There’s some degree of irony in me using the above heading as I blog on Saturday night. But there’s something really imbalanced about this:

In Paris, about 60 fans gathered on the Champs Elysees and marched through crowds of shoppers to the Arc de Triomphe. They held candles and banners with slogans of support and sang “We Are the World,” the 1985 African famine relief anthem written by Jackson and Lionel Richie.
“It’s really hard for us,” said Pascale Hatot, a 37-year-old fan from the suburbs of Paris. “I haven’t been able to sleep or eat for three days.”
Supporters in Rome gathered at the foot of the Spanish Steps just after darkness fell. They held candles and a sign in Italian that read: “Michael: Accused but not guilty!”

With all the stuff going on in the world today, I’m not sure why anyone feels a particular need to attend a rally for a has-been entertainer under criminal suspicion. But not being able to sleep or eat for three days over this? That’s bizarre. I don’t see how anyone who’s followed Jackson over the past decade could really be surprised by these charges. And for one to so distraught by Jackson’s arrest so that it interferes with his or her bodily routines seems like a symptom of a disturbed person.

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.