FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.

I can't clean up, though I know I should.

•   This week the Department of Energy put out a Halloween press release advertising "energy-themed pumpkin patterns to help 'energize' your neighborhood for Halloween." It also reminded revelers that pumpkin waste sent to landfills creates harmful methane gas, which is part of the reason why the Department is working on technology that would instead turn it to energy, which efforts it described at tedious length. Institutional holiday pressers are silly and we can have some good fun with them, but the global-warming-hah-how-come-it's-snowing crowd instead mobbed up to denounce the Department for, in their view, criticizing people who carved pumpkins ("Energy Department smashes pumpkins for causing climate change" -- Washington Times). The RedState asshole on the case even added, "The best part in all of this is that, despite railing against the dangers of buying pumpkins, they hypocritically have jack-o-lantern suggestions in their Energyween guide" (inappropriate boldface in original); that is, he apparently noticed the presser was clearly not telling people to abstain from pumpkin-carving, realized this didn't fit the bullshit story he was bandwagoning, and decided to portray this dissonance as evidence of his subject's hypocrisy rather than of his own self-induced reading disability. All propagandists are loathsome, but the ones who try so hard to cover their tracks are the worst.

•   That little boy in the hospital begged him to write a column about how liberals are The Real Racists™ because Ben Carson, so Jonah Goldberg steps to the plate, holds his bat aloft, drops it on his head, falls on his ass and sharts home plate.

Here’s something you may not know: Dr. Ben Carson is black.

Of course, I’m being a little cute here. The only way you wouldn’t know he’s black is if you were blind and only listened to the news.

It's a liberal media cover-up to end all liberal media cover-ups! I understand MSNBC has a video filter that makes him look white.

...But what’s remarkable is that at no point in this conversation did anyone call attention to the fact that Carson is an African-American. Indeed, most analysis of Carson’s popularity from pundits focuses on his likable personality and his sincere Christian faith. But it’s intriguingly rare to hear people talk about the fact that he’s black.

So liberals aren't making a big deal about Ben Carson being black. Great! Isn't this the I-don't-see-color world Goldberg normally wants to live in? Goldberg pulls back his bat and...

One could argue that he’s even more authentically African-American than Barack Obama, given that Obama’s mother was white and he was raised in part by his white grandparents.

...spins around, collapses into the arms of the catcher, and takes a splitter to the butt. "More authentically African-American"! Next he'll be calling Obama an Uncle Tom.

...And that probably explains why his race seems to be such a non-issue for the media. The New York Times is even reluctant to refer to him as a doctor. The Federalist reports that Jill Biden, who has a doctorate in education, is three times more likely to be referred to as “Dr.” in the Times as brain surgeon Carson.

Wait, Carson is a doctor too? Who knew? That MSM really doesn't want us to know the truth!

Carson’s popularity isn’t solely derived from his race, but it is a factor. The vast majority of conservatives resent the fact that Democrats glibly and shamelessly accuse Republicans of bigotry — against blacks, Hispanics, and women — simply because they disagree with liberal policies (which most conservatives believe hurt minorities).

In other words, we're not racist because we like this black guy, and you're racist because you don't. To the showers, Jonah.

•   Oh yeah -- let's go Mets! I'm going to hang onto the myth and magic of 1986/2015 until the smoke clears and the mirrors shatter. And if it all goes south, well...