HEATHER MAC DONALD: The Myth of Criminal-Justice Racism.

AT AMAZON, fresh deals on bestselling products, updated every hour.

Also, coupons galore in Grocery & Gourmet Food.

Plus, Kindle Daily Deals.

And, Today’s Featured Digital Deal. The deals are brand new every day, so browse and save!

COL. KURTZ, CALL YOUR OFFICE:

Shot: “Going By Movies, America Is In An Apocalyptic Frame of Mind.”

—Ace of Spades.

Chaser: “Why Trump and Carson want to bring about America’s apocalypse.”

—Former Bush #43 speechwriter Michael Gerson, in the Washington Post.

As Ace asks, “If the Age of Obama is so swell, if we’re all filled with Hope, why is this age not producing the spate of feel-good, have-fun, get-rich movies the 80s did? Why are our collective fantasies in the Age of Obama so single-mindedly focused on the idea of dystopia, cultural decay, and ultimately cultural destruction?”

Outside of the ubiquitous superhero movies, that’s certainly the material that Hollywood is pumping out; it’s a far cry from the feel-good stuff of the Bill Clinton go-go ’90s. Is Hollywood attempting to monetize the collective pulse of the nation, or are they also angry in some capacity with Mr. Obama? And if you buy Gerson’s premise about Carson and Trump, what does it say when an “apocalyptic” America gets candidates with a similar frame of mind? (Of course, I doubt Trump or Carson’s supporters are hearing the same tone or message in their speeches as a former Bush speechwriter.)

CNBC’S JOHN HARWOOD HAS NO BUSINESS MODERATING A GOP PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE, Mollie Hemingway writes at the Federalist:

Harwood works for both CNBC and The New York Times. You can get something of a feel for his predictable but conventional liberal takes from the headlines of just his most recent pieces:

• On the Economy, Republicans Have a Data Problem
• Tax Plans of G.O.P. Favor the Rich Despite Populist Talk
• Timing Gives Sanders a Lift in His Quest
• Republicans Vow to Erase Obama’s Record, but Such Promises Are Rarely Kept
• Outsiders Stir Politics, but Often Fail to Win or Govern Well
• Angry Bent of Party Let Trump Rise
• Bernie Sanders: A Revolution With an Eye on the Hungry Children

 There’s little doubt he’s a hard left Democrat operative with a byline, and in theory at least, this is supposed to be a debate aimed at Republican primary voters. But it will certainly be good practice for the GOP candidates — whoever goes on to win the nomination will very likely find his or her debates against Hillary moderated by nothing but the likes of Harwood, Gwen Ifill, and the successor to Candy Crowley.

BERNIE SANDERS IS RIGHT: LET’S COPY DENMARK! “America cannot ever be Denmark, but we should strive to copy their recent reforms. They have woken up to the woes of dependency and big government. They have cut their corporate tax rates and have made their country a better place to do business. We should follow their example and do the same.”

Faster, please.

REMINDING GLORIA STEINEM what really led to feminism’s bad reputation. Feminists:

“Too many folks see ‘feminist’ as implying not just equality, but other ideas — that the sexes are the same, or should be; that women who stay home to raise the kids are making a bad choice,” the editorial board wrote. “Feminism got tied to one side in the abortion wars and countless other issues. It’s hard now to see it as more than another arm of the ‘progressive’ agenda.”

The editorial board added that those who brandish the “feminist” label appear to respect the choices of some women — especially women who espouse liberal beliefs — more than others. . . .

The bottom line is that most Americans believe in equal rights, but the discussion has moved away from equal rights to equal outcomes. Men and women currently have equal rights, but not equal outcomes. The outrage brigade can’t point to a single actual right that men have (in America, at least) that women don’t.

Well, men have the right to register for the draft. So there’s that, anyway.

WHEN ROBBERY VICTIMS BLAME — THEMSELVES: In the New York Post, Karol Markowicz explores what happens when urban “Progressives” internalize their fellow leftists’ “Check Your Privilege” sophistry:

But writer Chaya Babu cranked the guilty gut-check to 11 last week when, reflecting back on being the victim of a crime last year at a cafe in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn, she made excuses for the man who stole her laptop at gunpoint.

* * * * * * * * *

In the weeks following the robbery, she and her friends worked on “finding space to take into consideration the broader social and economic circumstances surrounding the incident” and “cultivated our sense of compassion toward the robber, whom we imagined must have been acting out of dire need.”

Babu quotes another writer who was robbed that night as saying, “I didn’t ultimately think that person posed a threat. I didn’t feel afraid of the person; I felt more just afraid of the weapon.”

