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As an independent trader of stocks, bonds and commodities who tells me he was up more than 100% last year and is humming again in 2011, Caise Hassan’s thoughts on the financial markets would seem to be worth a lot more than his views on the Mideast turmoil.
Maybe not. Chicago-born Hassan, the 38-year-old son of Palestinian-born parents, makes a point of keeping close tabs on what’s happening throughout the Persian Gulf. And he doesn’t have to travel too far to do it since he and his family live in Amman, Jordan.
The ouster of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak may be good news for the country’s 80-million populace, but is it good news for the U.S. stock market? Or bad news? And what about the Mideast, in general?
While there are some worriers, it all seems to be an irrelevant issue for now as far as most of Wall Street

It is becoming common for people to say they don’t like WikiLeaks because they can’t stand Assange. This is misleading. Few sympathize with Assange as a character. Most of us, myself included, have never met with

After a month of silence following the horrifying Tucson shootings, the NRA’s “top gun”, Wayne LaPierre, returned to his same old talking points before the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington, D.C. this week. His speech consisted of a string of opportunistic arguments for even weaker gun laws, ignoring completely the tragic reality of what actually happened on January 8th outside that Safeway store.
“If Tucson taught us anything, it taught us this: Government failed. And when they tell you that a ban on assault weapons can make you safer, don’t buy it,” LaPierre

In an interview with the Huffington Post Saturday morning, Christopher Barron, co-founder and board chairman of the gay conservative advocacy group GOProud, clearly laid out the group’s position vis–vis Democrats, and what conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart has labeled as, “the activist gay left.” “Generally 95% of our hate mail and our criticism comes from the left,” says Barron, “the tolerance and diversity crowd on the left has absolutely no tolerance for diversity of ideological views.”
This “diversity of ideological views” according to GOProud and Barron, extends to conservative issues not traditionally placed under the banner of “gay rights.” We think gay rights includes taxes and things like the fair tax, and free market health care reform, personal savings accounts and social security and fighting the spread of radical, anti-gay Islam,” Barron says, “the left may not like them or think that they’re gay rights issues, but we think they are.
When asked why he believed most people, gay and straight, associate gay rights issues with liberals, Barron placed the blame more on messaging than policy. I don’t blame people for thinking that liberals are the only ones who are pro-gay,” Barron says, “because there’s been no effort before by gay conservatives to stand up and say that there’s a different way forward.”
Despite popular beliefs on the left-leaning politics of the many gays and lesbians, Barron points to the diverse political make up of the GLBT community as evidence that the conservative message has resonated with them in the past, and can do so in the future. “The gay population really isn’t monolithic and we see these swings in the gay vote,” Barron says, citing that the percentage of gay voters voting conservative has been “as low as 17 or 18 percent in 2004 for President Bush’s reelect, all the way up to 31% this past time and in fact, in ’94 during the Republican Revolution, it got as high as 40%.”
The question of what issues and policies are defined as “pro” or “anti” gay, has been key to GOProud’s message and what Barron views as the group’s ultimate mission. In contrast with many better known gay rights organizations, Barron claims that GOProud is “not looking for fairness and inclusiveness and equality and tolerance and all this.” He defines the group’s goal as more concrete and more political, saying “we want to make it clear that conservative policy solutions are good for gay and lesbian families [and] that they would improve their everyday lives.”
Despite the rising profile of both GOProud and gay conservatives, questions of tolerance and inclusiveness have arisen mainly in regard to conservatives, in the wake of decisions by well-known conservative organizations such as the Family Research Council, Heritage Foundation and Concerned Women for America to boycott CPAC due to GOProud’s sponsorship of the

An 18-day peaceful revolution has just toppled Egypt’s 30-year Mubarak dictatorship. As the free-falling government dispatched American-made F-16s to roar over Cairo as an act of intimidation, a coalition of average citizens (most of them under age 30) led the charge toward democracy. An uncertain but hopeful future awaits.
Here at home, a fascinating story in the February 12 New York Times tells how the U.S. Defense Department is proactively engaged in propping up the finances of the nation’s armaments industry, an industry that supplies not only our own hardware but much of the world’s, from Saudi Arabia to

