The outset of the debate was a giant pile on session of President Bush's foreign policy agenda. Essentially everyone argued that they would have done a better job had they been president. Some of the candidates have voting records that make their bravado laughable, very few of them have stuck to their guns, and others were never in a position to show their true stance on the issue.

I can't even count the number of times I heard the phrase "I will vote for whatever is necessary, but...." or "We have to support the troops, but...." during most of their answers to real questions. This is the classic answer from all politicians who want to have their cake and your vote too. The translation of these statements of course is "I will go along with what sounds good at the moment, but I reserve the right to complain about it down the road."

What most of them were saying is that when under pressure they would make better decisions. I thought the person who really showed how they would perform under pressure was Rev. Al Sharpton. Instead of getting flustered or derailed during a canned speech he actually took control of the entire audience during the numerous Lyndon LaRouche supporter interruptions. Sharpton is the straightest shooter of anyone running on the Democratic side, including Howard Dean. Now there is a blog that I would actually read.

It only took me a few minutes to figure out why Former Gov. Howard Dean, M.D. is clobbering everyone else in the field. Former Sen. Carol Moseley Braun and Rep. Dennis Kucinich might have some good sounding ideas, but they don't have the name recognition to last much longer. Sen. John Edwards looked and sounded like a bright eyed country bumpkin who appears to be running for class president on a free candy platform. Rep. Richard Gephardt talks a very loud talk but he's never really walked the walk. Sen. Bob Graham should be doing a lot better, but I think the whole daily journal thing freaks people out. Sen. Joseph Lieberman is doomed because he sounds like he's still running on the Gore/Lieberman ticket. Sen. John Kerry must be using his military training because it appears as though he's waiting for the other candidates to eliminate themselves before attacking Howard Dean. Rev. Al Sharpton was honest enough to go after the Democratic Party as much as Bush, and that is why he drives all of the other candidates nuts.

Howard Dean is a political abnormality. Dean has enough political experience but he is not a career politician. That allows him to trump all of the Congressmen and the outsiders at the same time. Dean is a smart cookie but he doesn't come off as being smug about it. That allows him to trump the other candidates without sounding like a egghead policy wonk. Dean has a true grassroots movement in place and everyone else is just treading on astroturf. That allows him to raise money and get the message out for the first few primaries. The problem is that although Howard Dean may be the best Democratic candidate he won't win.

Howard Dean won't win because all of his rhetoric requires nothing but bad things for the good old US of A. Dean needs another terrorist attack or more chaos in Iraq. Dean needs Usama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein still at-large and WMDs no where to be found. Dean needs some more scandals in the financial world and an economy still circling the drain pipe. Should any rays of sunshine begin to loom on the horizon the Dean campaign is toast. And if the sun manages to melt the ice in New Hampshire earlier than expected he could even loose to one of the Democrats.

I was told that it's possible the trusty US Postal Service might have put my bill in a neighbor’s mailbox on accident. That's probably what happened which is not a huge deal. The problem is that Piedmont Natural Gas' e-business and electronic bill payment systems make no sense whatsoever. I was given three options for paying my bill:

1. Use the online payment system, but the payment won't be recognized in their "system" for 3 to 5 business days.
2. Use a third-party pay-by-phone system that will be automatically recognized by their "system", but there is a $4.95 surcharge for using this service.
3. Use the shoe leather express and drive across town to drop off a payment in their local office, but they close at 5pm and it will still take a day to process.

Does anyone else see the insanity in this use, or rather misuse of technology? Somehow the third-party integrator can do a better job at e-business than the company itself. Of course there is a money trail that has to be followed to understand the insanity. The third-party has an obvious and instantly gratifying incentive to get the transaction done. The good old not-a-monopoly-just-your-only-choice gas company only has a down the road feel good incentive. The folks at SpeedPay are wise opportunists and Piedmont Natural Gas are dolts.

