180 Comments
Sep 3Liked by Martyn Wendell Jones

That's the wrong whey to go.

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They're butter off dead.

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I also think WE are butter off if....

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Booooo! I mean, mooooooooo!

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Dou you mean like when we one-upped on Little Miss Muffit and gave the Kurds their whey?

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what udder disrespect. I feel it behooves us all to listen to these Bovine Boosters. I mean, what curd go wrong? We need to turn our lives over to Cheesus.

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I’d lactosee them try to ban raw milk.

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What begins in hysteria will end with listeria

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Brava, good one!! :D

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They’re the crème de la crème, but not in the right way.

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Substack doesn't have a dislike button, so my only option is to like this post and lodge a complaint this way.

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First of all, when has a shutdown ever been good for the GOP? Anyone? Bueller?

Try it a month before election? Have fun with that one.

Secondly, go ahead and drink the raw milk, guys. But be sure to drop a little bleach in first.

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Ivermectin? Bleach will just take out the color, so I understand from OCF.

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Typical libbie. We all know the only way to reap the health benefits of bleach is via injection.

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Acid is for dropping, bleach is for mainlining.

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Dairy farms used to put formaldehyde in their milk. "In the late 1890s, formaldehyde was so widely used by the dairy and meat-packing industries that outbreaks of illnesses related to the preservative were routinely described by newspapers as “embalmed meat” or “embalmed milk” scandals."

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/19th-century-fight-bacteria-ridden-milk-embalming-fluid-180970473/

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I found this comment hilarious, but getting serious for a second: they think that shutdowns show

1) strength because compromise is for chumps

2) that government is inefficient and proving it is part of their mission

Point 2 is basically due to being immersed in modern US conservative messaging. Echo chambers, if you will. The counter argument is easy: the government works fine, if you’d stop sabotaging it.

Heck, the argument I just made is what got me to rethink how the Republican Party was operating around 2012. I’m here cause of that :)

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The only time raw milk is safe is if it’s from your (or someone very close to your) own cow that you raised and allowed to eat the sweet grass on your own pesticide free farm. Otherwise, you have no idea where it came from or how the cows were actually raised. Personally, I buy raw milk from my sister’s nextdoor neighbor because I make cheese and yogurt. Aside from this, I have to agree that unpasteurized milk can be very bad for you.

That said, I can’t believe these people. Don’t they understand that once milk started to be pasteurized child deaths from milk borne diseases dropped in half? I guess shitting yourself to death is part of the whole Take America Back! thing. (Because it’s unclear to me exactly how far back they’d like to take us.)

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Honestly at this point if some small number of GOP voters would like to shit themselves to death over their freedom to consume bacteria laden food... well... let's just say I won't lose any sleep over it

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I feel like that too, but is there a public health problem? Your freedom to get sick stops when you can get me sick, just as your freedom to throw a punch stops before my face begins. All animus aside (and believe me, I get that) autonomy of the body matters but not when it comes to, say, getting the measles vaccine. But honestly I don’t know if that’s a serious issue or not.

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Possibly, but it seems like it would be remote? The (good?) thing about food-borne disease is that it's only really contagious to other people who have contact with a person's bodily fluids. I suppose if the raw-milk craze got big enough it could overwhelm hospitals but... I really hope it doesn't get that far

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Me neither. Good riddance.

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I agree— if the potentially sick milk-drinkers are just adults who actively chose it for themselves. It’s their KIDS that I worry about—they eat and drink what they’re given at home.

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Marry me, Hillary!

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Raw milk is not safe. The bacterial growth is not dependent on whether they're out on pesticide free pasture or not.

It's how immaculate your equipment is, how well that udder is cleaned, and how the milk itself is handled.

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Those of us that drink raw milk know that. Milk from corporate cows that are milked 3X per day and spend their lives up to their knees in cow shit and are milked by minimum wage farm workers so the shareholders can make a nice profit probably should be pasteurized

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Exactly why I only trust the source from whom I get mine because I know their operation is very clean and their 4 cows are quite healthy. I would never buy raw milk at a farmers market for the reasons you lay out. I mentioned organic grass because the milk that comes from cows who’ve spent their lives in a heather and sweet grass field has the most delicious flavor, not because I think that alone is what makes the milk quality.

