Is The World Really Going To Hell?

The divorce rate in America is at a 30-year low. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention puts the current divorce rate at 3.5 per 1,000, down 8 percent in the last five years, 16 percent since 2000, and a staggering 34 percent since its peak in 1979. Roughly 20,000 fewer American couples are divorcing every year as compared with a decade ago.

From here.

* Traffic deaths are at record lows.

Traffic deaths last year in the United States fell to the lowest level in 60 years, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

The 33,808 deaths in 2009 represented a 9.7 percent decline from the previous year, the safety agency said on Thursday.

The number of injuries also dropped to 2.22 million last year from 2.35 million in 2008.

The agency said preliminary estimates showed Americans drove 0.2 percent more miles in 2009 than the previous year. . . . passenger-car fatalities have dropped for the seventh year in a row. Fatalities in light trucks, like pickups and sport utility vehicles, have dropped the last four years.

From here

* The crime rate (per 100,000 people) fell for every major type of crime from 2000 to 2009, from 2005 to 2009, and from 2008 to 2009. The car theft rate (car thefts per 100,000 people) has fallen 37.9% from 2005 to 2009.

* Inflation is very low, but positive (about 1.2% in the last year), which means that the misery index is actually at unexceptional levels by historic standards, despite high unemployment.

* There has been a dramatic reduction in the number of checks that are bounced. There were 24% fewer bounced checks in Denver in the first six months of 2010, and 41% fewer in Jefferson County, a suburban Denver county.

* Fiscal sanity is a bipartisan issue in Colorado.

Twenty-three of 27 GOP lawmakers in the state House and five of 14 GOP state senators have signed a letter addressed to all Colorado Republicans urging defeat of [Initiative 60, 61 and 101].

From here.

Cory Gardner, one of only four in the House GOP not to sign the letter, who is the Republican nominee in the 4th Congressional District, also opposes the measures.

The measures would make the state's budget even tighter, requiring 99% of general funds money to be spent on K-12 education by cutting taxes, and limiting the ability to state and local governments to borrow money.

* Video games may be good for you: "Playing shoot-‘em-up, action-packed video games strengthens a person’s ability to translate sensory information quickly into accurate decisions."

* The Obama administration is strongly considering not appealing a court ruling that the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" rule is unconstitutional.