Only for you, dear members of our Dolans.com family, would I spend last night listening to such a boring speech as The State of The Union!

Please don't take this as an anti-Obama statement.

They usually are boring no matter the President, no matter the political party.

The State of The Union has become nothing more than a laundry wish list that includes not only the President's hopes and dreams but also those hopes and dreams from every head of his cabinet posts.

Throw in a list of the President's legislative achievements and there you have it--one impossibly long exercise in verbal diarrhea made worse by constant interruptions from the peanut gallery. (Oops, I mean Congress.)

Last night's speech was chock-a-block full of hopes and dreams but lacking in presidential achievements.

It's a little tough to extol the virtues of Obamacare, the killing of the Keystone XL pipeline and a slew of new regulations like Dodd-Frank when there is so much opposition to those achievements.

The speech last night, however, was refreshing if, for no other reason, than it proved conventional wisdom wrong. 

All day long TV political pundits were predicting a barn-burner of class war rhetoric which, thankfully was missing in action.

The only real reference to any sort of class differences was the often-heard line about building a nation where "everyone gets a fair shot; everyone does their fair share; and everyone plays by the same set of rules."

Well, the last time I checked all citizens and legal immigrants do get a fair shot.

Education is free and you can make what you want of it.  Anyone with an idea, some nerve and gumption can start a business and succeed or fail based upon the soundness of the idea and their commitment to work as hard as they can.

So... we've covered that base.

Where your idea gets bogged down. Mr. President, is in the next two statements.

Everyone ISN'T doing "their fair share."  And, no, I'm not pointing a finger at those "millionaires and billionaires" that you seem to love to vilify.

I will grant you that they are getting away with "tax murder" but that's a result of our convoluted tax laws, not tax cheating on their part.

If they are paying less than they should, they are only doing so by following the law.  It's not done to spite the sainted secretary of Warren Buffet!

If we are going to talk tax reform then we must talk about the other 99% of taxpayers... 47% of whom pay NO INCOME TAXES.

Are they doing their "fair share?"

The second problem is with your "everyone plays by the same rules."

We out here in the hinterlands, away from the Beltway, are basically playing by the same rules.  It's only you Washington, DC types who are working from a different playbook.

You make the laws WE live by and then make a new set for yourselves. 

Is it any wonder the public is cynical?

Now... let's turn to the phrase of the last night's address which came out at almost the beginning and repeated itself many times through the body of the speech--an economy BUILT TO LAST.

What the heck does THAT mean? 

When I think of something "built to last" I think of a Maytag refrigerator or a car or, as Ken suggested, a baseball glove.

But I don't think of the most influential country in the world as being "built to last."

America is "built to succeed" or "built to innovate" or "built to share the beauty of freedom."

But to me, "built to last" suggests something that is currently up and running but will soon be out of date.

Meanwhile the new and younger models reap all the buzz and all the hype.

Is this really the vision of the greatest country on earth that you wish to project and nurture, Mr. President?

If this is going to be the new vision for our country, "an economy built to last" folks, then you can forget trying to acquire a big enough nest egg to retire or see your children do better than you have.

It takes a nation of big dreamers to accomplish that and "built to last" doesn't sound like a big dreamer.  It sounds more like a small thinker who depends on someone else to come up with something.

In an economy "built to last" our motto will become, "We're not pretty, but we are still running...sorta."

Yuck!