I disagree on all three counts. Even Donald Trump doesn't believe that the USA is great, and that it needs to be made so. But each to their own.

Although I will admit that the innovation of a feckless, clueless, incompetent president to lead the most powerful nation in the world is quite impressive, in a car-crash-watching sort of a way.

hmmmmm, what 38 years can do to a person ....

They always managed to attract the most innovative minds from all over the world so I think part of their success relied on this fact. America is still appealing to a lot of people, no matter who the president is.
(which makes the whole anti-immigration discourse to sound quite dumb, but hey-ho)

McConnell Says Republicans Are Giving Up on Health Bill!
Senator Mitch McConnell on Tuesday officially pulled the plug on the latest plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act, telling senators they will not vote on the measure and effectively admitting defeat in the last-gasp drive to fulfill a core promise of President Trump and Republican lawmakers.

Source Might be behind a paywall.

Free Source here!

It is like watching a slow motion train crash! GOP is not a united party more like a coalition of people with differing views.
Trump will only achieve his agenda if he pulls the GOP together instead he prefers to attack the people who are key to his political success.
McCain claims his opposition to healthcare is not personal but if you look at the long list of Trump tweets attacking him then you do have to wonder?

Trump's current strategy seems to be to encourage candidates to try to replace existing GOP congressmen in 2018 and later. But if the GOP use up their campaign funds attacking each other then they risk opening the door to success for Democrats; assuming the Democrats can come up with a better strategy than heretofore!

Exactly

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Trump's anti immigrant policies will be the opposite of MAGA!

Wonder if Don knows the meaning of the expression "shooting up"? I assume he does

In a major shock for Trump and the GOP - Moore, the anti-Establishment candidate, beat Luther Strange by 10 points!
Last year Trump won Alabama by 30 points over Hillary. Now despite Trump holding a rally last week in Alabama his candidate was destroyed in the result.
ProPublica's record of deleted Trump tweets shows the three pro-Luther Strange tweets were removed Tuesday night.

The president also deleted a post election tweet congratulating Moore and urging him to "win in November." The election to choose Alabama's next Senator is in December.

Now the question on everybody's lips is "Was this a one off or is Trump's base turning against him?"

Last time ca. 1.3 million voted for Trump as President but this time only around half a million voted in this race between two GOP candidates so was a low turnout despite the many millions spent by the Establishment to support Strange.
Some reports claim that Strange was supported by over $10 million in spending so each Strange vote cost over $40!

Edit - ca. 700,000 voted for Hillary, if they can be galvanised to vote again in the Senate election and if the Republicans stay apathetic then the Democrats have a slim chance to take the seat!

This is a dream scenario for the Democrats. Bannon and his buddies will back wacky conservatives against staid, swamp-bound, standard issue Republicans for the 2018 mid-terms. And normal people will vote Democrat, even if the Dems do not manage to get their act together, which seems likely :-(. Goodbye GOP!

The US Inland Revenue Service is now sharing information with special counsel Robert Mueller about key Trump campaign officials.

Mueller's investigators are reaching back 11 years as they investigate possible tax and financial crimes, according to search warrant documents.

Source

#net tightening

Every country's blind "anti-immigrant policies" will make them less than they could be. But it's a trend in Europe, it's a trend there and there so I try to see it as a "phase"....anyways, as an immigrant I would still feel better in America than anywhere in Europe, so that should shut our European mouths a little...

So long as you do not get sick?

If the GOP manage to repeal Obamacare then premium increases when you get sick

Academics have always been able to move between countries fairly freely and I don't think this will change. Trump is clamping down on blue collar migration, not on high flying academics and nobel laureates.

Au Contraire

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If Trump can really identify in advance who will be a Nobel Laureate then I am very impressed!

If you ignore pleasantries that one encounters there (and can question their genuine intentions actually, since you cannot really mostly say anything else if you do not want to be socially outed by undemocratic dogmatic mouths), I am not so sure anymore if an open pro-inclusive feel in the US is better than in Europe. It is hard, for example, to immigrate here. But once you make it, you feel like all the incredibly hard work was worth it and your place is earned. The fact that the locals can voice their opinions and attitude towards all this is pretty valuable, and long term intelligent. Sustainable, politically.

I think the entitlement to be easily accepted as an immigrant has had its consequences:
- induced racism claims
- deprived people of actually working hard for something they need to earn
- may have diminished the feeling of gratitude
- may have antagonized locals
- may not actually stimulate cultural sensitivity of new comers to traditions of their host culture

What some people see, trendily, as anti-immigration spirit, can others interpret as protecting sustainably their values and a way of life in a place that belongs to them. Why it is, a priori, labelled anti-immigration position is just a matter of semantics, me think. Semantics has proven a waste of time for a lot of voters.

__________________
"L'homme ne peut pas remplacer son coeur avec sa tete, ni sa tete avec ses mains." J.H. Pestalozzi

“The only difference between a rut and a grave is a matter of depth.” S.P. Cadman

"Imagination is more important than knowledge." A. Einstein

Trump's base votes for crazy dudes and Moore seems to fit the bill. All par for the course.

Here is a new "rule" that will definitely make the new immigrants feel welcome:

https://www.engadget.com/2017/09/26/...-social-media/

"interpret as protecting sustainably their values and a way of life in a place that belongs to them." Sounds good but not really realistic.
We are in a time of change; the US today is not the US of fifty years ago or a 100 years ago or ...

Languages change, ideas change, cultural values change, the horse was replaced by fuel engines soon they will be replaced by self driving electric vehicles.

Travelling to the other side of the world used to be a dangerous and very long experience; now just a few hours travel!

&&&&

"Facebook was always anti-Trump" What a very strange comment; Facebook like Twitter is a social media where individual people express their views.
There is no Facebook editorial policy

Nice he has time to tweet this sort of thing while neglected US citizens in Puerto Rico are dying

• Water, food, and fuel are scarce on the island. The airports are a mess.
• Power will be out for months in some places. The storm knocked out 80 percent of the island’s power transmission lines, the Associated Press reports. And as of Monday, nearly all of the island’s 1.57 million electricity customers were still without power.
• Over 60,000 people have been without power for over 20 days because Irma knocked out their power and it was not fixed.
• No electricity means no power to pump water into homes, no water to bathe or flush toilets. The Defense Department said Tuesday that only 56 percent of people on the island have potable water.
• The storm knocked out 1,360 out of 1,600 cellphone towers on the island so there is little communication with the cut-off communities and nobody knows how many people died.

Pity it is not Friday

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Now I understand why he made so many mistakes completing his security clearance request form