Hold up. Slow down. If you wait a half a second, there’ll be time for me to hop on the Ronald Reagan 100th birth anniversary bandwagon, onto which I plan on leaping with both feet. Well, to be honest, not so much jumping on, as using a Sherman Tank to slam sideways into it, then soaking the floor-boards with fermented cabbage shreds marinated in red wine vinegar infused deer

When I listened to the testimony yesterday of Ms. Antonia Pea, a domestic worker who volunteers at Casa de Maryland, I heard a story I’ve heard many times that never fails to affect me. Her friend Maria, who was born in El Salvador and has a two-year-old daughter, was in an abusive relationship. Because of her immigration status, coming forward led to legal retaliation against

ChocQuibTown is set to take the 53rd Grammy awards by storm this Sunday, as they set the stage for a pre telecast performance and are the odds favorite to take Best Latin Rock/Alternative Album of the year. Their journey has not always been an easy one and their rise represents the hope of a particular community in Colombia that often battles against racism and indifference.
In their first-ever interview in Los Angeles, ChocQuibTown sat down with Cuntame to explore everything from the success of their Grammy nominated album Oro, the roots of their culture and music to a passion for speaking out on Afro Latino issues in Colombia and around the world:
“Part of what ChocQuibTown wants to do is to include the Afro communities of Latin America and to share it all with other people who may also have a strong background and culture with African roots as we do,” says Goyo front vocalist for the band. This is precisely the roots of ChocQuibTown’s success and unlikely journey from the depths of Colombian Afro Latino community to prominence and center stage in the music capital of the world – the power and poignancy of their words and music has something to say and somewhere to go. They don’t hold back – and neither does their art – as such the rewards come fast and seemingly though deceptively easy.
It’s no wonder that if you navigate through their Facebbook page you will find ardent support from their fans and followers – with comments expressing pride and joy as they follow one of their own and shine light to an Afro identity often shunned in many Latino nations – like Colombia.
While one third of Colombians are of African descent, these roots are not always reflected in the country’s national cultural

Six months ago, the Los Angeles Times published a series of articles on teacher effectiveness that relied upon economist Richard Buddin’s study of the impact of elementary school teachers on their student test scores. Using seven years of data from the Los Angeles Unified School District, Buddin’s analysis looked at how much students’ test scores in math and English language arts improved while they were enrolled in particular teachers’ classrooms. That change is sometimes referred to as the “value added” by the teacher. The Times decided that Buddin’s study was sufficiently valid and reliable that it published a website identifying about 6,000 individual teachers by name on a five-point scale, from “least effective” to “most effective.”
At the time, many social scientists raised concerns about the methodology adopted by the

February is a great month for books about education, with very readable releases from John Seely Brown, Richard Whitmire, Ron Dietel, Alexander Russo, Gene Maeroff and one of Peg and Gris Merrow’s sons. It’s a short month, so you might not have time to read them all before March, but I hope you will give at least some of them a try. Below are my somewhat biased reviews of some notable titles.
For those who are looking forward to what schooling might become, “A New Culture of Learning: Cultivating the Imagination for a World of Constant Flux” is essential reading. While I don’t know co-author Douglas Thomas, I assure you that John Seely Brown is a deep thinker whose interests encompass just about

Today’s a very good day at work. I’m actually getting paid to watch my lifelong hero Bob Dylan rehearse a segment for Sunday’s Grammy Awards that will find him playing alongside two of today’s better bands in the world whose folk rock roots are showing — The Avett Brothers and Mumford & Sons. To make my workday even better, some guys named Jagger and Eminem are stopping by after him. I woke up this morning at 5AM, put my iPod on shuffle and the first song that came up was by Bob and it perfectly describes my mood today — “Can’t Wait.”
So I thought I should write this playlist

My guest post today is from Angel Santiesteban, a Cuban writer whose work has been published in more than 15 countries. His blog from Cuba is titled, The Children Nobody Wanted.
The Reflection in the Mirror: Castro and Mubarak
by Angel Santiesteban
The newspaper Granma, official organ of the Communist Party of Cuba, which also controls the rest of the official media as is common in totalitarian regimes, announces that demonstrations against Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak are a response to his thirty years in power.
The news seems to mock Cubans. The Castro government is already threatening to reach double that figure at the helm of the country, leading to ever growing poverty and scarcity.
Common sense, however, seems to fail authorities because a certain logic dictates that they shouldn’t publish this image of Mubarak–their reflection in the mirror. Thirty years in power in the Egyptian nation is bad, but fifty-three years for the Cuban dictatorship is good?
Mubarak declared, according to an interview on the American network ABC, that his departure from power would lead the country into

