Paul Ryan Had Me at Hammock, Michele Bachmann Had Me at Miracle

Both President Obama's State of the Union speech and the Republican response from Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan lulled me into a semi-somnambulistic coma.

President Obama droned on about winning the future and racing to the top, which sounded like a lot of work:

"We have to out-innovate, out-educate, and out-build the rest of the world."

I guess at some point I must have stopped paying close attention and wondered off in the direction of the fridge for a beer. And so, after plopping back down on my couch after as near as I can reconstruct four or five trips, my ears perked as I heard Paul Ryan say the following:

"America's best century will be considered our past century. This is a future in which we will transform our social safety net into a hammock, which lulls able-bodied people into lives of complacency and dependency."

Now maybe I'm missing something but while the Republican vision is a bit bleak, it does sound like a lot less work. I only have one question. Where do I get my hammock?

I did open my eyes a bit more for Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann's Tea Party response, and not just because she had gone goth with dark blue eyeliner. She really woke me up to an exciting prospect:

"Just the creation of this nation was a miracle. Who's to say that we can't see a miracle again?"

Who's to say indeed. Sometime after midnight I received an email from Barack Obama entitled "We do big things." Do? Sigh. Yes, I think I will take the Republican Tea Party approach for the next couple of years and just sink back into my hammock and wait for the miracle.

I'd hate for the hammock to be the miracle, I'd better buy one myself. I'll bet I can order a hammock off the internet with my laptop from my couch. You know, a laptop is kind of awkward in a reclined state, it might be better to swap for an iPad. America is an exceptional nation.