My view has been that this man, who is a quasi-traitor and anti-American as well as a vacuous, arrogant snob, could not be elected president, unless perhaps his opponent were falling apart before our eyes, and Bush hasn’t reached that stage yet. Regardless of the polls, regardless of what’s going on in the world of politics, it would be unimaginable and unprecedented for the U.S. to elect such a man.

That’s been my position. But now it occurs to me that there is another way of seeing it:

India’s stock market collapsed this week in a panic free fall after the return of the Congress Party in last week’s elections. The investor freak-out increased when it seemed that Congress would have to include India’s Communist Party of Marxism-Leninism in its ruling coalition.

Then came Sonia Gandhi’s masterstroke.

One problem our troops in Iraq have is the guerrillas using mosques as weapons store rooms and armed sanctuaries from which they can attack us with impunity. This is a favorite tactic of Muqtada al-Sadr and his “Mahdi” rebels, who have shamed and insulted the world’s Shia community by turning its most sacred shrine, the golden-domed Imam Ali Mosque into an armory.

The fat little bearded thug thinks he is safe in the mosque, for were we to storm the mosque risking its destruction, it could cause the Shia uprising he dreams of. What he doesn’t know is that we could quickly cleanse the mosque of him and his murderous riffraff without firing a shot.

This is a fascinating thesis: That the Nasdaq market movers are radical liberals whose George Soros-like hatred for Bush is influencing the movement of Nasdaq stocks. I don’t know if this is the case, but you simply must read it. Starting next week, Ms. D'Anconia will be submitting a weekly report, exclusive to To The Point, indicating the direction she perceives Nasdaq to be moving. -- Jack Wheeler.

I make measurements which indicate the direction the market is moving in the Nasdaq. The data I use are very sensitive indicators of the underlying financial mood of the Nasdaq movers and shakers. I do not try to predict or explain their mood. I just have a way of separating the noise from the signal.

In general, the larger indices (DJIA, SPX etc.) follow the same motions as the Nasdaq, but they do so more sluggishly. Nasdaq is the canary in the stock market mine, in that it is more sensitive and shows motion effects more clearly than the larger indices.

The stock market is one of the most quintessential symbols of American Capitalism. Thus it was with some surprise that since last fall, I found that inflections upward seemed to happen when bad things happened to America. Over the past several months there has appeared to be a correlation between political events and the direction of the Nasdaq. It is possible that these are all just coincidences. Anecdotal evidence is hard to use scientifically. Nevertheless, there appears to be a pattern.

This is a letter to his friends from Ray Reynolds, a medic in the Iowa Army National Guard, serving in Iraq. To The Point has determined its authenticity and updated its factual claims, verifying them with USAID and the Pentagon:

As I head off to Baghdad for the final weeks of my stay in Iraq, I wanted to say thanks to all of you who did not believe the media. They have done a very poor job of covering everything that has happened. I am sorry that I have not been able to visit all of you during my two week leave back home.

And just so you can rest at night knowing something is happening in Iraq that is noteworthy, I thought I would pass this on to you. This is the list of things that has happened in Iraq recently:

The most personally frustrating aspect of the Abu Ghraib folies is that over a year ago I submitted an interrogation method to the Pentagon that was foolproof, immediate, effective, and humane.

It’s called TFM Interrogation, utilizing a nutritionally-engineered diet of Tryptophan-Free Meals. A TTP article discussing the method is now posted in the Classics section.

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva - known as “Lula” - is functionally illiterate. He won’t read anything, any studies, reports, books et al. His aides have learned to give him only one-page bulleted summaries of any issue, then explain it to him verbally. He has no education and knows nothing of economics or business. Yet he has a photographic memory for events and what is said to him. He is incredibly articulate and persuasive in speech. Thus he is the perfect populist demagogue to rouse the poor Brazilian masses.