur and thus stopped teaching children.
• NATO is warning that Russia, with some 45,000 troops massed on the border with Ukraine, could invade the country at any time.
• California Gov. Jerry Brown and Democratic lawmakers have reached a tentative agreement on a $7.2 billion water bond issue to battle the state's worst drought in decades.
• California also has passed the nation's first smartphone "kill-switch" legislation to require a way to disable phones in case of theft, now headed for Gov. Brown's desk for signature.

Last Call For The Keys To The Kingdom

As an IT professional I can attest to the conclusions in this Wired article on passwords.  They're not very secure for two big reasons: one, they're not random enough (and cracking software has gotten very good at guessing) and two, it's a lot easier to just steal all the passwords at once from the server because they're not encrypted.

Here’s an example: some systems force you to chose an eight-character password, using capital letters, numbers and at least one number. That sounds pretty secure, but it’s not. The word P@ssw0rd fits these criteria and password cracking tools such as JohntheRipper or hashcat will guess it in minutes. That’s because they use something called “mangling rules” which take dictionary words and substitute letters such as a for @ or s for $. 

“The cracking software that’s out there has known about all of these tricks for more than a decade,” says Herley. “A lot of the password completion policies don’t push people toward randomness and things that will pass 10^14 guesses, they push people toward predictable strategies that will not.” 

Try out enough password-strength checkers, and you’ll get the impression that more is always better when it comes to password. But that’s not really the case, Herley says. Randomness is the key. But the problem—and it’s a near-fatal one—is that humans are really, really bad at generating random passwords. So maybe we should just expect our passwords to suck, and concentrate on protecting accounts in other ways–like with two-factor authentication, where you have to use a password in tandem with something like a fingerprint, a text message, or a random number generated on a device you lug around.

Two-factor authentication should really be standard by now, but it's not.  It's too inconvenient and costly to implement it for all users across an entire system about 99% of the time.  That's not going to change until the costs of not having enforced two-factor authentication for all users (like hackers stealing account info and the lost business it causes) exceed the costs of implementing it.

It's getting to that point for Apple and Google now.  They offer it and really should make it standard.  You'll see more and more companies going to two-factor authentication and soon as losses from password hacking and "social engineering" mount into the billions.

The counter-argument is that no system can ever be 100% secure as long as people have to access it and it has access to the internet, so there does have to be a limit on it.  But I'm betting sometime soon your IT department will be rolling out two-factor authentication, and not just for remote users.

When Liberals Don't Vote In Midterms...

...Democrats run like Republicans to capture the conservative voters that do show up.  That's the lesson of 2010 that Democrats are putting into play in 2014. 

Faced with a treacherous political environment, many Democrats are trotting out campaign ads that call for balanced budgets, tax cuts and other more traditionally GOP positions. Some of them are running in congressional districts that just two years ago broke sharply for President Barack Obama. 

The Republican-flavored ads provide an early glimpse of how Democrats will wage their 2014 campaign. Democrats, hampered by Obama’s rising unpopularity and the tendency for conservatives to turn out at higher levels than liberals in midterm years, face the reality that swing congressional districts favorable to them in 2012 will be far less so in 2014.

Whether the Democrats running in those districts can survive what party strategists acknowledge is a deteriorating national political environment will largely hinge on how well they can appeal to more conservative voters. 

“It’s a different kind of electorate,” said Ben Tulchin, a San Francisco-based Democratic pollster. “If you’re running in a competitive district as a Democrat in a nonpresidential year, you want to strike a more moderate tone.”

Moderate tone my ass.  Democrats are running Tea Party campaigns because Tea Partiers are the only people who regularly vote in midterms.  The rest of voters, especially liberals, stay home and complain about why there are no liberals in Congress.

Colorado Democrat Andrew Romanoff, who’s running in a district that Obama won in 2012 and 2008, has started airing a commercial that strikes a tea party theme. It highlights his record as speaker of the state House of Representatives when, he says, he helped balance the state’s budget. 

“It’s really pretty simple. You don’t buy things you can’t pay for,” Romanoff states. 

As Romanoff narrates, a graph of the nation’s soaring debt pops up on the screen. The image looks strikingly similar to one that appears in a Web video Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan released in 2011 to sell his controversial budget plan, though a Romanoff spokeswoman insisted that the campaign hadn’t borrowed from the former GOP vice presidential contender. 

New Hampshire Rep. Ann McLane Kuster, whose district broke for Obama by a yawning 11-percentage-point margin in 2012, is running an ad that touts her support for small-business tax cuts while showing her touring a local microbrewery. Separately, former Iowa state Sen. Staci Appel, in a district Obama won by 4 percentage points two years ago, underscores her record of fighting overspending in state government, a populist theme often heard from tea party-aligned conservatives.

So yes, because liberals stay home and don't vote, the electorate is conservative.  Democrats run as conservatives to get their votes, because conservatives are the ones voting.  We're not.

If liberals don't give a damn about voting in midterms,why should Democrats give a damn about liberals who don't vote?