Lefty Rigging at Google….

Report: Google News’ Search Results Aren’t Rigged But They Are Biased

by John Sexton  at  HotAir:

A group called AllSides put out a report Tuesday which concludes that Google News’ search results are biased toward the left end of the political spectrum. However, the report also states that this bias seems to reflect the general bias of sites which are popular on the web and doesn’t represent evidence that Google is intentionally skewing results. In other words, Google’s results are biased but they aren’t rigged. From USA Today:

John Gable, CEO of AllSides and author of the study, said the bias is the result of “most news online and most news consumption online (being) from a left perspective.”

AllSides specializes in identifying media bias for the purpose of providing balanced perspectives. The group uses a media bias ratings based on popular opinion to rank media outlets as either left, right or center.

“If you look at where people get news online and you rate it, most of it is coming from the left,” Gable said.

He said Google search results come from what is largely a “popularity algorithm,” meaning that viewpoints more people have are more likely to be highlighted. As a result, viewpoints that are outside the majority don’t appear as high up in search results…

“If their role is just to reflect the internet, they’re doing a fine job,” he said. “… If they think their job is to empower people to decide for themselves, they actually need to make a change.”

So how does AllSides determine which news sources are left and right? The answer is that they don’t. As you can see on this page, the group asks people to rate their own bias (left or right) and then asks them to rate the bias of articles from various sites and averages how different groups (left, right, and center) respond to various articles. The result is a master list which rates various news sites from far left (HuffPost) to far right (Breitbart). Some sites fall in the center (CNBC) while others lean left (Buzzfeed) or lean right (Hot Air). Here’s a chart from the report showing a sample of results:

You can, of course, take issue with any of the conclusions in that graphic or the master list it is based on but the idea is that people on all sides are having a say about the spectrum. It’s not the opinion of one person or a small group of people. So starting from that foundation, the site looked at Google’s search results and found this:

This study completed 123 different measurements of the political bias of Google News and Google News search results over 14 days from August 23 to September 5, 2018. This produced three summary views of the political bias of Google News…

The aggregate result indicates that the overall bias of Google News is 65% left, 20% center, 16% right.

Because the majority of traffic goes to the very first links displayed on Google, with an estimated one-­third going to the first result, the position of a link on a page is extremely important.

While our overall analysis takes this into account by measuring the bias of just the top 5 results separately from the rest of the first page, it is also important to consider where the first result from a left, center or right source appears. Being in the very first position is extremely impactful.

Here is the average position of the first result from the left, center or right:

● Left: average 1.7 (one of the top 2 results)
● Center: 5.3 (averages to be in the top 5 or 6 results)
● Right: 12.2 (this is below “the fold” meaning that users have to scroll down the window on their computer screen before they see their first news article from the right)

The report concludes:

These results that show a strong bias for left media over right media are also consistent with past research and observations by AllSides. AllSides analyzes the news on a daily basis and have often found it difficult to find perspectives from the right when using Google News…

This apparent bias could easily be the natural and unintended consequence of its algorithms and the fact that most news outlets, as well as most journalists, have political views that represent the left side of the US political spectrum. Online news consumers are younger and lean farther Left than the average American, and that directly impacts which articles Google’s algorithm selects and how high it places them on the page.

This study does not suggest that there is intentional favoritism for media sources from the left, nor does this study suggest the opposite. It only demonstrates that the resulting choice of links that Google News provides do have a significant bias in favor of the left.

So there is strong evidence that Google’s search results favor left-wing news sources but this may be because that’s what online news readers are looking at the most on their own. To put it another way, Google may be reflecting a bias rather than directing one. The full report with a lot more detail on the methodology and findings is 39-pages long and can be found here.

https://hotair.com/archives/2018/10/16/report-googles-search-results-arent-rigged-biased/

No Alcohol President Trump Blamed for Americans Drinking More Reports Washington Post

WaPo Columnist Blames Trump For Americans Drinking More

by Jazz Shaw  at  HotAir:

Donald Trump is responsible for all manner of things, particularly if you ask anyone at MSNBC, CNN, the New York Times or the Washington Post. He’s caused unrest around the world using nothing more than tweets, sparked riots in the streets and I’m pretty sure at least a couple of people have blamed him for global warming. But perhaps his greatest trick of all has been to increase the rates of alcohol consumption in America. Or at least that’s the opinion of WaPo columnist Kathleen Parker.

