Based on a few recent experiences regarding the YouTube community, and specifically how the tool could help increase citizen participation in our upcoming general election debates, this post seeks to encourage the Commission on Presidential Debates -- the Old Guards if you will -- to truly embrace the Internet in at least one of its three scheduled debates.

Let's dig in...

This morning, the Commission on Presidential Debates and MySpace are announcing "MyDebates.org,," a "landmark partnership" that they claim "will do for the debates what TV did in 1960 for the Nixon Kennedy election." Their joint press release says this new site "will offer a host of interactive tools for viewers to virally engage in the political process." The release notes that "marks the first time that the CPD has paired with an Internet property to include online functionality into the event series and traditional debate format." Unfortunately, the CPD's landmark is little more than a shack. At best.

Myspace and the Commission on President Debates announce a partnership, Paris Hilton responds to McCain campaign's video, McCain continues the "celebrity" attacks, and Republican Twitter movement is hardly a movement at all

We're not sure if there's going to be a presidential debate tomorrow night or not, but either way it can't hurt to highlight some of the ways viewers can participate in advance or during the actual event. Here's a fun list.

With word coming that the show will go on, we turn attention to tonight's first '08 presidential debate at Ole Miss. Change Congress's Larry Lessig and scores of other open democracy advocates from across the political spectrum (including PdF and techPres) have issued a call for the debates to be free. The ask? It's two-fold; : So, what on the political landscape has Twitterers tweet-tweet-tweeting away? Well, as of this morning, it's Sarah Palin's interview with Katie Couric and, relatedly, Miss Teen USA. Twitter has launched an Election '08 site; and a great deal more.

It was just last night that the 110-page Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 was finally hammered out, but members of Congress will be asked to render a vote on the bill as early as today -- making it unlikely that representatives and staffers without advanced Evelyn Wood speed-reading training will gone through the thing closely before issuing a yeah or nay; Have a grandma or grandpa living in the critical battleground state of Florida? Happen to be Jewish? Well then some activists want you to make The Great Schlep to the Sunshine State to hard sell your elders on Obama; Some of the more compelling online creativity we're seeing this cycle has nothing to do with two blokes named John and Barack; and more.

Now's a good time to ask, what the heck happened with the defeat of the bailout bill on Capitol Hill on Monday?; Debate? What debate? Oh, there's a debate tonight. The Internet has bubbled up some ways to play along with Palin vs. Biden; Wow. The Obama campaign has released a gorgeous new iPhone app; Congress has okayed a bill that requires the government to regularly and accurately assess who in the U.S. has broadband access and who doesn't. If we may humbly advance an opinion: excellent!; and a good deal more. Honest.

We're now two debates in to the general election, neither of which, I think it's fair to say, made a stellar case for professional moderation. Gwen Ifill seemed somehow restrained last night, pushing for consensus where none really existed. (I'm thinking of this exchange on marriage equality). And Jim Lehrer seemed to barely be a presence at the first debate. The whole thing kinda makes you wish for snowmen, doesn't it? The YouTube debate certainly had its ups and downs. But it did push the candidates outside their talking point comfort zones -- something that hasn't happened in the general election.

Was last night's presidential "town hall" in Nashville hosted by Tom Brokaw was a bust?; NPR social media bloke Andy Carvin's launched an intriguing last-minute "distributed dial testing" Twitter experiment yesterday. To participate, you simply included a one to ten rating of the candidates in your tweet, set off by asterisks; expanding upon the idea of using Twitter as an election protection tool, Culture Kitchen's Liza Sabater lays out some provocative ideas for taking advantage of the decentralized, network world and the humble cell phone to mix things up; and a good deal more.

The enormous number was breathtaking: six million people sent in questions through the Internet for Tom Brokaw to pose to John McCain and Barack Obama during Tuesday night's presidential town hall in Nashville. Breathtaking -- and entirely wrong; Building on what seems to be growing momentum behind using Twitter as an election protection tool, an online organizer has detailed possible standardized tags; Using donor data from ten large tech companies as a representative sample, ZDNet's Robin Harris finds that tech employees support Obama to McCain at a rate of nine to one; and much, much more.