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Mouth opens, sounds come out. From the New York Times:

WASHINGTON, Jan. 28 — President Bush will seek a big increase in the budget of the National Endowment for the Arts, the largest single source of support for the arts in the United States, administration officials said on Wednesday.

The proposal is part of a turnaround for the agency, which was once fighting for its life, attacked by some Republicans as a threat to the nation's moral standards.

[...]

The agency has a budget of $121 million this year, 31 percent lower than its peak of $176 million in 1992. After Republicans gained control of Congress in 1995, they cut the agency's budget to slightly less than $100 million, and the budget was essentially flat for five years.

Bush has much interest in the arts as he does in NASA or Mars or AIDS in Africa. None at all.

Rove evidently found a poll saying that people seem to like art ("can you believe what people are actually interested in?" he must be thinking) and he simultaneously learned that Robert Mapplethorpe is dead. Voila! A politically expedient, meaningless presidential pronouncement is born.

No need to think too hard about Bush and the courage of his convictions — he has neither.

{ 1:40 PM }

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