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I went through an approximately 5 year period with autumn allergies and I would go "over the border" into NYS to buy raw milk to contain the symptoms naturally. It's delicious medicine.

In states where it is legal, there is a different set of rules/inspections as I understand it. There is less room for error for farmers selling raw milk.

It makes sense to issue warnings now with the bird flu.

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I’m laughing because it was my job as a child to walk two miles to get raw milk literally right from the cow. Remember all to well cow hair in milk best was when it tasted like onions from cows eating onion grass in the spring . Hence the funniest thing is I bet that if you gave these idiots two glasses of milk one pasteurized the other raw they couldn’t tell the difference I’m surprised they aren’t talking about chocolate milk from a brown cow!

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Did you ever try milk from a cow that ate bitterweed?

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There was a measle outbreak in Oregon (I think) a few years ago. Several kids died and just like that, snap, people started getting their kids vaccinated against measles. Coincidence?

Quite honestly, health departments need to start messaging the impact of various childhood diseases and how vaccinations have caused the number of deaths to decrease. Will everyone be reached with these messages? No, but if enough people are reminded of these facts during a time when deaths to preventable diseases go up, maybe some will make a connection.

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I’m glad you shared about vaccinations. Retired nurse and sad when you see some of the things I’ve witnessed from kids with no vaccinations. Parents begging to give child vaccines now yet it’s always too late. There is no education that ever explains to parents what a huge chance they are taking not vaccinating their children . I have seen where they refuse to even listen to doctors over what politicians claimed . Our friends son n law (21) in a dirt bike accident hurt his knee two weeks in hospital with unbelievable infections then they found out he never had any vaccinations . His body can’t fight off newer and stronger viruses can’t give him the vaccines now it’s twenty years too late.

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Thanks. It seems that when we make great leaps forward, people eventually forget how we got there and start taking things for granted. We don't always maintain an adequate level of institutional knowledge and societal learning.

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The small town in which I grew up put on a polio vaccination event when I was very young (late 50s, when polio was a very real threat). The line was about a block long, and did not move terribly fast, but no one left before their children got the shot. There were lots of parents in town who wanted the polio vaccination in their children's arms. An African-American friend of mine went through the same kind of event in Birmingham AL. He said white families waited patiently in line behind black families. No one cared about anything other than getting the vaccine in their children.

Polio was a very real threat in the early 50s, and parents were willing to do whatever was available to reduce that threat. The anti-vax BS works as long as everyone other than your child is vaccinated. None of the vaccinated children will spread something to your child. The math fails when there are enough unvaccinated children to serve as a pool to host the virus.

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Very true. There were some kids who cannot be vaccinated for various health/medical reasons and their parents were very concerned with what they can do to protect their children. Having a high vaccination rate protects both the vaccinated and those that cannot be vaccinated. As much as people want their individual liberties, our society does best when we can make the common good just as important.

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Raw milk is safe if comes directly from your mother to you. But at that point in your life it isn’t your decision.

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19th C, for starters.

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In 1975 in Santa Fe, I had raw milk delivered to make yogurt.

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One thing about making yoghurt from milk is that the fermentation process can kill a bunch of bacteria if it is done to completion. I read a study done on milk in East Africa that showed the level of Brucella contamination in milk was reduced almost to zero when it was left in the sun to ferment for a day. Other bacteria may not be so susceptible to low pH in the milk.

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I hear room temperature uncooked pork & beef are the best. Just add ketchup.

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Yeah but you have to let them sit out for *at least* three hours for all of the nutrients to activate...

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It amazes me that people used to "age" beef by hanging it in the shade of the barn.

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I remember reading something about ageing meat, that it can get a mold on the outside. Apparently, you just cut that off and you got yourself a real meal.

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Better yet, chow down on them while they're still ambulatory.

