With the first celebrity concert of the inauguration over and a day of rest and MLK-inspired service upon us, there is plenty of time to reflect on Prop 8, Gaza, North Korea and tax cuts.

Anti-gay bigots are back in court in California this week, and not to defend against the suits that seek to overturn Proposition 8 or even to meet the kind of people that will invite them to the gay orgies they know are going on but swear they don't want to go to. They're in court to try to get the court to overturn California's open records laws on political donations that require all contributions in excess of $100 be disclosed. Although the federal contribution disclosure standard is $200, conserva-lawyer James Bopp — once literally laughed out of court — says that the standard should be way higher to prevent bigoted donors from being identified publicly as bigots and being subjected to harassment campaigns — like boycotts by LGBT people and their supporters who don't want our money funding bigots or their bigoted political causes. Boo fucking hoo.

In other news, both African-Americans and white Americans seem to think that racism is less of a problem in this country on the whole than it was 15 years ago, though more white people than black people think that blacks have achieved racial equality and don't have any problems anymore. I guess that's because race had no apparent effect on the election so, since Barack didn't "suffer" from racism no black person does anymore. Yay equality.

Obama is, however, having a worse time of it in Congress than anyone suspected, with significant differences between his stimulus plans and Nancy Pelosi's ideas continuing to spill out in public. And if it weren't bad enough that Pelosi wants to repeal Bush's tax cuts now and Obama wants to wait for them to expire next year, the media insists on drumming up this big rift because it's more interesting if it's a fight rather than a boring disagreement on mundane tax policy. They also disagree about whether to investigate Bush and his Administration over everything that has ever happened, but that's good because it will allow Obama to keep his hands clean and call for unity up until the House investigations that were always going to happen anyway unearth something prosecutable, at which point Obama can with great sadness appoint a special prosecutor and let the games begin.

Speaking of games, Rod Blagojevich has asked his lead lawyer not to show up for his impeachment trial next week because Ed Genson thinks it might be a bad idea to call the trial "a lynching," which (and I never thought I'd say this), good for Ed Genson. Everyone is freaking out about who New York Governor David Paterson will appoint to take over Hillary Clinton's seat this week and the Obama camp is unofficially officially behind Caroline Kennedy but Paterson is still thinking about some new info that has come to light. And that pilot guy that ditched the plane in the Hudson River last week will be at the inauguration of Barack Obama this week with his family in what will no doubt be many of this Administration's cribbing from former Presidents' PR playbooks.

On the international front, the Iraqi shoe-thrower is looking for asylum in Switzerland because he's fine throwing his shoes at a world leader on camera and less fine with paying the consequences for it. North Korea has finally admitted that it's got enough weapons grade plutonium for 4-5 nukes which they totally promise not to use on Alaska as long as Obama gives them lots of other cool shit with which to occupy their time in between figuring out how to starve their own people more efficiently and mint more fake U.S. currency. Gaza is pretty well fucked up but, as I predicted, Israel has signed a cease-fire and is starting to withdraw its troops just in time for Obama's inauguration tomorrow. That's change, if not exactly progress.

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