“The Buck knife saved my leg and maybe my life at least once when I carelessly caught a pant leg in the anchor winch.” So writes “Old Fool,” the retired aviator and mariner who writes a colorful blog on various and sundry things at www.oldfool.org.

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced on April 8 it has received enough H-1B applications to meet the congressionally mandated cap of 85,000 H-1B visas for fiscal year 2009. The H-1B visas are given to foreign workers in “specialty occupations” (science, engineering, law, medicine, computer programming, etc.) where U.S. employers have filed petitions claiming there are not qualified U.S. applicants to fill the jobs.

By now everyone knows that Congress and the White House approved an enormous $700-plus billion package a short time ago and that the Treasury Department is rapidly burning through that mountainous sum and asking for more. What wasn't known until the past few days is that the Federal Reserve has been "lending" hundreds of billions of additional dollars to troubled companies and institutions. In fact, the Fed may have already dished out nearly $2 trillion!

The Idaho Statesman in a June 6, 2010 story extolled the efforts of Idaho’s Commerce Secretary Don Dietrich and Idaho Governor C.L. “Butch” Otter to lure Chinese investors to their state: “‘The Chinese are looking for a beachhead in the United States,’ said Idaho Commerce Secretary Don Dietrich. Idaho is ready to give them one,” the Statesman reported.

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan (pictured) lives a charmed life. Besides pulling down an $8.5 million advance on his memoir, The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World (topped only by Bill Clinton’s $10 million advance), he recently was treated to an orgy of media hype and hoopla usually reserved for screen idols and rock stars.

National Review, the putative voice of political conservatism, continues to flack for the Federal Reserve and Fed chief Ben Bernanke's latest round of money magic known as "quantitative easing," or QE2.

They're from the government and they're here to help us ... for a price — a very big price.

After a meeting with his economic team and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke on June 29, President Obama announced "the economy is strengthening" and "we are into recovery." The recovery mantra, however, seems to be falling on more and more deaf ears these days.

The one thing that economists seem to agree on is that any economic recovery will be an uphill battle for some time to come. But if you’ve ever pulled a heavy wagon up a hill, you know what happens if your fellow pullers decide to become riders instead and jump on the wagon.

The timing of the sellout by Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) could not have been more politically auspicious — or more suspicious. For months the Senator had been denouncing the secrecy of the Federal Reserve’s bailout operations, which have exceeded two trillion dollars. For months he had been pledging that he would push for a genuine audit of the Fed. He authored an amendment in the Senate identical to “Audit the Fed” legislation in the House (H.R. 1207) authored by Congressman Ron Paul (R-Texas).