A REAL STATE OF THE UNION SPEECH: Sen. Marco Rubio's response.

MY THOUGHTS on last night's State of the Union speech: unexceptional, trite, banal, same old, same old ... then Stephen Green, liveblogging as http://pjmedia.com/blog/drunkblogging-sotu/Vodkapundit, got it exactly: "the Audacity of Bullshit." Here are my notes again, cleaned up and slightly expanded.

Our military men & women coming home. Yes, but as they did during Vietnam, sacrificing in vain because the administration didn't have the courage to win.

Today America uses less oil. Yes, but because America is a less prosperous nation under Obama's 'leadership'.

Can I buy (tax, borrow, or steal) some more zeros? I'll need them to continue the administration's 'investment' in government. Nothing I'll propose will increase the deficit (neither will it decrease the deficit).

Keystone? Fracking? Nope, but I will 'speed up' (ha!) leasing public lands (my lands, by the way; I'm the public) and use the income to combat climate change by -- you guessed it -- further subsidizing wind and solar.

Let's "Fix it First" -- with more tax money we don't have, of course. And by the way, I'll direct private capital their money on ports, pipelines, and schools.

More NewSpeak (again via Stephen Green): Spending is Saving.

Our children aren't learning enough in government schools, so we must start their indoctrination earlier with government-funded preschools.

Colleges and universities are becoming unaffordable, so let's get rid of those pesky 'for profit' institutions.

Obama promised me a job.... 0ops, he meant illegals.

Raise the minimum wage; take another rung from the bottom of the latter. Jump higher, you poor bastards.

We're going to fill up the middle class by reducing the number of people in the upper class.

We're going to defeat Al Qaeda leaving the Mideast and focusing on reducing our nuclear arsenal.

A nothing speech. Reduce government tax expenditures (NewSpeak for raise taxes); invest (NewSpeak for spend more [on pie-in-the-sky liberal dreams]); educate more (NewSpeak for indoctrination); and promote public safety (NewSpeak for control more). Be of good cheer; our Government is here and it.will.help.you.

ENDNOTE: I participated in the Fox News/Bing pulse poll during the State of the Union speech. The results, posted http://www.bing.com/politics/stateoftheunionhere, are accurate only if the vertical axis went from Neutral (top) to Negative (bottom). Only once during the entire speech did the 'pulse' ever move into positive territory. The charts are bogus.

TECHNOLOGY: tracking aircraft by television. Making more spectrum available for social networking and video games....

THE FUTURE of your 401k is ... unsettled. To say the least.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT: The long run decline in actual homeownership. "The primary impact of US homeownership policy has not been to increase homeownership, but to increase debt along with driving up house prices.... [H]elping everyone live in a McMansion hardly seems like a compelling public policy goal."

RANDOM THOUGHTS from Thomas Sowell are always worthwhile. Here are two:

Why do so many judges' views of criminals seem to be the opposite of policemen's view? It could be that judges see criminals when they are on their best behavior, while the police see them at their worst. But I believe it is because judges have usually spent more time in educational institutions than policemen, and have picked up more politically correct nonsense as a result.

Some people seem to think that glib and shallow political correctness becomes Deep Stuff when it comes from a TV commentator with a foreign accent.

Read the rest.

TECHNOLOGY: The top 10 tech 'fails' of 2012.

WITH CHRISTOPHER DORNER, the 'blame the Right' movement fell silent. Now that he's (likely) dead, his victimization at the hands of the LA police can proceed apace.

HOW'S THAT hopey-changey stuff working' out for you Millenials? Well, you asked for it, you got it.

FRANK J. FLEMING: Just Say Yes to Gridlock.

When in history have politicians demonstrated an ability to do anything useful? When the two parties actually do come together, we get things like the TSA. Every time you get your junk touched before you get on a flight, you can just consider that bipartisan love.

Gridlock is good.

YES. YES, IT IS. Is it time to get rid of the EPA?