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April 11, 2012 | | Passion With Santorum’s decision to quit the race, the Republican field loses the one candidate that embodied compassion and consistency. And if Romney’s going to have a chance in November, he has to take some cues from Rick, says Patricia Murphy. Scary An 8.6-magnitude quake has struck off the coast of Indonesia's Aceh province, in the northwest, prompting tsunami warnings throughout the Indian Ocean, including Thailand, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and others. The warning said quakes of that size “have the potential to generate a widespread destructive tsunami.” Indonesia’s disaster-management agency said power was down in Aceh province, with traffic jams leading up to the areas of higher ground. Indonesia issued a new tsunami warning after an 8.2-magnitude aftershock rattled the western coast. In 2004 a tsunami killed 170,000 people in Aceh. Déjà Vu First the banks won’t lend, now they’re back to lending to risky borrowers. As banks look to make up for fee income barred by new regulations, they’ve gone back to offering loans and credit cards to borrowers with bad credit. Credit-card companies gave out 1.1 million new cards to borrowers with bad credit in December, up 12.3 percent from the month before. Capital One is especially aggressive, wooing customers just out of bankruptcy. Lenders are also giving more auto loans to people with bad credit. Analysts say the banks are attracted to the high-interest rates borrowers with damaged credit pay. Moneybags With Rick Santorum out, Foster Friess, the retired investor who spent almost $1.7 million on Santorum’s campaign, is getting behind Mitt Romney. “I’ve got some plans as to how I might be able to be of help,” said Friess. Friess suggested he might throw his weight behind Karl Rove's Crossroads group, which plans to spend $300 million attacking President Obama and supporting Romney. In fact Friess says he might've already given to the organization: “I know that I have contributed to some other groups, but I can’t remember which ones. There are so many of them. They’re all over the place.” CEASEFIRE Free Syrian Army soldiers driven into Turkey by Bashar al-Assad’s military are sneaking back into their country despite the regime’s failure to honor a U.N. ceasefire, and say they will keep fighting even with few weapons and no concrete Western support. | | 
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