Rich, white and wishy-washy

The White House has a pamphlet, "President George W. Bush: Friend of the American Jewish Community," which I can’t find online, although they emailed it as a pdf to Jewish leaders, some of whom were quoted, without permission, as if they supported Bush, but do not. And there’s this: "For Yasser Arafat, the message has been clear. While he was a frequent White House guest during the last administration, he has never been granted a meeting with President Bush." And evidently this was put out at gov expense, not by the campaign. Anyone know where a copy exists online?

Speaking of pandering, this is Bush’s "W Stands for Women" site. With 140 million women in this country, the 4 listed under "Women supporting W" include a former Miss America (!), and the vice president of West Group Commercial Real Estate. And it leads off with this condescending quote from Shrub: "Our country, my administration and my own life are improved and enriched by strong, capable women, from my wife, daughters and mother to senior members of my White House team. I’m proud that our administration has more women in senior positions than any administration in the history of our country. America’s wives, mothers and daughters bring strength, dignity, compassion and integrity to our communities and our country." He really does have difficulty seeing women other than as appendages of men. Would he refer to Rumsfeld, Ashcroft and Powell as "America’s husbands, fathers and sons"? Or not mention a single specifically women’s issue, as opposed to security, the economy, although it does mention education, as if women are allowed to be concerned for their children, but not for themselves.

And still speaking of pandering, here’s a WaPo article on ads that a white businessman, J. Patrick Rooney, who profits greatly from Bush policies, is running on black radio stations attacking Kerry for being "rich, white and wishy-washy", and Teresa Heinz-Kerry for having commented that with her Mozambican roots she could be called African-American, although Rooney, who I repeat is white, says in the article that he goes to an "all-black church." OK, stupid and silly, but... rich, WHITE, and wishy-washy? Is attacking a candidate’s race ok if he’s white?

We know from the recent Tigger-bad-touching case that the actors in character costume at Disney World have limited range of vision and motion. So OSHA has decided that maybe they shouldn’t be next to moving vehicles, and fined Disney a whopping $6,300 for an incident February where "Pluto" got his foot caught in a float at the "Share a Dream Come True" parade and was run over and killed, which for all we know was his dream, I mean if your job is to dress as Pluto, you must have pretty weird dreams. But my point was...$6,300. You may lose respect for me, but I have to say that fine is pretty Mickey Mouse.