Breast Beating

It appears the controversy du jour centers around first lady Michelle Obama's decision to "promote breast-feeding, particularly among black women, as part of her campaign to reduce childhood obesity." In conjunction with this initiative, "The Internal Revenue Service...announced that breast pumps, which can cost several hundred dollars, would be eligible for tax breaks."

Michele Bachmann immediately jumped in to completely misrepresent the situation: "To think that government has to go out and buy my breast pump — You want to talk about nanny state, I think we just got a new definition." To its credit, the Times points out that Bachmann's statement is wrong on its face.

And, of course, Sarah Palin could not help herself but to enter the fray by displaying complete and total ignorance of consumer prices:

“No wonder Michelle Obama is telling everybody, ‘You better breast-feed your baby,’ ” she said at a speech on Long Island. “Yeah, you’d better, because the price of milk is so high right now.”

Really, Sarah? Really? Yup, it's as "high" now as it was about seven years ago, in mid-2004:

Of course, we can't just give infants just whole milk, so let's drill down into the specific category of "Baby Food":

So there's been no inflation in "Baby Food" in about three years, while Milk has actually declined and is lower now than it was for about a two year period in the late aughts.

And there is no serious debate about the benefits of breast feeding. The Times also points out that the government is among the largest buyers of baby formula, and that promoting the use of breast milk "might actually help reduce government spending," clearly a top priority of Tea Partiers like Bachmann.

But none of this will stop folks from simply making things up.