I've been enjoying a fabulous trauma conference in beautiful downtown Chicago. This is simply one of my favorite cities in all of the United States. The spring and fall will deliver weather that is unparalleled. Unfortunately, I got here just a little late in the season. It's starting to get chilly. The Art Institute of Chicago is one of my favorite places.

Terrible plane crash in Reno, Nevada. Several deaths. Upwards of 50 or 60 injuries, according to some news reports. Very sad.

Inflation appears to be ticking up. This is really bad news. The things that the Federal Reserve can do to combat inflation hurt job growth and money availability. Most commonly, the Fed will increase interest rates and decrease the money supply. These actions will make money harder to come by and loans harder to come by. They will in turn cause a decrease in spending, which will then lead to prices coming down and breaking the back of inflation. I have no idea what the Fed does in the face of 9.1% unemployment, a stagnant economy and the beginnings of a bump in inflation. This is going to be interesting.

There was a special election in Anthony Wiener's district in New York. The Democrat, somebody I've never heard of, lost to a Republican. There was/is a bunch of handwringing as, once again, the mainstream media is trying to convince the American people that this election was about Pres. Barack Obama. I find that most local elections are about local things. I think it is seldom the case that local elections are about national things. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think this election was about Anthony Wiener and his behavior. Barack Obama has plenty of other things to worry about.

Drone strikes in Yemen. There are some question whether the Yemeni government will collapse.

Somalia seems to be lapsing once again into famine. Unfortunately, the world has little or no stomach for aiding this dysfunctional and war-torn country.

A teenager in Horizon City, Texas is being brought up on charges of defrauding a community out of $17,000. It appears that the community believe that the teenager was dying of cancer.

I have no idea what's going on in Egypt. Seems like there is chaos breaking out, again. There also seems there is a police crackdown, again.

There seems to be a real pathological brain injury associated with Gulf War syndrome. All I know is we need to take care of our troops. It's our promise to them. As Americans, we must keep our promises.

If this story is true, I hope the prosecutor throws the book at this young lady. She "allegedly" started a charity for her lymphoma. She collected over $17,000 from a community called Horizon City, Texas. It turns out, she does not have cancer. This kind of behavior that we must stop in the United States. This is the kind of behavior that takes advantage of our good will and ruins our communities as we could begin to distrust each other about everything. (the earlier version of this news story made no sense. I have no idea what happened.)

There's a new book about Sarah Palin and her life. This supposed to be some tell-all book. Stop it. A tell-all book? Why? I don't like Sarah Palin because I think she is destructive. I don't think that she has any answers for the problems of the United States. I really don't care about some book that is not going to improve the economy or create jobs. Right now, the focus should be on jobs. That's it. 24/7.