This is the video in which YouTube users were asked to turn in their questions for tonight’s Republican candidate’s debate.

Tonight is the night of the second CNN-YouTube debate. This time it is not the democratic nominees but the Republican presidential candidates that will debate with each other and respond to questions that were sent in from Internet users, in the form of short YouTube videos.

The debate will be staged in St Petersburg, Florida. Although initially the idea was to let an online voting system make a selection of the thousands of questions that were sent in, the directors of the debate decided to select the questions themselves.

Like David Bohrman, senior vice president of CNN, says that the internet is still too underdeveloped a medium to set the agenda for a national debate. Bohrman regrets that he had to appoint his journalists to sift through all of the questions that were sent in by internet users, but he also said that it was necessary. He adds: “If you would have taken the most-viewed questions last time, the top question would have been whether Arnold Schwarzenegger was a cyborg sent to save the planet Earth.”

The CNN-YouTube debate is one of several debates in the run-up to the presidential elections in 2008 that use new kinds of media to organize the debates. One of the goals of organizing this type of modern debate is to attract people to vote, and to bridge the gap between politics and the “average citizen”.

Watch the CNN-YouTube Republican debate tonight via CNN

Source: wired.com

Democratic as well as Republican presidential nominees face a lot of stress while campaigning. Not only do they have to get up really early every day, they also have to take care of their public appearances and money.

Making sure that the press pictures her well is one of many energy absorbing tasks of Hillary Clinton and her consortium. The Clinton campaign is said to even challenge the Bush administration when it comes to attracting positive press releases by manipulation/ control. Hillary mainly controls press release by distancing herself from the press, making it very hard for journalists to talk to her personally.

A bigger headache than press release, however, is the control of the fundraising. Who donates the campaign money? This is something that some presidential nominees have been worrying about, since some campaigns are already hurt by fundraisers who, after their donations that undoubtedly trigger political thrill seekers to investigate, are charged with criminal activities that range from possession of cocaine to money laundering.

Read all about who’s campaign was harmed by which fund raiser at the blog www.politico.com

Rebublicans Mitt Romney and John McCain are the biggest money spenders in the first two quarters of this year’s run up to the presidential elections. Mitt Romney spent more than $11 million on his campaign in the first quarter and more than $20 million so far in the second! Republican presidential candidate John McCain spent more than $8 million on his campaign in the first, and more than $13 million in the second quarter.

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are the two biggest spenders on the Democrats’ side, being good for more than $41 million spent together so far in the first two quarters of 2007. Obama was the number 1 democrat spender in both the first and the second quarter. See for more details on presidential candidates’ campaign spending the Interactives at Yahoo.com