Welcome to the bizarro world of gentrification guilt, where the man with the gun pointed at you isn’t allowed to be “scary” but a weapon with no motive of its own is.

The kicker comes when Babu notes that “many of us in the group agreed that in some respects we identified more with our robber than with the characters we were portrayed to be” in media stories about the crime.

In the future, every leftist will be Robert Fisk for 15 minutes.

LIFE IN OBAMA’S POSTRACIAL AMERICA: “Black Lives Matter” Activist Shaun King — Who’s Actually A White Guy Pretending To Be Black — Calls Black Sheriff David Clarke and “Uncle Tom.”

Clarke’s response: “That crap doesn’t bother me.”

More on Shaun King — who, incredibly, has been hired by the New York Daily News to write about race relations — here.

Related: Today’s Democrat Activists and the Island of Misfit Toys.

MOVING AHEAD ON impeaching IRS Commissioner John Koskinen. It won’t go anywhere, exactly, but it does make a point:

The last impeachment of a cabinet officer or agency head was War Secretary William Belknap in 1876. Then again, no Presidency in decades has treated Congress with the disdain that President Obama has. With rare exceptions he has also refused to dismiss officials when they fail at their most basic obligations. If the House votes to impeach Mr. Koskinen, the Senate then would need a two-thirds vote to convict in a trial, which is unlikely.

Yet the exercise will have the salutary effect of reminding executive-branch officials that they are not a government unto themselves. The U.S. Attorney has refused to honor Congress’s contempt charge against Ms. Lerner for refusing to testify, the Justice Department has closed its investigations into IRS targeting without prosecutions, and the press corps winks at abuses of power when conservatives are the targets. With an executive who refuses to honor the normal separation of powers, Congress is obliged to use its authority to hold government accountable.

I think Koskinen should be radioactive — protested at speaking events, too controversial for post-IRS employment, you know, the way lefties would treat a similar offender on the right.

BACON PANIC + POOR MATH SKILLS = EASY MONEY: “In other words, if this study is absolutely positively spot on correct eating that hotdog every single day for your entire life raises your odds of catching colorectal cancer by nearly but not quite….1%.”

TIM CARNEY: Is the GOP now Paul Ryan’s party? Or is it still K Street’s party?

If Ex-Im is to be revived, it will probably take the cooperation of McConnell, McCarthy and presumptive speaker of the House, Paul Ryan — all of whom oppose Ex-Im.

So here’s the question: Who’s party is this? Is it Paul Ryan’s Party or Steve Fincher’s Party?

Ryan, for years, supported corporate welfare. Under Bush, Ryan voted for Ex-Im, the Medicare prescription drug benefit, the Wall Street bailout and the Detroit bailout.

Since the late 2008 bailout bonanza, Ryan has had the zeal of a convert against corporate welfare. He wrote an op-ed in 2010 headlined “Down With Big Business,” channeling a famous Wall Street Journal editorial from the late 1970s.

“The problem we have had as a party,” he said, “is we have often confused being pro-market with being pro-business.”

Analysis: True.

ANDREW McCARTHY: Budget Betrayal: GOP’s Path to Victory … for Hillary:

Upon taking control of the House in 2011, Republicans approved a budget with $1.3 trillion in deficit spending, pushing the national debt to $14.7 trillion (this is the officially recognized debt, not taking into account tens of trillions of dollars in unfunded liabilities).

Today, after four years of GOP control of the House, during the last ten months of which Republicans have also controlled the Senate, the debt stands at $18 trillion. In his last official act, Speaker John Boehner, along with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, will accede to Obama’s demand to push the debt limit to an unimaginable $19.5 trillion in just the next two years – a transparent attempt to remove the threat posed by deficit spending as a 2016 election issue.

That is nearly $5 trillion added to the national debt since the GOP’s 2010 pledge to end out-of-control borrowing and spending. Mind you, it took over 200 years for the United States to accumulate $5 trillion in debt after constitutional governance began in the late eighteenth century. With this latest deal, Republicans have colluded with Democrats to add about two-and-a-half times that amount – $13 trillion – since President George W. Bush was sworn in in January 2001.

In the 2016 campaign, Republicans will blame all of this on Obama and the Democrats.  They will continue to hope you don’t realize the spending could not have happened without their acquiescence – often their insistence. They will hope you don’t check the paper trail and realize that they promised to stop it, then caved. They will vow: “If you’ll just turn out to vote for us, under our new management, we are not going to do business like this.”

