Here’s a humorous recap of last year’s socio-political follies by the always-amusing Dave Barry, published at the Washington Post: Dave Barry’s Review of 2013, the Year of the Zombies
Yes folks, a month-by-month reminder of stuff we had hoped was dead and buried that came back to haunt us last year… EEEYYYAAAAWW!
 

 
Here are some highlights:
 
February ~

… Washington faces another crisis in the form of a “sequester” that will happen automatically unless Congress can agree on a budget, which seems unlikely inasmuch as Congress cannot agree on what planet this is. If the sequester goes into effect, federal spending will continue to rise, but not quite as fast as it would have risen without the sequester. To a normal human, this means government spending is still increasing, but to Washington, the sequester means “draconian cuts” and is a looming disaster of epic proportions. Panic grips the city, as grim-faced former student council presidents write talking points far into the night.

March ~

… as the federal budget deadline passes without Congress reaching agreement, the devastating, draconian, historically catastrophic sequester goes into effect, causing a mild reduction in the rate of increase in government spending that for some inexplicable reason goes unnoticed by pretty much everybody outside the federal government. Undaunted, Washington turns its massive collective brainpower toward the task of deciding what to do about the next major national crisis, whatever it may be.

August ~

… U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, signaling a major change in the federal government’s policy regarding the War on Drugs, tells a meeting of the American Bar Association that he has a family of tiny, invisible harmonica-playing giraffes living inside his nose.
 
… In politics, San Diego Mayor Bob “Bob” Filner resigns as a result of allegations that he is a compulsive serial horn dog who groped pretty much the entire female population of Southern California. He immediately becomes a leading contender in the New York City mayoral race.

 
October ~

… the federal government, in an unthinkable development that we cannot even think about, partially shuts down. The result is a catastrophe of near-sequester proportions. Within hours wolves are roaming the streets of major U.S. cities, and bacteria the size of mature salmon are openly cavorting in the nation’s water supply. In the Midwest, thousands of cows, no longer supervised by the Department of Agriculture, spontaneously explode. Yellowstone National Park — ALL of it — is stolen. In some areas gravity stops working altogether, forcing people to tie themselves to trees so they won’t float away. With the nation virtually defenseless, the Bermudan army invades the East Coast, within hours capturing Delaware and most of New Jersey.

 
September ~

… In other foreign-affairs news, Dennis Rodman travels to North Korea for a loon-to-loon meeting with Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un, who presents the former NBA star with a commemorative set of 50 political prisoners.

December ~

… retailers report that the Black Friday shopping weekend was weaker than expected, with a nationwide total of just six shoppers killed, 148 seriously injured and only 357 arrested — all numbers well below last year’s totals.

Not only was it a “Zombie” year, but after reading Barry’s re-cap of the last twelve months it’s not hard to imagine that the entire planet has fallen down a universe-sized rabbit hole – which may very well be the case.

 
Related:
Speaking of zombies ~ Don’t Let Death Stop your Social Security ~

Uncle Sam, always generous to a fault with taxpayers’ money, doled out about $108 billion in Social Security benefits to the dead in 2012. 😯