Tea Party group puts out ad encouraging Donald Trump to fire Rod Rosenstein.

Courtesy of Raw Story:

Tea Party Patriots Action has released an ad that seems aimed at encouraging President Donald Trump to fire Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. 

While Rosenstein might be a Republican appointed by former GOP President George W. Bush and kept on by Trump, that isn’t enough for the fundamentalist wing of the GOP. The fact that former President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton aren’t in handcuffs seems to be the nail in the coffin for his career. 

The ad alleges that instead of following the rule of law, Rosenstein is working for the so-called “deep state.”

Yep, getting rid of Rod Rosenstein will likely open a pathway to firing Robert Mueller, or at the very least taking away a significant amount of his investigative power. That could work.

However if this group was hoping that the Devin Nunes "secret memo" was going to provide ammunition for this, they were sorely mistaken.

You know the truly bizarre thing about all of this, aside from the fact that it is happening of course, is that everybody can see it happening right out in the open.

It is almost as if they think they are being clever in hiding their real motives or something.

It kind of reminds of when little kids play hide-and-go-seek, and only cover their eyes in the belief that if they can't see then nobody can see.

Here is a GOP Congressman suggesting that the FBI and State Department should be purged of agents who are part of the "deep state."

WATCH: GOP Rep. Francis Rooney calls for 'purge' of FBI, accuses some in the agency of being a part of the 'deep state' pic.twitter.com/kkJTBPFeui

— MSNBC (@MSNBC) December 26, 2017

"Deep State" by  the way is right up there with the "Illuminati" and "Gay Mafia" as fantastical imaginary shadow organizations which conspiracy theorists claim are working the levers of power behind the scenes.

This is the kind of lunacy espoused by Alex Jones and Right Wing talk radio hosts.

To see an actual member of Congress using this kind of language is flatly terrifying.

Stephen Seagal has "written" a book, and look just in time for Christmas.

Courtesy of the AV Club: 

Apparently smarting after his interview with Piers Morgan was ridiculed far and wide for, among other things, obtusely arguing against NFL player protests and enthusiastically praising Vladimir Putin, lawman and blues guitarist Steven Seagal licked his wounds by writing a book, such that he could better explain his political ideas. It is written in the only language Seagal knows: that of a low-rent, straight-to-DVD action flick, its dual nature upheld by each side of the colon in its title The Way Of The Shadow Wolves: The Deep State And The Hijacking Of America. The foreword is by Sheriff Joe Arpaio, because of course it is.

The book follows John Nan Tan Gode, an Arizona Tribal police officer, described on the first page of the book as having “classic chiseled features,” who stumbles upon a conspiracy that reaches the highest levels of power. It is, in other words, a written adaptation of a Steven Seagal movie by Steven Seagal himself, a casting suggested most prominently by its cover, in which the legendary lawman saunters brow-a-furrowed out of some sort of wolf sunset.

I have seen a Stephen Seagal movie so I have been unable to take him seriously as an actor.

Since he started hanging out with Putin I have been unable to take him seriously as an American.

So there is absolutely NO way I am going to be able to take him seriously as an author of a book.

Besides I would be completely unable to read it.

Ever since I graduated from the first grade I have not been able to make heads or tails out of anything written in crayon.

Trump White House becomes obsessed with Russian probe while Capitol Hill Republicans resign themselves to watching the presidency end in disaster.

Courtesy of Politico: 

President Donald Trump has been aggressively working the phones since returning this weekend from his foreign trip, talking to friends and outside lawyers as he obsesses over the deepening investigations into his aides and Russia. 

Two White House officials said Trump and some aides including Steve Bannon are becoming increasingly convinced that they are victims of a conspiracy against Trump's presidency, as evidenced by the number of leaks flowing out of government — that the crusade by the so-called “deep state” is a legitimate threat, not just fodder for right wing defenders.

Still, Trump and his aides are starting to take the probes more seriously, seeking to establish a communications team dedicated to dealing with questions around the probe and beefing up his legal representation. And they've become more rattled by the idea that they don't know where the scandals are headed and who may be ensnared next.

That could be good news for the country, since a Donald Trump obsessed with the Russian probes, is a Donald Trump not actively screwing up the country.

Apparently the White House staffers have no idea what plan, if any, Trump has for dealing with all of this either:  

Aside from bringing in additional aides to handle the Russia probe, the president's senior aides say that his strategy for confronting the crises — or for pushing a stalled legislative agenda — remains unclear. 

Senior aides and long-time confidants admitted not knowing who Trump would hire, how safe the jobs of top staff are, what the White House's agenda is for the coming days, or what — if anything — they can accomplish.

“We are letting others dictate entirely how we are perceived," one White House official said. “The calendar changes every day. There is no rhyme or reason to a lot of it.”

I would suspect that Trump has no idea what to do about any of this, and probably knows for a fact that things will only get worse from here.

And it is unlikely he will get much help from Capitol Hill.

Courtesy of The Atlantic: 

For the Republicans running the government, Capitol Hill has become a workplace with extremely poor morale. The moderates fear for their careers, while the conservative true believers see little to hope for. When the liberal magazine Mother Jones credited Representative Justin Amash of Michigan with being the first Republican to raise the possibility of impeachment, the office of Representative Carlos Curbelo of Florida called to request a correction: Curbelo had gone there first. 

But for the most part, his party has not openly turned on Trump. What would be the point? Behind closed doors, a longtime House Republican staffer told me, a few lawmakers still wholeheartedly defend the president; among the rest, there are differing degrees of fatalism. One group thinks it is possible to fight through the crisis, while another is resigned to “a long slow death,” as this staffer put it, potentially culminating in a Democratic-controlled House beginning impeachment proceedings in 2019. “This is like Reservoir Dogs,” the staffer said. “Everyone ends up dead on the floor.”

Well there's a graphic image for you.

However it also means that the Republicans, who immediately started pushing through policies to undermine and repeal various social programs, may become too uncertain about the future to risk putting their names on any new bills which might come back to haunt them in the next election cycle.

And that could be good news indeed.