SEE ALSO: Joe Biden accuses Trump of “trashing American values”

Amid hurricanes, a vanished journalist, the recent Supreme Court hearings, midterms and “mobs,” it is little wonder that Americans are drinking more than ever.

Factually, this is so. More than 70 percent of Americans imbibe each year, and about 40 percent drink excessively, according to two separate studies last year. A comparison to 2014 data showed a 10 percent increase in the number of heavy drinkers.

I mention these sotted stats for context. Lately, at least from my perch on the porch, the evening cocktail has become less an aperitif than a medicinal slug made necessary by the alternative of ripping off my face. To bear witness to These Times In Which We Live is to go insane, join a cult or pour your favorite poison.

Parker goes on from there to cite a number of horrible things about the world today, spending most of her time talking about Kanye West’s recent appearance in the Oval Office. All of this is supposedly to blame for a rise in American drinking habits.

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Let’s put the snark aside and say that this is true. If so, Trump can chalk that up as one more win. I mean, somebody has to keep the alcohol industry afloat, right? There are a lot of jobs riding on the successful sales of beer, wine and liquor. One study last year found that the beer industry alone accounted for more than 2.2 million jobs and more than $350 billion in economic output. That works out to 1.9 % of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product. The wine and liquor industries provide a similar boost.

What I find odd here is that the booze business needed any sort of a bump. Traditionally, the liquor industry has been seen as one of the most recession-proof business channels in the country, perhaps second only to the Mafia. When times are good, people drink to celebrate. When times are hard, they drink to console themselves. Or at least that’s how it’s traditionally been perceived.

So is Parker onto something? Is Trump actually driving people to drink? I’ll wait until martini time this afternoon to decide, but if he is I say good for him. And now he’s got somebody on the Supreme Court who really likes beer, so we should be in good shape from here on out.

https://hotair.com/archives/2018/10/13/wapo-columnist-blames-trump-americans-dinking/

Dem Chris Wallace Nags Senator McConnell Regarding Future Supreme Court Picks

McConnell Hints: We Might Break The Garland Rule And Confirm A New SCOTUS Nominee In 2020

by ALLAHPUNDIT at HotAir:

The only thing I can think of that would have made the Kavanaugh saga more toxic is if the vacancy had involved a seat held by a Democratic appointee.

And the only thing I can think of that would have made that more toxic is if McConnell broke his own rule for Merrick Garland and tried to confirm the new nominee in a presidential election year.

Since American politics is now a massive garbage fire being fed by an endless stream of accelerant, I’m treating Cocaine Mitch’s commentsyesterday as an almost divine sign that we’re going to face that exact scenario 18 months from now.

“When you blocked Merrick Garland’s nomination from President Obama, you basically said that we don’t do this in a presidential election year and that we wait until the election and then whoever the people choose, they get to pick the Supreme Court nominee. But what you just said now, is it’s a question of whether or not the party in control of the Senate is different than the president. The question I guess I’m getting to is, if Donald Trump were to name somebody in the final year of his first term in 2020, are you saying that you would go ahead with that nomination?” [Chris] Wallace asked.

“I understand your question. And what I told you is what the history of the Senate has been. You have to go back to 1880 to find the last time a vacancy created in a presidential election year on the Supreme Court was confirmed by a Senate of a different party than the president,” McConnell responded.

The Garland Rule was straightforward: When you have a vacancy on the Court in close-ish proximity to a presidential election, let the voters decide who should fill it. You might dislike that rule because it lets a majority of the public decide the immediate future of what’s supposed to be a countermajoritarian institution (“Trump didn’t win a majority of the popular vote!” liberals cry) but it’s “fair” in the sense that it doesn’t depend on which party controls the White House and the Senate. It’s a bright-line rule. Let the people decide.

Now here’s McConnell, faced with the not insignificant possibility of a new vacancy in 2020, refining the rule. It does depend on which party controls the White House and the Senate. The people don’t necessarily get to decide.

You can try to justify that in vaguely principled terms. “If the White House and the Senate are held by the same party,” you might say, “then the people already decided whom they wanted to oversee the nomination.” Yeah, but Obama fans would say the same thing about the Garland episode in 2016. He was duly elected president in 2012 and the Scalia vacancy happened during his term. The Republican Senate was within its rights to vote Garland down — they were duly elected too, after all — but McConnell wouldn’t even give the squishes like Flake, Collins, and Murkowski an opportunity to vote. He punted the decision to the public because he feared that his own Senate, if afforded an opportunity to rule on Garland, might have ruled in a way he didn’t like.

