Gray-overcast again this early Thursday on California’s north coast — sunshine supposedly later, but tempered with some expected gusty winds.
Another day in the life…

And ugly it can be — Donald Trump continues. A display of the overall repugnance of Republicans, this from Sen. Mike Lee of Utah: ‘“Hey look, Steve, I get it. You want me to endorse Trump…We can go through the fact that he’s made statements that some have identified correctly as religiously intolerant. We can get into the fact that he’s wildly unpopular in my state, in part because my state consists of people who are members of a religious minority church…”‘
So after a tirade against The Donald, Lee adds he would endorse the guy, wait for it, ‘“if I heard the right things out of him.”‘

Heartless insanity…

(Illustration: Salvador Dali’s ‘Hell Canto 2 – Giants,’ found here).

The “shit stain” has put the rotten GOP’s ugly insides on the outside — and the world follows suit. Trump is distasteful worldwide.
From the Guardian yesterday:

Donald Trump’s ratings abroad are strongly negative, according to a Pew Research report on how people around the world perceive the US.
Asked if they had confidence in Trump’s ability to manage foreign policy, only 9 percent of respondents in 10 EU countries agreed.
By contrast, a median of 77 percent said they had confidence in Barack Obama and 59 percent in Trump’s likely general election opponent Hillary Clinton.
Trump collected the most support in China, with 22 percent expressing confidence in him.
In Canada and India, he had 14 percent confidence; Australia, 11 percent; and Japan, 8 percent.
“Confidence in Clinton to handle world affairs is generally high,” the report said.
“By comparison, few trust Trump to do the right thing when it comes to foreign policy.”
…
Even in China and Italy (21 percent), the countries that expressed the most confidence in Trump, respondents still had more confidence in Obama, Clinton and Putin.
Compared to Trump, Putin fared better, sometimes overwhelmingly so, in most countries.
Only Poland showed more confidence in Trump than Putin, although both men had 8 percent support in Spain.
“He’s unpopular at home, he’s unpopular with Republicans, he’s unpopular abroad — none of this is a surprise,” said Margie Omero, a Democratic pollster and executive vice-president of public affairs firm Penn Schoen Berland.

In another new poll, also yesterday from Quinnipiac University, 42 percent favor Hillary Clinton, through Trump is right behind with 40 per cent — accordingly, with a 2.4 point margin of error, the poll is simply “too close to call”.
The bottom-line of this political cycle via the UK’s Independent:

“It would be difficult to imagine a less flattering from-the-gut reaction to Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton,” assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll, Tim Malloy, said.
“This is where we are,” he added.
“Voters find themselves in the middle of a mean-spirited, scorched earth campaign between two candidates they don’t like.
“And they don’t think either candidate would be a good president.”

Hillary ain’t no saint, but Trump is in a really-horrible category by himself.
Intriguing story this morning from BuzzFeed on The Donald possibly eavesdropping on telephone calls at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach — of course, The Donald’s reps cry bullshit, but there’s this little bit:

At Mar-a-Lago, “He listened in,” said one source with deep knowledge of the working of the phones and Trump’s phone use.
This person added that workers were told to be aware of it.
For example, this source recalled a time when a staff member was on the phone with a club member.
During the phone call, Trump called the staff member on another line to weigh in on the very issue that was being discussed.
“There is no other way you could know what that conversation was about unless you were eavesdropping,” this source said.

If Trump is elected in November, the US and the world at-large will be pretty-much fucked, even worse than right now…