Selections from Dave Barry's "2010 Year in Review"

The scariest thing about the [Gulf oil] spill was, nobody in charge seemed to know what to do about it. Time and again, top political leaders personally flew down to the Gulf of Mexico to look at the situation firsthand and hold press availabilities. And yet somehow, despite these efforts, the oil continued to leak...

Iceland's Eyjafjallajökull (literally, "many syllables") volcano erupts, sending huge clouds of ash into the atmosphere and forcing airlines throughout northern Europe to ground flights. Greece, although not directly affected, announces it will take six months off, just in case; France, as an added precaution, surrenders...

On the terrorism front, New York police, alerted by Times Square street vendors, discover a smoking SUV packed with explosives... and a suspect is later captured at Kennedy Airport by sharp-eyed Transportation Security Administration workers trained to spot suspicious behavior. Ha, ha! Just kidding, of course. The suspect is captured by U.S. Customs agents at the last minute after boarding a Dubai-bound plane filled with passengers who, like the suspect, all had been carefully screened by the TSA to make sure they were not carrying more than three ounces of shampoo...

In other national news, Congress passes and Obama signs into law a financial-reform act designed to curb Wall Street excesses by mandating the death penalty for anybody caught wearing a watch costing more than a house. Having guaranteed that the financial community will behave in a responsible manner, Washington returns to the important work of running up the deficit...

In New York, the big issue is a proposal to build, two blocks from Ground Zero, a Muslim community center, which proponents claim will promote dialogue. Even in the purely conceptual phase, it promotes a huge amount of dialogue, to the point where National Guard troops may need to be called in...

... the elections turn out to be a bloodbath for the Democrats, who lose the House of Representatives, a bunch of Senate seats, some governorships, some state legislatures and all of the key student council races. Also, a number of long-term Democratic incumbents are urinated on by their own dogs. Obama immediately departs for a nine-day trip to Asia to see if anybody over there wants to hear about the benefits of health-care reform...

The full column is at the Washington Post, via The Pajama Pundit.