All he’s doing here is acknowledging how raw the power politics of Supreme Court vacancies have become. What he means to say is “When an opportunity appears to shift the balance of the Court, grab it with both hands and don’t apologize,” but politicians are forever forced to pretend they’re driven by principle even in situations where they know no one believes them. But here’s the thing: I’m not so sure he’ll be able to impose his will on the caucus if a vacancy does open up in 2020. The Kavanaugh war was so wrenching and politically dangerous that it might be too much to ask moderate Republicans to do it again, in the middle of a national election, with a Democratic seat on the line, in clear contravention of a precedent Republicans themselves set just four years earlier. Susan Collins will be on the ballot in 2020. With the left already angry at her over Kavanaugh, do you really believe she’d tempt fate by trying to ram through an Amy Barrett for the Ginsburg seat with the Garland precedent hanging over her head? Would Lisa Murkowski, who ultimately opposed Kavanaugh, go for that? Would Joe Manchin, who’ll be able to point to the Garland Rule and say that he thinks the people of West Virginia and other states should have the final say?

Would Lindsey Graham be willing to vote on a new nominee? He’s everyone’s favorite RINO right now but I remind you that he was asked this question directly just a few days ago, before Kavanaugh was confirmed. We’ll hold the seat open through the election, he said. I was skeptical of that at the time — Republican voters would be enraged if their leaders fumbled away the Ginsburg vacancy — but the more I think about it, the more I wonder if the math simply isn’t there for McConnell. Asking Collins, Murky et al. to break the Garland Rule in order to confirm someone in 2020 would be like asking them to nuke the filibuster for Gorsuch all over again. That was an extraordinary measure but extraordinary measures are feasible when the political waters are relatively calm. They were relatively calm in early 2017: Trump had just been elected, Gorsuch’s record was spotless, they had Harry Reid’s precedent of ending the filibuster for lower-court judges to cite in their defense. The political waters in 2020 will be extremely rough. Trump will be facing a tough campaign; Dems will throw everything they have at the new nominee to protect a “Democratic seat;” the relevant precedent this time will be a Republican one, the Garland episode.

All of this is a long way of saying that if McConnell wants to throw out the Garland Rule in 2020 and confirm a new nominee, he’ll need a few more seats added to his majority this fall. If the Senate ends up as a push, with the GOP holding a two- or four-seat lead, he’ll almost certainly start the next confirmation process in deep trouble in getting to 50 with Collins, Murkowski, Manchin and maybe Graham all opposed to voting on the nominee before the election. The only way around that potentially would be for Trump to nominate the most moderate, inoffensive Republican judge he can find. If he floated someone to the left of Tom Hardiman, say, rather than Amy Coney Barrett, maybe Collins et al. would rethink. But if he did, Republican voters would be angry: What’s the point of filling a vacancy if you’re going to fill it with another Kennedy or O’Connor or (shiver) Souter? Hold it open, reelect Trump, then go for broke. Trump being Trump, he himself probably thinks victory is so assured that McConnell might as well hold it open. He’ll fill it in 2021.

In case the prospect of a 2020 Court fight hasn’t already given you a migraine, bear in mind that Democrats will be favored (maybe heavily favored depending on next month’s results) to retake the Senate that year. The map favors them. That means the choice for Collins and the rest isn’t merely to confirm the new nominee or to hold the seat open until the following year; the choice will be confirming the new nominee while Republicans still have the power to do so or waiting until Chuck Schumer has control of the chamber, in which case he might decide to pay Republicans back for Garland by refusing to hold a vote on any nominees. The seat might stay open for years. What do you do if you’re a RINO and your options are breaking the Garland Rule to confirm someone or acquiescing in having Trump effectively stripped of his power to fill Supreme Court vacancies for his entire second term?

 

https://hotair.com/archives/2018/10/08/mcconnell-hints-might-break-garland-rule-confirm-new-scotus-nominee-2020/

Susan Collins’ Victory Speech Saving the Nation from a Fascist Revolt!