Old habits die hard, but when it comes to Valentine’s Day traditions you had with a former spouse, die they must.
When you’re in a subsequent marriage or relationship, it’s imperative to burn the old playbook and write a new one — especially one customized to your new partner’s joys, loves, and unique tickles. On Valentine’s Day, your partner needs to know she’s the one, not the “second one.” Here are five no-nonsense, no-expense ways to make that loud and clear.
What a Girl Wants
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Courtroom Antics that Get You Nowhere
Socialite Divorces: High Society’s Most Notorious Splits
Surviving The First 5 Days Of Divorce
Craig Damrauer: New Math Equations Parse Relationships, Divorce
5 Signs It’s Time To Get Divorced
Kids Draw Their Parents’ Splits: Postcards From Splitsville Chronicles Childrens’ Divorce Pain
Nothing makes a new partner feel better than knowing she’s special, so don’t just do a generic “flowers and candy” thing. Discover her favorite flower, her favorite snack, her favorite color, her favorite restaurant, her favorite band, her favorite jewel, her favorite movie, her favorite dessert.

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Welcome toWife Watch!, the only blog post that ranks the most powerful wives on this week’s episode of Big Love.
(SPOILERS AHEAD)
–
Sorry for the delay this week—life got hectic—but for the rest of the series, you can expect to see Wife Watch! on Wednesdays.
And now, on with this week’s episode, “The Oath,” which has considerable highs and considerable lows.
If you’ve been reading Wife Watch! since the beginning, then you’ll know that for me, nothing is higher, nothing is greater, nothing is more joyous than the return of Rhonda, my favorite crafty gal who was last seen warbling “The Happiest Girl in the Whole U.S.A.” before getting shipped off to a faraway compound where Roman couldn’t reach her.
Since then, we’ve met J.J. and Cara Lynn and other residents of Juniper Creek North, so it’s easier to imagine what Rhonda’s life was like while she was off spot-welding or whatever it was they asked her to do.
The genius of Rhonda’s reintroduction is that at first, she seems like a different person: Her polygamy hair has highlights, she’s got a baby, and she seems happily married to Cara Lynn’s cousin Verlan. What’s more, this family in introduced as a blessing for Cara Lynn. They’re the only people from her compound who will still talk to her, and as Cassi Thomson’s performance makes clear, she’s thrilled to have a connection to her old

In much of the world’s media, the story of the popular revolution that transformed Egypt goes like this: an oppressed people who had suffered bitterly in silence suddenly decided that enough was enough and spontaneously rose up to claim their freedom.
Like most revolutions, however, this one was a long time coming. The historic takeover of Tahrir Square was the culmination of countless sit-ins, strikes, pickets and demonstrations over the last decade, by Egyptians who have risked and suffered repeated beatings, torture and imprisonment.
If we are going to do justice to the immense courage of these people who brought down Mubarak, we need not only to recognize their years of determination, but also to listen to what they are saying about how to bring true democracy to the Middle East — and to back their efforts in any way we can. With their blood — and in some cases with their lives — they have earned at least that much.
Watching television coverage of the brave people in Tahrir Square over the last two weeks changing their world and ours, I have seen some familiar faces. Several years ago, while on a book tour, I visited Cairo community centers and non-governmental

Every year as February 14 nears, my phone starts ringing off the hook with clients suffering from what many call, “The Valentine’s Effect.”
Indeed, instead of serving chocolate, they’ll be serving papers–for divorce.
Just this week, one of my clients decided to have her husband served papers and a motion to be removed from the family residence on February 14, a legal version of an acid-tipped arrow straight through her husband’s heart. “Happy Valentine’s Day, Dear.”
More than any other family-oriented holiday such as Thanksgiving and Christmas, Valentine’s Day hits many unhappy spouses like a ton of bricks, triggering thoughts of divorce rather than roses or lingerie.
Is it any wonder after watching all those TV commercials of men professing their undying love to women while presenting them with dazzling diamond rings as the music swells to a crescendo? Often unhappy spouses experience a visceral reaction to these images. They ask themselves, “Why don’t I feel that way?,” “What happened to those feelings?” and “Where is my soundtrack?”
People who are able to ignore the disastrous state of their marriage on a day-to-day basis, see it in the stark pink light of Valentine’s Day. Seeing other people happy and in love makes them feel miserable and ready to act

