Summit Watch: 257-111, But who's counting...

By GottaLaff

Photo via

Earlier today on Twitter, I made a prediction that one of the talking points after the health care summit would be that the poor GOP didn't get enough talk time. The big bad Democrats were hogging the conversation, as was stated during the meeting by the GOP, several times.

Okay, so that wasn't really much of a prediction, then.

But just the same, I did call it... and the ever dutiful CNN picked it right up and regurgitated it:

Democrats spoke for a total of 135 minutes while President Obama spoke for 122 minutes, for a total of 257 minutes. Republicans, meanwhile, spoke for just 111 minutes, about 30 percent of the total speaking time.

The time discrepancy did not go unnoticed by the top Republican in the Senate

Shortly after President Obama, Vice President Biden and legislators from both parties returned from a lunch break, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's office released a statement detailing how long President Obama had the floor, versus how much time members of each party were allotted during the nearly three-hour morning session.

Let's break it down: The Dems got 135 minutes and the GOP got 111. The president was moderating. And he's the president.

Now let's compare that enormous, terribly unfair 24 minute gap to this post of only 1 year ago:

In a new analysis, ThinkProgress has found that Republican lawmakers outnumbered Democratic lawmakers 75 to 41 on cable news interviews by members of Congress (from 6am on Monday 2/2 through 11pm on Thursday 2/5):

Some observations from our analysis:

– Last week, Fox News came the closest to balance with 8 Republicans and 6 Democrats. But the so-called “fair and balanced” network was not able to maintain such a ratio this week, hosting 24 Republicans and only 11 Democrats.

– The business news networks were particularly egregious this week. CNBC had more than twice as many conservatives, with 14 Republicans and 6 Democrats. Fox Business was even worse, hosting 20 Republicans for just 4 Democrats.

– In the previous study, the supposedly liberal MSNBC favored Republicans 15 to 9. This week, however, MSNBC became the only network to host more Democratic members of Congress than Republicans, with 17 Democrats and 12 Republicans.

[...] Some of the most frequent Democratic guests this week were outspoken critics of the proposed stimulus plans, such as Sens. Ben Nelson (D-NE) and Kent Conrad (D-ND).

Fortunately, the imbalance on the networks is not going unnoticed. A House Democratic leadership aide told Politico’s Michael Calderone yesterday that “what happened with cable last week is that Republican House members were the only show in town.” A “very senior” Democratic aide told The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent that the leadership is “aware of the problem and are taking steps to fix it.” The aide noted that “there is also an onus on producers to remedy this issue.”

Let's not forget this post. Or my post entitled "Mything In Action-- Librul Media. Network news coverage favored Republicans 1992-2004". Or this one.

Call me crazy, but I kinda think they owe us a few minutes.

President Obama's First Year: By the Numbers

I've just picked thru the article to find the ones I like, the rest are here.

NEWS CONFERENCES: 42
• Of which 5 were formal, solo White House Q&A sessions. Four were in prime time. His last one was July 22, 2009.
• Nearly all of the other press availabilities were joint appearances with foreign leaders at which as few as 1 question was taken by Mr. Obama.
• Predecessor George W. Bush did 21 news conferences his first year of which 4 were formal, solo White House sessions. Only 1 was in prime time.

INTERVIEWS: 158.
• This is a striking number of interviews and far more than any of his recent predecessors in their first year. Ninety of the sessions were TV interviews. Eleven were radio. The rest were newspaper and magazine. The number reflects the White House media strategy that Mr. Obama can best respond to questions in an interview setting.

Ha! And not too long ago some of the rightards were bitching that he was "in hiding".

NATIONAL DEBT: On day Mr. Obama took office: $10.626 trillion
• One year later: $12.319 trillion
• Increase on Mr. Obama's watch: $1.693 trillion

Pretty stark when you see the numbers he started with.

VISITS TO CAMP DAVID: 11 visits totaling all or part of 27 days.
• George W. Bush made 26 visits his first year spanning all or part of 81 days

VACATIONS: All or part of 26 days over 4 trips
• George W. Bush spent 69 days at his Texas ranch over 9 trips to his ranch his 1st year.

Republican convention got more cable coverage than Democratic convention

By GottaLaff

Unfair and unbalanced:

On September 2 and September 3, MSNBC, CNN, and Fox News each dedicated more on-air time -- significantly more in most cases -- to official Republican convention programming during the most-watched portions of their coverage than each channel dedicated to official convention programming during the same times on comparable nights of the Democratic National Convention.

So what else is new...