For decades, the battle lines in New England’s most politically conservative state were clear. Republicans ran on tax cuts. Democrats ran on targeted tax credits. Both parties kept New Hampshire free of a state income or sales tax, blurring some distinctions for suburban voters. Then came the Republican tax plan in Congress.

“Do you think it’s right to raise taxes on millions of hard-working Americans?” asked Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) at a Friday night Democratic fundraiser. “Do you want to risk a $25 billion yearly cut to Medicare to give the wealthiest few a tax cut?”

The crowd of about 600 Democrats bellowed “no,” still shocked by the party’s recent political gains. Coming off Election Day wins from Seattle to Long Island, Democrats are starting to see the shape of a new majority, built on a potential suburban backlash to changes in the tax code.

“It’s incredible,” said Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), a vice chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee who has helped the party recruit candidates in suburban west coast districts. “I don’t understand why they think raising taxes on the middle class to benefit the rich would be better for them electorally than doing nothing at all.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/democrats-see-backlash-over-republicans-tax-bill-as-a-key-to-winning-in-the-suburbs/2017/11/19/37e9f2a6-cc4e-11e7-b0cf-7689a9f2d84e_story.html

Indiana GOP councilman charged with 3 counts of child molestation after allegedly assaulting two ten-year-old girls

Republican Indianapolis city councilman Jeff Miller has been charged with three counts of child molesting, fondling or touching after two 10-year-old girls alleged he inappropriately touched and massaged them, Fox 59 reports.

The charges come after Channel 8 WISH-TV Friday reported Miller was under investigation for an Oct. 20 incident listed as “sex crime — child fondling.” Authorities reportedly executed a search warrant in Miller’s home the following day.

According to the affidavit, Miller submitted the two young girls to fondling between Sept. 1 and Oct. 20, including massaging one of the victim’s legs and patting her buttocks. During a search of Miller’s home, police looked for “a bin of massage stuff.”

“When Jeff massages her, he uses all of the various massage tools in the box of massage stuff she described earlier,” the affidavit reads.

Miller told place he was friends with the girls’ parents. They would reportedly play hide-and-seek and a game called “Ride the Wild Jeff-beast” while at his home, according to police.

https://www.rawstory.com/2017/11/indiana-gop-councilman-charged-with-3-counts-of-child-molestation-after-allegedly-assaulting-two-ten-year-old-girls/

An Italian doctor announced Friday that he will soon perform the world’s first human head transplant in China because medical communities in the United States and Europe would not permit the controversial procedure.

"The Americans did not understand," Sergio Canavero told a news conference in Vienna.

Canavero said the Chinese government and Xiaoping Ren, a Chinese doctor partnering with him on the procedure, would confirm the surgery's date "within days" to signal its goal of becoming a world leader in all fields, including medicine.

"Chinese President Xi Jinping wants to restore China to greatness. He wants to make it the sole superpower in the world. I believe he is doing it," Canavero said.

In a phone interview with USA TODAY, Canavero decried the unwillingness of the U.S. or Europe to host the surgery. "No American medical institute or center would pursue this, and there is no will by the U.S. government to support it," he said.

Canavero would not divulge the identity of the Chinese donor or recipient. The donor will be the healthy body of a brain-dead patient matched for build with a recipient's disease-free head.

Canavero estimates the procedure will cost up to $100 million and involve several dozen surgeons and other specialists.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2017/11/17/italian-doctor-says-worlds-first-human-head-transplant-imminent/847288001/

A few of the participants in the recent "Al Franken must resign" debate might benefit from this procedure.

Just so you know. My wife and I are both Navy veterans. No big deal. We served single enlistments, then went to college and life has been OK. We're both bootstrap kids from difficult backgrounds and the military helped us get somewhere. My wife went on to get a Phd. in psychology. Mostly paid for by the Navy. I talk people into buying things they don't actually need.

We work very hard, but life has been good to us, and the time we spent in the military served us well.

