The Daily Feather — O Captain! my Captain!

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,

The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,

The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,

While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;

                         But O heart! heart! heart!

                            O the bleeding drops of red,

                               Where on the deck my Captain lies,

                                  Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;

Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills,

For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding,

For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;

                         Here Captain! dear father!

                            This arm beneath your head!

                               It is some dream that on the deck,

                                 You’ve fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,

My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,

The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,

From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;

                         Exult O shores, and ring O bells!

                            But I with mournful tread,

                               Walk the deck my Captain lies,

                                  Fallen cold and dead.

Walt Whitman’s 1865 mourning of Abraham Lincoln’s death is a solemn reminder that the stunted peace that followed civil war exacted a price. It’s fitting to share here and now as the silent majority asks who our captain will be to navigate the storm building into Election Day.

At QI Research, our commitment to convey unvarnished data is unshaken. The pressure to flatter reality is nothing like Dr. Gates and I have experienced in our 30 years in the business. We present an unusual fivesome of charts today to eradicate equivocation from the ‘soft landing’ debate the mainstream financial media propagates without feigning objectivity or a pretense of apoliticism.

The ‘good’ news is the public sides with our resolve as a research house. Consider this from a CNBC article last month, “‘Between the news, the radio, and politicians just talking about how the economy is so great because unemployment is low and just hearing all that, I just want to scream from the rooftops: Then how come no one can find a job?’ said Jenna Jackson, a 28-year-old former management consultant from Ardmore, Pennsylvania. She has been actively looking for a job since her layoff four months ago.”

Ms. Jackson’s being told she’s delusional is aggravating a societal unrest that’s palpable. It’s at times like this that I’m tempted to seek out a bigger platform. But I am a wife and a mother first and foremost and don’t have license to sacrifice on their behalf more than I already have.

In the interim, we are grateful that the analysis we pursued on the Employee Retention Credit manifested in policy change. In the spirit of relentlessness, QI’s next mission is introducing into government statistical agencies the big data technology that’s old hat in the private sector. Real-time analysis is accessible and affordable, even for the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).