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.

On Wednesday, April 7, 2004, the Washington Post ran this headline:

U.S. Forces Take Heavy Losses As Violence Spreads Across Iraq
About a Dozen Marines Killed; Foreigners, Scores of Iraqis Die

To the fathers, mothers, wives, brothers, and children of the Marines who died, the losses are the heavy indeed. There is nothing so precious as the blood of our soldiers, Marines, airmen, sailors, and civilians who willingly lay their lives on the line in service to their country. We can never replace them, and we must always remember them.

Nevertheless, I am angered at the sensationalist journalism that would lead the uninformed to believe our Army and Marine Corps are being bled white in Iraq.

One of the key indicators of Bush’s impending victory on November 2nd is a historic shift in Jewish voting habits. American Jews in unprecedented numbers will cast their ballot for a Republican president. Cliff Alsberg, a writer and television producer in Los Angeles, has written this compelling essay addressed to his fellow Jews still struggling with their reflexive compulsion to pull the Democrat lever. -JW

I am writing to you today as members of my “extended family”—my family of fellow Jews and fellow Americans with whom I most strongly identify and who I most cherish.

Never before have the stakes in a presidential election been greater for us; both here at home and abroad. Never before has there been a clearer choice between two candidates, and never before has so much depended on us-- both as Jews and as Americans.

I’d like to address six key issues that invariably affect each of us as both Jews and Americans. I urge you to read and to “listen” to these issues with an open heart and an open mind. If you are truly “undecided”, I implore you to dig deep within your heart to weigh the consequences of your vote. If you are already a staunch Kerry supporter, I respectfully ask you to remain open and intellectually honest for the duration of this letter.

If you thought American Universities were repositories of masochistic appeasement of enviers of Western Civilization, compare them to those of Israel’s. If you need to sober up after all those Christmas parties, this article will do it quickly. –JW

“How could you report the war in Iraq if you sided with the Americans?”

“How can you say that George Bush is better than Saddam Hussein?”

These are some of the milder questions I received from an audience of some 150 undergraduate students from Tel Aviv University’s Political Science Department. The occasion was a guest lecture I gave last month on

When John Kerry testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in April 1971, he admitted that he had probably broken the law by going to Paris and meeting with North Vietnamese and Viet Cong leaders. (From page 188 of the hearing record: "I realize that even my visits in Paris . . . in a sense are on the borderline of private individuals negotiating, et cetera. I understand these things."

The prohibition against private individuals negotiating--which has been on the criminal statute books since John Adams was President--is contained in 18 U.S.C. Section 953 and is a felony.)

I was serving my second tour of duty in Vietnam at the time, and while I was painfully aware of the lies Kerry was telling Congress and the American people about what was happening in Vietnam (pretending to speak for "all" Vietnam veterans, calling us "war criminals," saying 60-80 percent of us were "stoned" twenty-four hours a day, and the like), I was unaware until recently that he was also involved in exploiting the families of American POWs in Vietnam.