We have two kids. One is a senior in high school, the other is a sophomore. Both boys. The plan was that just like their parents they too would serve, then go to college. It is a family tradition. My father also served in the Navy.

Now we are having second thoughts. What if Trump really is in Putin's pocket? And what if we go to war? Would you feel good about having your kids in a military where the Commander In Chief is possibly the agent of a hostile foreign power? One whose aim would be to kill as many American military people as possible?

We are leaning against it. Neither of us are sure we want our two boys serving in a military run by Donald Trump.

Would you?

A mayor in Ohio who left the Democratic Party last year to endorse Donald Trump for president has gone down in defeat.

Tom Coyne, who was elected as mayor of Brook Park in 2013, lost his reelection bid on Tuesday night when he was defeated by independent candidate Michael Gammella.

As the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports, Coyne lost by more than five percentage points to Gammella, a former city council president and United Auto Workers representative.

Coyne made headlines in 2016 when he ditched the Democratic Party to back Trump’s candidacy. He has so far shown no remorse for his decision this year, and he even appeared at an October fundraiser in Cleveland alongside Donald Trump Jr.

In a recent interview with the Plain Dealer, Coyne said that Trump had done a lot to transform the GOP into a party representing blue-collar white people, which he claimed were the people he was trying to represent as mayor.

https://www.rawstory.com/2017/11/ohio-mayor-who-left-dem-party-to-back-trump-goes-down-in-humiliating-electoral-defeat/

(CNN)President Donald Trump has never been terribly popular with the American public. But in the past month, Trump has seen a sustained dip in his numbers that have to be concerning to the poll-obsessed President.

Of the 10 major national polls conducted over the past month, the highest -- repeat: the highest -- Trump's approval rating has been is 38%. The lowest is 33%. Trump's average approval rating over those 10 polls is 37.1%. His average disapproval? 57.1%.

That Trump is at his polling nadir is also borne out by Gallup.

Trump's weekly average in Gallup's daily tracking poll is at just 35% for the week of October 29. That matches the lowest Trump approval rating for any week of his presidency to date. (Trump's approval averaged 35% for the week of August 27.)

http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/03/politics/trump-polling/index.html

He’d promised to build the wall. To make America great again. To lock her up. Now, in the last weeks of his campaign for president, Donald J. Trump needed one more stirring slogan. And since he was badly trailing Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, it would have to be a marketing marvel worthy of Mad Men’s Don Draper, one that encapsulated the vague yet compelling promise of his candidacy—its worship of American ideals and its total break from them.

On October 17, 2016, the Trump-Pence campaign released a five-point plan for ethics reform that featured lobbying restrictions that would insulate Trump and his administration from corporate and interests. The plan was called “drain the swamp.”

Trump tried out the phrase that day at a rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin. He used it the next day at a rally in Colorado Springs, Colorado. “We’re going to end the government corruption,” Trump vowed, “and we’re going to drain the swamp in Washington, D.C.” He then recited a litany of accusations regarding Clinton and her use of a private email server, calling her “the most corrupt person to ever run for the presidency.”

(skipping forward a bit)

Now, a year after the election—and more than a year after Trump first made that pledge to the American people—many observers believe the swamp has grown into a sinkhole that threatens to swallow the entire Trump administration. The number of White House officials currently facing questions, lawsuits or investigation is astonishing: Trump, being sued for violating the “emoluments clause” of the U.S. Constitution by running his Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C.; Paul J. Manafort, the second Trump campaign manager, indicted on money laundering charges in late October; Flynn, for undisclosed lobbying work done on behalf of the Turkish government; son-in-law and consigliere Jared Kushner, for failing to disclose $1 billion in loans tied to his real-estate company; and at least six Cabinet heads being investigated for or asked about exorbitant travel expenses, security details or business dealings.

http://www.newsweek.com/trump-administration-most-corrupt-history-698935