When President John F. Kennedy was shot in Dallas in 1963, Schieffer was the Star-Telegram’s night police reporter. As he wrote in a guest column for the Poynter Institute, a journalism think tank, phone calls that night were pouring into the newsroom.
“Every phone was ringing,” he wrote. “I grabbed one, only to hear a woman caller ask, ‘Is there anyone there who can give me a ride to Dallas?’
“‘Lady,’ I shouted, ‘We’re not running a taxi service, and besides, the president has been shot.’
“‘Yes,’ the voice responded, ‘I just heard it on the radio and they said my son is the one they’ve arrested.’
“It was Lee Harvey Oswald’s mother.”
As a result of this conversation, Schieffer played a minor role in the Kennedy shooting, helping drive Marguerite Oswald to the police station after the shooting. He didn’t get what he was looking for — a scoop — but he has a great story nonetheless.
Or how Obama wins without Ohio or Florida? Or what the most likely path is to a 269-269 electoral tie? Larry Sabato’s got you covered.
2012 Debates Memorandum of Understanding Between the Obama and Romney Campaigns
The guidelines of tomorrow’s presidential debate, as agreed upon by both campaigns (technically, this is a “memorandum of understanding,” not a list of official rules). Good get by Mark Halperin over at Time, who highlighted some of the more interesting bits in the 21-page document. source
“And what would you like for Christmas, little boy?” Jon Stewart’s reaction to a question asking what advice they’d give Congress on working together was to sit on Bill’s lap.
lifeincommas asks: Do you know if the O'Reilly / Stewart debate tomorrow will be available after the fact or is it only streaming? I haven't been able to find anything useful, answer-wise.
» SFB says: According the the FAQ page, “And after the live event, you will be able to download the media file and put it on your favorite device locally.” By the way, in case you want to watch it on TV, it’s available on Roku. I’m probably going to liveblog this, by the way. — Ernie @ SFB
If your presidential candidate loses the election in November, and you win an online contest, JetBlue Airways will give you a free round-trip ticket, one of 1,006, to escape to Mexico or Caribbean or other international destinations and ease your pain.
The campaign, from ad agency Mullen, includes TV, radio, digital, mobile and event marketing, along with social-media and in-flight efforts. A PSA encourages people to get out and vote.
“Fun is one of our five founding values, and in this spirit we decided to give people a chance to recover from the political noise and follow through on their claim to skip town if their candidate comes up short,” said JetBlue Senior VP Marketing and Commercial Strategy Marty St. George in a statement. “And with service to more than 20 international destinations JetBlue is the perfect fix. Most importantly, we want to highlight the freedom we have as Americans to exercise our right to vote and encourage everyone to do their part on November 6. Live Free or Fly!”
And it’s not one-way because …
Romney did something last night that I didn’t expect him to do, and obviously Obama didn’t expect him to do. He suddenly became the moderate Massachusetts governor again.Michael Tomasky, chalking Romney’s success last night up to the adoption (or re-adoption) of a moderate political ideology. In returning to his circa-2002 policy positions, Romney “disavowed or contradicted virtually everything he’s been saying for the past 18 months,” Tomasky says, citing Romney’s stated positions on preexisting conditions, taxes, Medicaid and school funding. source
And now, you: What did you think of tonight’s debate?
$125 the price President Obama’s campaign paid for a slot of ad time in Ohio
$900 the price a conservative super PAC paid for the same amount of ad time in the same state source
A rarely-discussed fact about super PACS: Under federal law, they’re charged a substantially higher rate for ad time than candidates’ campaigns. One implication of this is that candidates who are supported primarily by super PACS get a lot less bang for their buck than candidates who pay for ads with their own campaigns. This excellent chart, courtesy of Paul Blumenthal at Huffington Post, says it all: 
Keep in mind that Florida is a must-win state for Mitt Romney, yet for all of his supposed financial advantages, he’s buying less ad time there than Obama (h/t Jon Chait).
Hat tip to this headline writer.
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First, she said, she’d bring back job programs like the New Deal’s Works Progress Administration (WPA) and Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), so that unemployed people could do something useful instead of just drawing government benefits. “If you don’t have work, you’d go to an employment office, not an unemployment office, and you’d get a job, not sit home, depressed, with a check.”
On health care, she’d extend Medicare to everyone, which she said would “save trillions of dollars” by eliminating the “health insurance bureaucracy.”
On education, she said she’d make public higher education free to everyone and bail out student loan debtors. (“We know higher education pays for itself,” she says, citing the GI Bill).
And, because three things weren’t enough, she added that she’d downsize the military to below its 2000 funding levels and avoid “hypermilitarism,” from which, she says, “we are getting a lot of blowback right now.”
She also favors ending the Patriot Act, and rolling back the civil-liberties infringements of both the Bush and Obama administrations — the latter, she says, being worse than Bush’s in many respects.
Not feeling the main two presidential candidates? Try Green Party candidate Jill Stein on for size.
Mitt Romney, who has been criticized by members of his party in recent weeks for not campaigning aggressively enough and who trails President Obama in polls in most swing states, placed the blame for his campaign’s struggles squarely on the president himself Sunday afternoon.
Speaking to reporters as his private charter plane flew from Los Angeles to Denver, Mr. Romney blamed his relatively languid campaign schedule — five public events in the past seven days, compared with 11 fund-raisers — on the president’s decision to opt out of the federal campaign finance system four years ago, and criticized Mr. Obama for, he said, “trying to fool people into thinking that I think things I don’t.”
… or perhaps being a better campaigner?
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