His format sounds suspiciously like that of the first presidential debate. Schieffer has picked six topics — although not necessarily to be discussed in this order:

• America’s role in the world
• Our longest war – Afghanistan and Pakistan
• Red Lines – Israel and Iran
• The Changing Middle East and the New Face of Terrorism – I
• The Changing Middle East and the New Face of Terrorism – II
• The Rise of China and Tomorrow’s World

Schieffer will open each segment with a question, and the candidates will have two minutes to respond. Then it’s Schieffer’s job to “facilitate a discussion” for a total of 15 minutes on each topic.

The debate starts at 6 p.m. PT.

Here’s the NewsHour Live Stream:

Debate chat from NPR, starting at 5:30 PT:

Fact check the debate while it’s going on — or immediately after:

• Factcheck.org
• Politifact.com

Here are some live blogs:

• NPR
• PBS NewsHour
• policymic
• The Guardian (UK)
• The Washington Post
• Forbes
• NY Times
• Foreign Policy

STF/AFP/GettyImages

Disappointment.

That was the attitude expressed by many Bay Area residents on Twitter following Wednesday night’s presidential debate in Denver. Twitter said the debate was the most-Tweeted about U.S. political event to date, as more than 10 million Tweets were posted about the candidates, the moderator and the topics discussed.

In the Bay Area, many of those Tweets said the debate was boring and lacked substance. They criticized almost every aspect of the event, including the performance of moderator Jim Lehrer, the lack of vision expressed by the candidates and the font used in the stage decoration. Some Romney supporters did celebrate, saying their candidate performed better than the president. That’s been the position of other Romney backers across the country as well as some pundits and analysts, buttressed by some instant polls.

Below is a brief wrap-up of debate-related Tweets from the Bay Area. What did you think of the debate? Leave a comment at the bottom of this post and let us know.

Kennedy-Nixon, the first televised debate. (Courtesy National Park Service)

After months of campaigning — and days of surrogates’ efforts to lower expectations of their guy’s performance — it’s finally time for the first presidential debate. The political duel is being held at the University of Denver.

While there are many, many relevant sites we can steer you to around this event, we’ve chosen to put WNYC’s Interactive debate bingo front and center. You can thank us later, after the 25th time one or both candidates have used the phrase “make no mistake” before looking into the camera and gravely declaring just how the other guy is going to ruin the country if we make the awful mistake of electing him.

Here’s what looks to be a curated list of debate tweeters by Twitter, running the political gamut from Ann Coulter to David Axelrod, plus many in-betweens.

You can watch the debate online via PBS NewsHour:

You can also watch ABC News/Yahoo coverage live online on YouTube…

For non-English speakers, Univision will be streaming live in Spanish.  And for non-English speakers or those hard-of-hearing, PBS NewsHour and crowd-sourced subtitling site Amara are translating in multiple languages. Those videos will be available here after the event.

We’ve also aggregated some live blogs. Pick your political persuasion…

• The New York Times
• The Washington Post
• Forbes
• San Jose Mercury News
• CNN
• ABC News
• CATO Institute
• Wall Street Journal
• Talking Points Memo
• National Review
• Denver Post