When And On What Channel is the Presidential Debate?

In case you were wondering about when tonight’s presidential debate is taking place and on what television channels it is showing:

Tonight’s presidential debate between Democratic candidate Barack Obama and Republican candidate John McCain on the Ole Miss campus in Oxford, Miss. is scheduled to take place at 8 pm Central Time (9 pm Eastern Time, 7 pm Mountain Time, 6 pm Pacific Time). The debate will be aired on television channels ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, PBS, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, and BBC America.

Apparently, tonight’s presidential debate will take place whether or not John McCain decides to show up.

According to the National Review’s Rich Lowry, the Ole Miss community is seriously peeved with McCain’s attempt to postpone. A presidential debate event is costly for the university and takes a great deal of planning. Look for the crowd to be more hostile than usual towards McCain.

In Preparation for Tonight’s Debate: Two Fact Checks

Since these questions might come up in tonight’s debate between John McCain and Barack Obama, this just in from the Fact Checker over at the Washington Post. As the scouts say, “Be prepared!”

In its attempts to rebut charges by The New York Times that campaign manager Rick Davis was until recently involved in business with (and receiving money from) Freddie Mac, the McCain campaign has been ducking the question by making false allegations against the New York Times. This is called “working the refs” (or “blaming the messenger”), where a contender attacks the media source that publishes true but embarrassing information in order to discredit the information. Rick Davis’ association with Freddie Mac is factual and gives the lie to McCain’s claim that he is aggressively going after those who caused the recent economic crisis. Read the full debunking here. Watch for McCain repeating tonight that he is going after Wall Street bigwigs and/or defending Rick Davis against “unfair attacks” that are actually true.

Meanwhile, Barack Obama’s running mate Joe Biden has run into some major trouble explaining his statement at a recent Pennsylvania rally that McCain’s tax plans will represent a tax increase by more than a trillion dollars for middle class voters. In fact, McCain’s proposal includes a full overhaul of the tax and insurance system that includes tax credits and lower insurance costs. Biden’s numbers come only from the cost of the insurance plan as established by the estimates of the Office of the Management and Budget. However, according to the non-partisan Tax Policy Center, Biden omits that if seen in context of all the reforms, middle class tax payers will at least break even under McCain’s proposal. Read the full debunking with a video clip of the speech by Biden here. Watch for Barack Obama claiming tonight that John McCain wants to raise taxes on middle class voters by exorbitant amounts.

Does anyone have similar things to add? (Please document your claims from objective sources. Thanks.)