With CPAC starting this week, I knew I had to scoot over and get some of the inanity on camera. Be sure to check out today’s video of the ex-gay leader who supports LGBT relationships and the Stonewall riots or yesterday’s interview with the leader of a white supremacist group that’s fine with gay people. What else happened in the queer blogosphere this week? Here’s some of the best posts from the past week on Bilerico:
Sunday
When Was the Last Time a Christian’s House Was Burned Down? Filed by: D Gregory Smith
Revisiting the Reagan Nightmare Filed by: Terrance Heath
Monday
Ronald Reagan’s Real Legacy: Death, Heartache, and Silence Over AIDS
Filed by: Karen Ocamb
Injustice At Every Turn: Study of Trans Discrimination Filed by: Dr.

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Every woman needs to see the new Justin Bieber movie, Never Say Never.
Why?
In the words of two young Bieberettes who momentarily pause in their Bieber-shrieking to talk to the cameras during the movie’s opening, “He’s such an inspiration … he gives us hope.”
And perhaps no one needs the Bieber-brand of hope more than the single woman on the weekend of Valentine’s Day. That’s because Justin Bieber reminds us what it’s like to love, be loved and feel love. And from the moment he appears onscreen until the moment he fades from the 3D spotlight, you’re feeling it.
Now, before the Atlanta screening of Never Say Never, I wouldn’t have recognized a Justin Bieber song if it kissed me on the

V-Day has come around and it got me to thinking about the research on love relationships and specifically their positive and negative impacts on women in particular. Is marriage toxic to women?
In my new relationship advice book, Sealing the Deal: The Love Mentor’s Guide to Lasting Love, I review the literature on the health, well-being and financial impacts of marriage, divorce, living together and being single. We don’t have room here to go through all that but I wanted to share some key findings in the hope of giving you a new way to look at your own situation.
Many studies that compare single people with couples as to their quality of life and general health and happiness come to conflicting

It’s confirmed. Dairy products and sugar cause acne.
As our sugar and dairy consumption has increased over the last 100 years so has the number of people with acne. We now have over 17 million acne sufferers, costing our health care system $1 billion a year, and 80-90 percent of teenagers suffer acne to varying

The intoxication of romance may bring a sense of the certainty that your loved one will be with you for eternity. Divorce statistics show otherwise. Romance does not guarantee longevity of partnership.
In fact, I have noticed that the more intense an attraction, the more likely it

We were truly, madly, deeply in love.
It was the early ’90s and we had just spent a year merging our lives (his three sons and Ph.D.-in-progress and my uber-busy consulting practice). We took a honeymoon of sorts in the American Southwest. I can’t tell you if we were in Arizona or New Mexico, but as we crested a rise on the highway, there rose before us something we’d only seen before in the movies: a

For the first 29 years of my life, Valentine’s Day was the most imposing of holidays.
Every year, I was either single or with a girlfriend that I knew things probably weren’t going to work out with. It didn’t help that walking into a mall in early February was like being shot in the face with a confetti cannon, one packed with paper hearts and glitter and rose-colored candy.
By my 30th year, I was convinced I would never get married. Based on my dating life, I saw no hope that I would ever experience this sensational romantic love that seems so otherworldly to single folks but which every gift shop in the country assures us is right around the

In the non-resignation heard ’round the world, Hosni Mubarak vowed on Thursday to Egypt’s “martyrs” to “hold accountable all the people who committed crimes against you, and with the utmost punishment and penalties.”
After the Egyptian leader’s departure from office on Friday, a larger question looms: who will hold Hosni Mubarak accountable for his 30 years atop one of the world’s most repressive regimes?
Potential answers are finally starting to crystallize. The subject garnered virtually no attention during the 18-day uprising, as Mubarak’s critics treaded carefully so long as he remained in office. Protesters overwhelmingly coalesced around a single demand: “Leave!” Opposition leader Mohammed ElBaradei called for Mubarak’s “safe exit” from power, President Obama for a “graceful exit.” Human rights organizations kept their distance from any talk of legal action that might have spooked the defiant dictator into digging in even deeper.
Since his resignation, all that has started to change. The Swiss Federal Council moved immediately on Friday to freeze Mubarak family assets in the country’s