Julie Bird is so right on this matter, and has stated her case in a careful and accurate way.

In fact, the evidence shows that to the current day, breast fed babies have a much better chance at avoiding maladies that affect children and humans in general. Moreover, Julie Bird called you out and asked that you pony up evidence that toxins through breast feeding have been shown to rival the disadvantages of formula. Well, Mr. Sugarman, produce the evidence.

I'll show you mine if you show me yours:

http://www.breastfeeding.com/all_about/all_about_more.html

(There's tons more out there, with just as much back up.)

Your example -- which isn't even about breast milk -- fails as evidence of Juliebird's request to show why formula is better.

And even if your example had been about breast milk, the threat it poses according to your link (slightly more women with some local anomalies) seems an awfully dumb reason to make a plea for practices that produce higher rates of sickness and death among those certain to be born. With breast feeding so obviously better, why not fix the now limited problem, suffer a few more women while you’re working on it, and retain a critical tool for the species?

But now I see your last post about why you really don't like it. Fair enough; you are honest. But don't start arguing health based on your own social point of view.

Glenn, you stay in the trees without mentioning their forest, which I know you see.

Maybe your psychological analysis is right on an individual level, and that Estrich and the leaders of the national Democratic Party are praise-seeking airheads (I buy it). But the real matter is how did they get where they are, and who benefits?

Here I find instructive the view that there is one corporate party with two slightly diverging flavors.

The oligarchic club has great incentive in making sure both parties do their geo-political bidding: it safeguards their geopolitical schemes in any electoral weather. But in order to keep the scam up, they must ensure the two parties offer enough political bread and circuses to con the rest of us into thinking we are choosing between polar opposites. As abortion rights teeter on legality for millions on both sides, the rich can rest assured that credit card interests are safe from public scrutiny, along with arms contracts, tax giveaways to themselves, etc. And in any case, their daughters will be able to get an abortion whichever party’s tab they’re picking up.

This observation is not new. But in order to make the bread an circuses work in their interests, the oligarch must keep the people from ever demanding anything from one of the parties that interferes with their plans (this is why the GOP has always been the best party for them – you can screw around with abortion rights to placate a religious base, but you don’t want to screw around too much with corporate regulation to please an economically driven base). This is where hiring the right people for the part comes in. In order to keep the people from stepping outside of their tightly constricted “democratic zone,” you need Susan Estrich, NPR, the Washington Post, and most of the Democratic Congress to enforce the acceptable liberal limits. Liking gays is okay. Feeling uncomfortable about guns and the death penalty is okay. But single payer healthcare and pulling out of Iraq completely? Our public institutions won’t even touch these issues other than to use them to mark some public figure as a fringe element (in spite of polls showing such concerns to be far less fringe than the parade of AEI fellows in the press and on All Things Considered).

So it isn’t about Estrich or the Democrats or our “liberal” msm news sources – or what Estrich or NPR’s employees think they are doing on an individual level. It’s about power making sure that those who define the “acceptable Left” will do so in the right ways.

While I probably share no political views with this group, they are at least standing up for their issues.

The GOP for years had dangled an abortion ban as a carrot for religious folk whose economic interests are not those of the Republican Party. With neo-fascist Giuliani the emerging pick of the establishment, it is now clear that global imperialism and a police state is much bigger priority than the born-again chum they throw out for votes every once and a while.

Why can't the left get just as angry? No time soon will the current Democratic Party give us massive education spending, single payer healthcare, real corporate regulation, clean elections or even an end to this war on terror. When are we gonna say, "okay, that's enough?"

The only voices on the air represent elected officials -- not the bases -- and the way it goes is fierce argument when they AGREE:

Right/GOP: We're winning in Iraq and need to stay in Iraq forever.

Right/Dem: Iraq is going terribly! You are lettting America down. We need to stay in Iraq forever.

Right/GOP: We need to rollback more rights to catch terrorists like those sting operations against idiots who couldn't blow up a balloon.

Right/Dem: We are outraged by your disrespect for the Constitution! But we will allow a vote on repeal of the Constitution -- how many votes do you need?

Right/GOP: With all the money we need to spend on imperialism, we can't afford to educate our population, or give it healthcare.

Right/Dems: There is a role for government, you heartless scoundrals! But we will demand a balanced budget and promise not to roll back our war budget, leaving us to push education and healthcare policies that rely on the private sector.