Two items in today’s paper bode well for the coming week:

1/ Fatal Crashes of Air­planes Decline 65% Over 10 Years:

Bar­ring a crash before mid­night Sunday, the drop in the acci­dent rate will be about 65 per­cent, to one fatal acci­dent in about 4.5 mil­lion depar­tures, from one in nearly 2 mil­lion in 1997.

2/ Giu­liani Inspires Threat of a Third-​Party Run:

For months, Chris­t­ian con­ser­v­a­tives have been esca­lat­ing warn­ings that nom­i­nat­ing Mr. Giu­liani could splin­ter the party. Dr. Dobson wrote a column declar­ing that he would waste his vote before cast­ing it for either Mr. Giu­liani or a Demo­c­rat who sup­ports abor­tion rights, like Mrs. Clin­ton, of New York. Some con­ser­v­a­tives also noted that Mr. Giu­liani has been divorced twice and mar­ried three times and is estranged from his children.

(Chart, above, shows number of fatal air­plane crashes in the U.S. from 1987-2007 and the number of times that the words “permanent Repub­li­can majority” were taken seri­ously during those same years.)