“Socialist!” is no longer a McCarthyite slur.

Rather, the fresh celebrity “Squad” of newly elected identity-politics congresswomen – Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib –  often either claim to be socialists or embrace socialist ideas.

A recent Harris poll showed that about half of so-called millennials would like to live in a socialist country.

Here are the ingredients for a culture that emphasizes the self, blames others for a sense of personal failure, and wants instant social justice and for money to grow on trees.

A disgraceful end for “deep state” actors and an implosion of the Democrat Party’s 2020 nominee are both very real possibilities.

It is now clearer than ever that the whole Trump-Russia collusion argument is such a monstrous hoax that it has been hard for the public to take it on board.

Of course, the assimilation of what has happened has been made more complicated by the extremely agitated political ambiance of the Trump era.

But the stark contrast in policy and personality terms between the president and the Democrats, and the bellicosity of the president himself, which has been essential for him to get through the unprecedented effort to undermine him illegally, do not in themselves explain the very long fuse that is burning with excruciating slowness toward the powder keg of explicit revelation of Democrat law-breaking.

Once upon a time, long, long ago, public opinion polls may have reflected, however faintly, some generalization of public opinion.  For a multitude of reasons, that is no longer true.

Take the Quinnipiac poll results that whatever is left of Joe Biden would beat Trump 54 percent to 38 percent in a general election, and the Economist’s poll number asserting that 55 percent of the public thinks the country is headed in the wrong direction.  It is a certainty that none of those numbers reflects reality.

So, discarding the meaningless political polls, I went to the most accurate opinion poll I am aware of for my pre-quadrennial presidential forecast: the Washington County Agricultural Fair in Pennsylvania (the county is southwest of Pittsburgh bordering Ohio and the northern tip of West Virginia).

Here you can see with your own eyes the Trump landslide coming in 2020.

There is a small slice of the American populace who, by their own admission, are exhausted.

No, I do not refer to new moms caring for cranky infants or emergency room nurses working the night shift or tactical officers patrolling the ’hood or farmers plowing their soybean crops.

Our bone-weary countrymen populate opinion magazines, newsrooms, editorial boards, and cable networks up and down the Acela corridor. Cognitive fatigue has set in. Makeup artists in the MSNBC green room desperately try to conceal dark circles sagging under the eyes of barely-functioning hosts and guests.

Hatred is exhausting, mentally and physically.  Meanwhile, the object of their hatred hasn’t aged a day since taking office.

Did anyone believe Will & Grace stars Debra Messing and Eric McCormack when they backtracked on their demand Hollywood supporters of Donald Trump attending the president's coming Beverly Hills fundraiser be outed and consequently blacklisted from The Industry?

Of course not.  Truth is, there is no reforming these people. They are what they are.

It's time for conservatives and what Kurt Schlicter calls the "Normals" to have an entertainment industry of their own. Hollywood has effectively divorced conservatives (and the Normals). And after a divorce, as they say, "living well is the best revenge."

The question is how.

Mad Dog is mum on Trump but skewers Obama for taking a wrecking ball to American prestige and power.

Most of the coverage of James Mattis’s new book, Call Sign Chaos, co-authored with Bing West, deals with the former defense secretary’s relationship with President Trump.

The Atlantic‘s pre-publication interview with Mattis was headlined, “The Man Who Couldn’t Take It Anymore.” The New York Times editorial page ran a column about Mattis called “The Man Trump Wishes He Were.”

Fake News Alert. Both articles establish that Mattis doesn’t have much to say right now, in either the book or in interviews, about President Trump. Neither article, though, mentions another president about whom Mattis is more than willing to dish.

Not long ago, the current presidential contenders opposed open borders, sanctuary cities, and federal funding for abortion. Now they can’t move left far and fast enough.

All politicians are “flexible.” If they are in politics long enough, many reinvent themselves ideologically several times over — given the perceived volatile mood of 51 percent of their constituency.

But rarely have we seen an entire primary field of candidates scrambling to renounce all their past identities and agendas — and to do so unapologetically, abruptly, and vehemently.

Apparently, they believe, at least in the primary, that the electorate will either identify as nonwhite, or far left, or both — and thus resent deeply any who are not.

To win the nomination, almost all the leading candidates on the Democratic debate stage now believe that they must renounce almost everything they once stood for — at least for a while. Given that most are white or affluent or children of privilege, or all three, sometimes the metamorphosis becomes low comedy.

In case you missed it, or are exclusively a reader of the New York Times, late last week Bernie Sanders tweeted this nugget: "Fossil fuel executives should be criminally prosecuted for the destruction they have knowingly caused."

No, that wasn't The Onion or The Babylon Bee. It was the real deal. The always-furious Vermont senator wants to incarcerate the very people who are responsible for keeping the lights on and the air conditioners running in the operating rooms of almost every hospital, not only in America but across the globe. And that's just the beginning of the myriad necessities of human life provided for at this point in human history by these supposed criminals in the eyes of the self-described democratic socialist of the multiple houses and private jets.

Crazy, no? Crazy, yes. Crazier than the proverbial hoot owl. And mighty angry.

Was Bernie always this way? More or less.

Most of us who have reached the age range that Joe Biden has have already watched our own parents age, decline, and suffer the indignities that invariably come with advancing age.  We know we too will endure certain ailments or infirmities and hope we will be able to face them with courage and grace.

Now, for reasons no one outside the Democratic Party understands, Joe Biden is being put through the ringer as a presidential candidate, an undertaking for which he clearly is not prepared, mentally or physically.

Biden has always had problems with honesty and the truth.  He plagiarized part of a speech by Neil Kinnock during his run for president in 1987–88. He lied often during the Obama/Biden campaign and about his academic career.

Google "Biden gaffes," and you will get a long list of outright lies and countless injudicious remarks, many of them quite racist.  Those who never stop claiming they are not racists usually are exactly that.

The ongoing affair between the nation’s top law enforcement agency and the news media resulted in another hookup last week when CNN announced the hiring of Andrew McCabe, the former deputy director of the FBI.

McCabe, a vocal Trump foe who opened a criminal investigation into the sitting president of the United States in May 2017 during his short stint as acting director, was fired by the FBI last year for lying to federal investigators.

He played a key role in concocting the Trump-Russia collusion hoax; wrote a book filled with animus toward the president; and remains under a grand jury investigation. Last week, McCabe’s lawyers met with federal prosecutors who are deciding whether to indict him for perjury.

So, of course, CNN hired him last week.