Kavanaugh fight: Susan Collins stands up to Democratic bullies and becomes a profile in courage

by Charlie Kirk  at Fox News:

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, did the most amazing thing on the floor of the U.S. Senate on Friday: She spoke rationally. That’s something you rarely see in Congress.

In a dramatic floor speech, Collins explained her decision to support the nomination of the highly qualified Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. Her remarks were thorough, sequenced, logical and convincing. She spoke from the heart and what she said made sense.

And with Collins’ announcement and the announcement of Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., that he will also vote in favor of Kavanaugh’s confirmation, Kavanaugh has a clear path to Senate confirmation this weekend – unless any senator makes a surprise change in his or her announced voting plans. At this point, 51 senators in the 100-member chamber have said they plan to vote to confirm Kavanaugh.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska is the only Republican who has said she will vote against Kavanaugh’s confirmation.

Over the past couple of weeks numerous conservative commentators, myself included, have publicly laid out arguments in support of Kavanaugh’s confirmation by the Senate. We’ve pointed out the various flaws, inconsistencies and non-sequiturs of the arguments posed against the confirmation of the judge, who has served on the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia for the past 12 years.

Collins used almost every single one of those arguments in her floor speech Friday. It was like listening to a greatest hits’ album of all the reasons why Kavanaugh should be confirmed.

I don’t necessarily think Collins has read or heard much or any of things those of us outside the process have written or said. I think that she has simply had a front row seat and has drawn her own conclusions from a corrupted process.

Collins had been one of the senators named as a swing vote in this process of confirming Kavanaugh – no one was sure how she would vote. She was identified that way because of her tendency over time to seem to want to be friendly or liked by her Democratic colleagues and members of the media.

On Friday she turned from friend to foe.

Collins did not become a foe in the petulant and screaming way that Democrats like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York and Cory Booker of New Jersey have come to symbolize. She became a foe because she clearly was no longer willing to set aside rational thought strictly for the sake of appeasement.

One by one she took apart every objection that has been raised against Kavanaugh. This included objections raised in the Women’s March statement released in July that condemned the nomination of “XX” by President Trump – meaning the group had decided even before Trump announced a nominee that it would oppose the person.

In her remarks Friday, Collins raised each particular objection that had been made against Kavanaugh and then recited facts to diffuse the objections, one by one. She did this systematically until every argument against his judicial record was eviscerated.

And then Collins turned to the uncorroborated sexual misconduct allegations made against Kavanaugh. Three women have accused the judge of such misconduct.

The accuser who has received the most attention is Christine Blasey Ford. She testified before the Judiciary Committee last week that a drunken Kavanaugh forced her onto a bed and tried unsuccessfully to take her clothes off some 36 years ago when both were in high school.

Ford said she feared Kavanaugh would rape her or that he might accidentally kill her when he covered her mouth to stifle her screams.

Kavanaugh has testified under oath that he never sexually assaulted Ford and has never sexually assaulted anyone. He also denied other allegations of sexual misconduct made against him.

The accusations against Kavanaugh were not corroborated by a single person other than Kavanaugh’s accusers or by any evidence. And a new FBI background investigation report on Kavanaugh that was reviewed by senators on Thursday and Friday found nothing that supported the accusations against the judge.

In her floor speech, Collins politely but unmistakably scolded the Senate for the devolution of the confirmation process. She reminded senators of notions of fairness, the presumption of innocence, and something new she introduced called the “more likely than not standard.”

Applying this more lenient standard instead of one of full-fledged reasonable doubt, Collins said that Ford’s statement simply did not pass even this test.

Collins said the process of Senate confirmation hearings has been deteriorating for 30-plus years and she hopes that this hearing process marked a hitting of bottom.

If the Senate process for giving advice and consent on Supreme Court nominations just hit bottom, then here is a piece of clearly good news: Susan Collins bounced.

Despite enormous pressure – including what amounted to a blackmail campaign that started raising money for her unknown Democratic opponent in 2020 should she vote to confirm Kavanaugh  – Collins stood up for her principles and was a true profile in courage.

And sure enough, the Maine Democratic Party issued a statement Friday night denouncing Collins for her vote.

Collins has made it clear that she will stand up to Democratic bullies. She is a strong, intelligent and honorable woman who takes her job of serving her constituents and our nation seriously. And she deserves the thanks of all Americans.

(Please click below to review Senator Collins’ outstanding speech.)

