But Mr McCarthy believed he could still shake Americans out of their political torpor.
By promoting fresh faces, UK business could stand tall once again after the economic torpor of the 1970s.
But at home the risk remains that she will not do enough to shake Germany out of its torpor.
One is judicial torpor: of 335 criminal cases relating to his administration, sentence has been passed in only 39.
Liberal Laotians like Bounthanh say only democracy can force Laos from its torpor.
"He woke me up from a sort of torpor, from the little life in which I was living, " recalls Armani.
His newest outrage has almost single-handedly shaken Israel out of its torpor, giving it a renewed sense of purpose and determination.
Such paternalism may have helped to shake Turkey out of its Ottoman torpor, but it goes down badly in liberal-democratic modern Europe.
In addition, it is both a cause and consequence of economic torpor that politics in the south remains the province of strongmen.
By being so good for so long, the Yankees have perhaps lulled their fans into a big of a satisfied torpor, Teixeira suggested.
Perhaps in fear of losing the argument to those who draw more adversarial lessons, moderate governments may be rousing from their long diplomatic torpor.
The president, this line of argument goes, sacked the government in order to create an atmosphere of political intrigue and thus shake voters out of their torpor.
Technically, the answer is no: arising from his holiday torpor last weekend, he sacked the entire government, showing that he could still throw his constitutional weight around.
It is just an idea, but the fact that it is being discussed shows that reformists are trying to shake off the torpor that seems to have afflicted the president.
ECONOMIST: How to fight a conservative establishment that always wins
It was only late in the global crisis, when Greece admitted to lying about its numbers, that the markets woke up from their torpor into a sudden panic over sovereign risk.
For them, the shortage of credit is not the underlying reason why the UK economy can't wake from its torpor (although the the credit crunch sent the economy into its torpor five years ago).
It had been an exciting but sluggish contest, owing partly to the unavoidable torpor that accompanies televised football, but mostly because of the persistent confusion brought by the NFL's great 2012 boondoggle: replacement officials.
So although we may all be fed up with the economy's torpor, and would be keen for a bit of renewed growth, it is not clear that any growth sparked by a new housing-linked consumer boom would be altogether healthy.
If those workers conclude that they would be better off spending now, since the alternative could be earning next to nothing on their savings if they retire in a future period of economic torpor, long-term U.S. growth will be the real loser.
The two big challenges for George Osborne today were to do something to wake the UK economy from the torpor that has afflicted it since 2008, while also persuading investors of the world that lending to the government remains a prudent thing to do.
So why can't Occupy Wall Street become a tea-party movement for the other side, one that might jolt the Democrats out of their torpor, tug them left, and switch back on some of the electricity that Barack Obama generated when he was running for president?
In the same way, they hibernate by going into torpor, they can do the same thing on a very short-term basis through the summer - if it is wet and windy and there is no food then they just shut down their body temperature and they just sleep it out.
In this wondrously accomplished and furiously expressive drama blending the moody rambles of a road movie with the tightly ratcheted criminal tension of a film noir the director Amy Seimetz, in her first feature, captures the wildly flailing energy and exhausted torpor of grinding frustration as well as the flickering grace of stifled dreams.
应用推荐