If, come January 20, 2017, Hillary Clinton is taking the presidential oath of office, ready to hit the ground running with big Democratic gains in Congress, we will know why.

Read the whole thing.

NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: Less Talk, But Plenty Of Action:

Nobody in the stock market gets excited about the phrase “nanotech” anymore. Which is strange, because nanotechnology itself – that is, the science and engineering conducted on a molecular scale, measuring less than 100 nanometers – is yielding applications and products in a number of industries, just as its more sensible supporters have long predicted. . . .

According to Google Trends, searches on “nanotechnology” have steadily trended downward to between 15% and 20% of the levels of a decade ago. Searches for “nanotech” – the catchy buzzword preferred by investors – have grown even quieter. And yet each year there are more interesting applications that wouldn’t be possible without nanotechnology.

One better-known example is semiconductors, which began employing a 65-nanometer manufacturing process in 2007. Intel this year announced a processor with transistors measuring 14 nanometers, small enough to fit 1.3 billion transistors on a chip, and is pushing for a 10-nanometer process.

Meanwhile, research for new drug therapies are increasingly relying on molecular-level science, while gold nanoparticles are being developed as way to diagnose and treat cancers. Touchscreens, LEDs, displays, batteries, water desalination, energy efficiency – all are areas that are benefiting from nanoscience, with products already in the market or approaching there. IBM, for example, is looking into carbon nanotubes as a promising alternative to silicon, which isn’t useful in transistors below 10 nanometers.

Nanotechnology never had its Facebook, its multibillion dollar blockbuster IPO that made clear how a new technology is changing the world. Instead, it’s enabling a lot of mostly incremental change in older industries. It may not be as visible as a social network, but it’s even more widespread. Most of the investments, however, have been coming not from VCs but from governments or deep-pocketed, diversified giants like IBM or GE.

That’s good.

THE CERTAINTY OF UNCERTAINTY: Great juxtaposition by Mark Steyn:

Nine years ago self-proclaimed “climate hawk” David Roberts was contemplating Nuremberg trials for deniers:

When we’ve finally gotten serious about global warming, when the impacts are really hitting us and we’re in a full worldwide scramble to minimize the damage, we should have war crimes trials for these bastards — some sort of climate Nuremberg.

But in his latest piece, at Vox.com, he’s singing a rather different tune:

Basically, it’s difficult to predict anything, especially regarding sprawling systems like the global economy and atmosphere, because everything depends on everything else. There’s no fixed point of reference.

Now he tells us.

Roberts isn’t the first “climate hawk” to charter multiple flight paths over the years; here’s the late Dr. Steven Schneider versus Dr. Steven Schneider:

(The whole “In Search of the Coming Ice Age” segment from Leonard Nimoy’s cheesy late-’70s paranormal In Search Of series is online here; and I’ve rounded up plenty of other Not-S0-Final Countdowns here.)

BIG BEER TRYING TO CRUSH CRAFT BREWERIES. Easy issue for a GOP member of Congress: the “Beer Freedom Act,” allowing brewers to sell direct to retailers and the public without going through wholesalers. The whole three-level setup was just an excuse for graft anyway.

I DON’T KNOW, ONE SURVIVED IN MANITOU SPRINGS: And my kids enjoyed it when they were little.  Pictures Of An Old Arcade.

YOUR INSOMNIA-CAUSING THOUGHT OF THE NIGHT: The War for Turkey.

HE COULD HAVE KILLED EVEN MORE PUPPIES, TODDLERS AND STUDENTS: What Che Guevara might have accomplished but for asthma.

CLEARLY THIS IS MY NIGHT TO BE SHOCKED: Inconceivable again! A Fascinating Critique of European Socialism.

BUT BUT IT’S A HOLY SOCIALIST CHOO CHOO, BATMAN: Liberals Ignore the Fracks of Life.

THE MESS IN OUR SCHOOLS:“We saw a pretty routine discipline issue become a criminal issue in just a matter of minutes”.

TOO LITTLE TOO LATE: Fred Hof: “I was wrong”.

THE EIGHTIES BACK AGAIN: Cuban Alliance with Russia Highlights Moscow’s Influence in Latin America.

WELCOME TO THE CABARET: Predicting the Next Year.

UPDATE FROM SPECIAL SNOWFLAKE LAND: HuffPo: The Word ‘Too’ Is Sexist and Hurts Women. We should ship such fragile women to strict Islamic countries ASAP.  There they’ll be covered head to toe and “protected” from any contact with anyone but relatives.  And hopefully no one will talk to them.