The whole premise of using e-business is to reduce the need for human points of contact (failure) and to reduce the overall costs of each transaction. Giving customers the ability to pay bills online is a huge cost savings to everyone involved in the transaction. Ask Bank of America how much money they are saving by giving away electronic bill pay for free.

I am sure that Piedmont Natural Gas is not the only company out there that has managed to screw up its e-business initiatives. Most of these companies are simply waiting for someone else, either third parties or banks, to do the real heavy lifting. Their argument is that they are in the business of providing a service (gas, water, etc) and not in the business of giving customers new fangled payment contraptions. That argument fails to recognize that today's customer believes that service should involve the entire experience, not just the front end. Get a clue.

I've always enjoyed steak over sizzle so the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards was a pretty small meal. The concept behind the show and the marketing dollars it generates is pure genius. The fact that I'm blogging about it is proof that they are indeed getting a lot of free advertising out of their charade. I will give MTV credit for that but don't try and pass off fat and gristle for a porterhouse.

Now I'm one of those people that will listen to just about any kind of music. My CD cabinet is full of everything from rap to rock, classical to movie soundtracks, new age to grunge, progressive to jazz, pop to 60s stuff. Throw in all the CDs my wife has and there's not much I don't enjoy listening to. On any given day I'll have Tupac or Coldplay, Buddy Rich or U2, Leonard Bernstein's Candide or 10,000 Maniacs, 50 Cent or Rush in the car or on at work.

So I'm not a music snob or philistine when I say this: The MTV Video Music Awards is a contrived farce more about MTV than music. The only blind prophet in the whole comedy of errors was Chris Rock, who artfully quipped, "Today is the anniversary of Martin Luther King's 'I Have a Dream' speech - isn't it nice to see that his dream has finally come true?" Chris Rock was a singular voice of reason as he poked fun at the many no-talents in appearance. Can someone please tell Kelly Osbourne that her 15 minutes are up? (Oh, and consider bathing.)

"If someone had told me, when I was a kid, that I was going to win the super-genius of the century award, I would have never of believed it." - Jack Black, mocking last year's Michael Jackson moment

You may ask why did I watch the show if I have such distain for the whole notion that MTV is being above board in choosing it's winners? First, I thought MTV might of had the sense to give Johnny Cash a moonman. Second, hey who doesn't love a good train wreck? I missed the opening act but it was everywhere on the tube, dial, and screen this morning. MTV has guaranteed itself and its sponsors plenty of viewers when the show is repeated ad nauseum in perpetuity.

After searching and searching and searching I was unable to locate any information about how exactly the winners are chosen. That's because the winners are chosen by MTV, and Missy Elliot has more long-term earning/exposure potential than Johnny Cash. It's that simple. Honestly, every time Elliot's Work It comes on the radio I turn the dial. That whole lyric, "I put my thing down, flip it and reverse it", running backwards two times throughout the song is like fingernails on a chalk board to my musical sensibilities.

MTV did give Johnny Cash's Hurt the award for Best Cinematography in a Video, which is like the Oscars' token Scientific and Technical Academy Awards. It gets them off the hook for not totally dissing a legend, but it keeps their core audience from complaining about having to see some old guy who's all depressed. Everyone knows that depressed young people sell a whole lot better. And what's not to be depressed about when you have your whole life in front of you? Please, give me a break.

As with most things in life, it's all in the timing. Thomas' days with the team were numbered from the moment Bird returned to the Pacers. At that time Donnie Walsh said he wanted to finish up the team's free agent singings, and then pass the reigns to Larry Bird. The re-signing of Reggie Miller was Walsh's final act and the ticking clock on Isiah Thomas' coaching tenure with the Pacers began. Everyone knew this was going to happen, but what people are questioning is the timing.

I was an Indiana Pacers season ticket holder when Bird was coaching and for Thomas' first season with the team. Donnie Walsh is a basketball genius who took a gamble on both Bird and Thomas, and the numbers appear to show he was a winner yet again. But there was no love loss between Bird and Thomas, both on and off the court, and Rick Carlisle was Larry Bird's preferred successor three years ago. With Bird now running the show it would appear that he really is running the show. And not wasting too much time either.