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/kavanaugh-fight-susan-collins-stands-up-to-democratic-bullies-and-becomes-a-profile-in-courage

Google Powerhouse “Sneaked” For Hillary in 2016!

MEMO: GOOGLE TRIED TO HELP HILLARY WIN BY DRIVING LATINO VOTE

by John Hinderaker  at PowerLine:

I’ve written several times about the fact that the Left has outsourced censorship to the giant tech firms of Silicon Valley. Given that much political debate now takes place on social media, generally thought of as a public space, it is a handy way around the First Amendment. But the role of the giant tech companies goes beyond suppressing conservative voices, to include promoting liberalism and the Democratic Party.

The tech companies all take the same position as the Democratic Party press: sure, we’re all liberals here, but it doesn’t affect what we do! In our business lives, we are scrupulously neutral.

No one has bought that line with regard to the liberal media in a long time, and there is no reason to believe it with regard to Silicon Valley, either. The latest evidence comes from a leaked Google email that found its way onto the Tucker Carlson show last night:

A Google executive’s leaked email reveals efforts to increase Latino turnout prior to the 2016 U.S. presidential election and the executive’s “surprise” at Donald Trump’s performance among Latino voters.

The 675-word email, first obtained exclusively by Fox News Channel’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” was written by the tech giant’s former head of multicultural marketing and details a range of efforts to increase Latino turnout, including the support of a partner organization that helped to drive voters to the polls.

The full text of the email may be online somewhere, but I haven’t seen it, so I have to rely on the Fox summary.

“We worked very hard. Many people did. We pushed to get out the Latino vote with our features, our partners, and our voices. We kept our Googley efforts non-partisan and followed our company’s protocols for the elections strategy,” the email begins. “We emphasized our mission to give Latinos access to information so they can make an informed decision at the polls, and we feel very grateful for all the support to do this important work.”

At the end of the email, the author wrote that Latino Googlers are “probably hurting right now” and that the election results are “tough to handle now that we know not all of us were against this.”

The Google executive acknowledges that Latinos, long considered the “sleeping giant” of American politics thanks to the country’s rapidly shifting demographics, did vote in record-breaking numbers and turned out early—but a significant percentage supported Trump instead of Hillary Clinton.

“Ultimately, after all was said and one [sic], the Latino community did come out to vote, and completely surprised us. We never anticipated that 29% of Latinos would vote for Trump. No one did,” the executive wrote.

The only reasonable interpretation is that Google tried to help Hillary win the election, in part through this initiative, but fell short.

Google distanced itself from the memo with the usual rationale:

A Google spokesperson previously told Fox News: “The views expressed in this email are the employee’s personal political views and are not representative of any official stance from the company. Google’s elections efforts—both in 2016 and leading up to this year’s midterms—have been entirely nonpartisan.

Right. What to do about the liberal (often, far-left) bent of the tech giants, several of which are monopoly platforms, is a big question. Break them up under the antitrust laws? Turn them into regulated utilities like the water company? Found competing conservative/moderate platforms? That is a big topic to which we will return many times in the months and years to come.

 

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/09/memo-google-tried-to-help-hillary-win-by-driving-latino-vote.php

Minnesota’s Ellison Plot

Kudos to the Star Tribune Editorial Board for advocating jurisprudence as the basis for reconciling the domestic violence accusation of Keith Ellison’s former live-in girlfriend and his “flat” denial.

The constituents of U.S. House District 5 are 100 percent urban, essentially Minneapolitans, and represent a bit more than 10 percent of Minnesota’s population. Ellison routinely receives 70 percent of the vote within this DFL protectorate. As recently evidenced, he is always assured a DFL endorsement.

Ellison’s ambition of seeking statewide election as attorney general is to be taken seriously. But anything approaching a 70 percent of the vote, statewide extrapolation would be folly, given the demographics of the other 90 percent of Minnesota’s population.

Our local media has perennially granted Ellison a politically correct shield as to his personal and political record. Accountability is not a component of his repertoire. But, due to the #MeToo phenomenon, his current accuser could partly penetrate that shield.

In any event — Ellison, as an attorney general candidate, is now accountable to all Minnesotans.

Gene Delaune, New Brighton

Mark Waldeland sent the above ‘epistle’ found in the usually leftist Strib newsprint.

Remember the Leftist Shock the Day After America Was Saved by Donald J. Trump Becoming President?