With lagging sales due to current dieting fads, bread bakers have slipped down into the bunker to regroup:

The US bread industry is to hold a crisis “bread summit” on Friday to discuss falling sales amid the growing craze for protein- rich, low-carbohydrate regimes such as the Atkins diet.
Some 40 per cent of US consumers are eating less bread than a year ago, according to the National Bread Leadership Council, which is organising the meeting. The summit will focus on ways to dispel what the industry believes is misinformation encouraging consumers to switch from bread to meat.
The council’s Patrick Davis said it was not clear whether the fall was a fad or a longer term change in eating habits. “Is it a real shift in how Americans like to eat? That’s what we’re going to discuss.” Mr Davis added that, while the average American ate 54 pounds of bread a year, Italians and French ate almost three times as much but did not seem to suffer from obesity.

I’ve got to say, I’m pulling for bread in this one, and not just because I’m a bread fan.
I’m not a nutritionist, but I can play one in the blogosphere (Hey, I did take a nutrition class in college). This Adkins-style diet fad seems totally misguided to me. Anyone who opts for meat and fatty foods over a diet of grains and vegetables is asking for long-term health problems:

Many doctors and the American Heart Association have warned that the diet could be dangerous. The Heart Association advocates a diet based on whole grains, fruits and vegetables.
It warned that over time the Atkins diet and similar approaches could raise cholesterol. Other experts have said the diet might also increase the risk of kidney disease and the PCRM [Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine] adds osteoporosis and colon cancer to the list of risks.
The PCRM, which advocates a strict vegetarian diet, has set up an online registry at www.atkinsdietalert.org for people to offer complaints about the diet.

Stick with the bread, not the bacon.

. . . who already has had enough of the Jacko coverage.
You’d think from a ratings standpoint, one of the three cable news channels would try to tap into this sentiment and position themselves as the anti-hysteria alternative by limiting their coverage to a mere 10 hours a day, rather than 20. But I guess the pack mentality is hard to break.

. . . in voting against the “God resolution”:

Before the last vote on the resolution, as written by the Greene County Commission, Commissioner Jeff McCall read a statement.
He paused, then explained why he was about to vote no, at times stopping to choke back tears.
Yes, he believed that God was the foundation of America’s heritage.
“God is our creator,” he said. “God is and always will be.
“There is nothing I can do, or that we collectively can do, that will elevate God to any higher stature than he already has.”
Thus, McCall didn’t think the resolution was necessary. By considering it, the commission was attempting to address a problem in America with governmental action, he said, a problem more appropriately a matter of individual responsibility.
He continued, “If there is a danger of our nation forgetting and our children never knowing that God is our foundation, it will be because we fail as children of God to share his love with our community as we should, and because we fail as parents to teach our children about God and introduce them to his son, Jesus.
“I can say with little hesitation that my children will never read the minutes of this county commission to see what resolutions did or did not pass. But they will read, day in and day out, how their father acts, who he puts his faith in, and whether or not he loves his neighbor.”

Exactly. God writes his law in our hearts, not in our legal codes.

Great. Now we’re going to have to start bombing the donkeys:

More than a dozen rockets fired from donkey carts slammed into Iraq’s Oil Ministry and two downtown hotels on Friday morning � brazen coordinated strikes at some of Baghdad’s most heavily protected civilian sites that defied a U.S. crackdown.
Two other rocket launchers mounted on donkey carts were found within hours � one 30 yards from the Italian Embassy and another near the Academy of Fine Arts, both in the Waziriya neighborhood north of downtown. Iraqi police and U.S. troops were seen securing those weapons, which apparently had not been fired.

Yesterday, when asked about the thousands of people demonstrating against him, President Bush was in his typical memorized-response-regardless-of-the-question mode:

Q: Mr. President, if I could ask you, with thousands on the street — with thousands marching on the streets today here in London, a free nation, what is your conclusion as to why apparently so many free citizens fear you and even hate you?
PRESIDENT BUSH: I’d say freedom is beautiful. It’s a fantastic thing to come to a country where people are able to express their views.
Q: Why do they hate you, Mr. President? Why do they hate you in such numbers?
PRESIDENT BUSH: I don’t know that they do. All I know is that it’s — that people in Baghdad, for example, weren’t allowed to do this up until recent history. They’re not spending a lot of time in North Korea protesting the current leadership. Freedom is a wonderful thing, and I respect that. I fully understand people don’t agree with war. But I hope they agree with peace and freedom and liberty. I hope they care deeply about the fact that when we find suffering and torture and mass graves, we weep for the citizens that are being brutalized by tyrants.

To be fair, �why does X hate you?� is a rather awkward question, but one an America president ought to be able to handle.
Although Bush was trying to dodge the issue of his cool reception, his media allies back across the pond were doing their best to downplay the demonstrations by discrediting the messengers. This tactic had two main themes: the protestors are (1) far-left communist/anarchist radicals (if not terrorists themselves), who are (2) anti-American.
Anytime there�s a large, public demonstration, it�s likely to attract the people who are most disgruntled with society. There�s no question that some people involved in this rally are out on the political fringe. But I�ve haven�t seen any reporting indicating that such elements were anything more than a small minority of those demonstrating. As far as I could tell, the rally included plenty of rank-and-file Britons.
The second point is even more dishonest. Note to right-wing broadcasters: Being anti-Bush does not equal being anti-American. A majority of Europeans, even those in �Old Europe,� have a favorable opinion of America, and more importantly, American ideals. The thing that has turned them off is Bush�s reckless unilateral approach to policy, where diplomacy has become an afterthought.
The right-wing talking heads want to obscure this distinction; they want to deflect frustration toward the symptoms of the problem, away from the problem itself. Don�t be fooled. We haven�t yet burned all the bridges with our long-standing allies. There�s still an opportunity for reconciliation�back to the point where foreign masses welcome an American president. But we can�t continue down the path we�re on. It leads to even greater international disdain.