Isiah Thomas will coach again but it may not be this season. Had Walsh given him the axe at the end of the season it is very likely Thomas would be the new head coach of the Detroit Pistons. The same team that did fire Rick Carlisle at the end of the year, and they quickly replaced the successful coach with Larry Brown. Rather ironic how both Thomas and Carlisle found themselves out of a job for off-court personality issues, instead of how their teams did on the court.

It would appear that participation from the folks on North Jordan Avenue and Varsity Villas was down from last year. Though it would be hard for me to imagine tumbleweed rolling across Kirkwood Avenue or a lackluster Little 500 weekend at IU. Despite the drop in the list it was encouraging to see that 3 out of the top 5 schools come from the Big Ten. The matriculants at Madison have always known how to throw a good tailgate party rife with brats and beer, and living in Champaign alone would drive even Carrie Nation to drink.

Now the funny thing about college rankings is that every administrator and faculty member hates them, unless of course their institution is high up on the more favorable lists. Back when I was teaching at IU it was named College of the Year among research institutions by Time magazine. There was a huge billboard about it on the outskirts of Bloomington that I would pass on my way to and from Indianapolis. And there were probably inserts of the article in every admissions brochure that went out the door.

Whether these kinds of rankings are measuring alcohol consumption or the number of Nobel Prize winners on the faculty, at the end of the day they are all subject to one extent or another. That explains why one survey says IU is at the top and another says it's all bottoms up in Bloomington. I have no problem with that as long as administrators don't try and talk out of both sides of their mouths.

According to a very biased survey taken at the MacLaughlin household, which has four pieces of vellum hanging on the wall from IU, we can both attest that Indiana University is both a great institution of higher learning and a place that has many fine establishments for consuming an adult beverage. Please drink responsibly. Please read surveys responsibly as well.

I argued my way out of the university's mandatory freshman writing course and into the higher-level argumentative writing class. I was a political science and English major with a minor in public affaires. That seemed the right mix of disciplines to prepare me for the LSATs and entrance into law school. What I quickly learned was that the things I enjoyed most about these subjects were in fact the antithesis of the modern legal world.

"The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers." - Dick the Butcher, Henry VI, Part II (Act IV, Scene II)

I took a course on law and public policy in my junior year at Indiana University. The class was excellent in the sense that it taught me how to research and read case law, understand the basics of state and federal laws, codes, statutes, and regulations, and all the nuances of using one of the top law school libraries in the country. But it also revealed the simple reality of the legal system: It's minutiae and manipulation run amuck.

Future courses and lessons in life further revealed just how much the legal system operates in a alternate universe of its own. That probably explains the lawsuits against McDonald's for coffee that's either too hot or hamburgers that taste too good. That would also explain why fewer people pursue nobler professions for fear of being subpoenaed. Be forewarned that entering the nether regions of the legal domain is not for the faint of heart or light of wallet.

Given enough time, resources, and court motions you can essentially turn the wheels of justice in a direction of your choosing. Given enough machination and obfuscation you can bend the rod your way. Given enough legal experts anyone watching television can be convinced of anything. And don't forget that most of the lawyers you see and read about growing up are fictional characters to begin with. The next time you contemplate stepping off into the abyss that is the legal system stop for a moment to ask yourself one question: How much justice can you afford?

Something tells me that before all of this is over the jokes about a slow moving bronco and cigars will pale in comparison to the carnalcopia of innuendo coming out of this trial. If you think the coverage was over-the-top for seven-minute hearing, then just wait for the actual trial.

Wait a minute, is that Gary Coleman and Gallagher in a town hall debate discussing the merits of an effective energy policy in California? Time for the media to jump off one breaking story in need of in-depth analysis for another. Stay tuned...