Rick Santorum will run for President again in 2016, and says, rather candidly, that he doesn't have to "lay out his bona fides" to the religious right ("That's done") and can focus on getting blue-collar workers back -- but with his hard-line stance on immigration. Well, it's not like America's Hispanic population is growing or anything. Seriously, of course Rick Santorum can win, but he'll need to rely more on economic populism (yes, economic populism in defense of corporatism can befuddle enough of the people enough of the time to win) and, this is important, he'll need to speak in his inside voice.
Sue Sturgis at the Institute for Southern Studies finds North Carolina making very little progress in its apparent effort to keep coal ash pits from leaking into drinking water sources. How? Well, Duke Energy has a lot of coal ash pits, but they also have a former employee as North Carolina's Governor, Pat McCrory, and he has put a lot of former Duke Energy workers in his brain trust. Then Gov. McCrory went on 60 Minutes to criticize Duke Energy's pollution record -- without mentioning that he wasn't actually doing anything to stop it! The EPA issues final coal ash rules next week, unless Great American Super-President Mitch McConnell has anything to say about it.
Openly gay South African model surprised to find himself on a Virginia billboard advertising an organization called Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays -- playing twins! Kyle Roux, as fate would have it, is not part of a set of twins; the organization simply used the same photo twice (a stock photo he made ten years ago, and you never know where those will wind up) and put different clothes on it each time. Does anyone still assume that identical twins should be alike in every conceivable way?
David Koch, of the infamous Koch brothers, asserts that he's really a "social liberal" on abortion and gay marriage -- and yet somehow just about everyone he supports doesn't share his values on social issues, despite his billions and his clout. I mean, a man with his money could have created a thriving Libertarian movement in this country, but instead he's given us the Tea Party. And I care even less about David Koch's "good" values than I do about Michael Bloomberg's -- and any pro-lifer who wants to bring back the 91% tax bracket is more my ally than any thousand pro-choice Third Way types.
Finally, the governments of France and the United States reach an accord on $60 million in reparations for Holocaust victims transported by the French national railroad corporation, SCNF. You may have helped bring this about, if you remember supporting Leo Bretholtz -- who only survived the death camps as a youth by jumping off one of those SCNF trains -- in his activism against SCNF. Mr. Bretholtz passed earlier this year (at the age of 93, which, like, good show!), but at least he got a measure of justice -- and it is like pulling teeth to get France to admit it did anything wrong during World War II.
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