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I especially love the claims we were healthier before pasteurized milk. Life expectancy then was about forty.

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And brucellosis and tuberculosis (consumption) were major causes of death. These two were the reason that pasteurization were mandated.

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Pastuer won the nobel prize for a reason.

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Sorry to bust your bubble RF&W, but Louis Pasteur developed his miracle life-saving process in 1862; the first Nobel prize was awarded in 1901. Mr. Pasteur was long dead and, no, he did not receive the award posthumously.

I will allow an "E" for effort, though.;-)

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Outstanding!

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And when people, most likely children, start dying from that milk, it's Biden's fault. As for the shutdown - go ahead. Let's shut down airports, national parks, don't pay the military, don't pay Congress, etc. It worked out so well for every other R that did it.

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Of course, if the new, less well connected Rs realize that it also means no paychecks for them, or their staff or their landlords, perhaps a stop-gap CR will pass....

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MTG has been crying since she got to Congress that she's not paid enough. And she's a millionaire. Given what she's been doing there, I think she's overpaid.

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No matter what her "paycheck" read, you are right.

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Grossly so.

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Reading “Frankly, the only glimmer of hope is that Johnson will see a need to protect his most vulnerable Republican colleagues…” gave me an intense feeling of deja vu! And I thought the raw milk thing went away in the 1970s (where I first heard about it while I was at the University of Michigan). Live long enough, and you start to feel like you’re just riding on a ridiculous carousel!

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I have no problems if every single MAGA person wants to drink raw milk. May they enjoy all the physical discomfort from the listed possible diseases.

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Killing off your constituents is not a way to grow your party.

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I have to say, the notion that the SAVE Act should include border provisions is unfathomably rich. They negotiated a perfectly good bill, bipartisan and everything (even according to an R negotiator, Sen. Lankford) and Trump ordered it tanked. What's different now? It's all performative nonsense. Playing to the cheap seats. Lord, deliver us.

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Still, you wanna guess/bet which presidential candidate gets Lankford's vote?

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Exactly. If the ask is: "must have a border bill" then feel free to pass the existing Lankford bill, verbatim. As for the rest especially including the SAVE Act, don't engage in any of this intentional disruption.

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When I first moved to SoCal in 1973, raw milk was a thing in Encinitas, where I lived. I thought it ridiculous at the time. Suppose it shouldn't come as a surprise that the rw has chosen a new thing to be reactionary about. They're already rejecting scientific advancements re vaccines, what's one more to kick to the curb?

How did this raw milk thing even start? Joe's post here is the first I've heard of it and I am terminally online.

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It's been out there forever, what with the whole back to nature stuff from the '60s/'70s timeframe.

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I’ve always felt the health nuts out here were secret fascists.

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Sep 3·edited Sep 3

I listen to a podcast that's been following (among other things) bizarre insane conspiracy theory stuff in the dankest corners of the internet for a long time. The number of things they've covered that then made their way into relatively mainstream Republican politics is *incredible* - thanks to them I knew about incels long before they became a dangerous political movement. The raw milk thing is ridiculous, but unsurprising. Come back when you hear Alex Jones talking about how rice is actually cyanide and I'll *really* be impressed!

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They ...the gov't the corporations, the rich people are poisoning us with Crisco and their drugs ..if they drink pasteurized milk ...we'll drink it free ,clear and RAW..we Were paranoid..4 dead in Ohio...But I knew a Judge who drank it as a kid and lost an eye to Salmonella..saved a normie like me!

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I'd like to think not, but.....

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I think it is all of a piece with the survivor mentality. Peppers, if you will.

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The farm where I purchase my organic, free-range beef also sells raw milk and butter. I purchased the butter ONCE and had to toss it: it was probably spoiled, but smelled rank.

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oh lawd not the raw milk discourse 😭

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Pasteurization is the new 5G/wifi boogeyman for the antivax/crank GOP wing. Maybe the GOP would support a National ID for US citizens as the alternative to the Save Act🤣. And sorry, pumpkin spice latte…..I’m judging.

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Ya, I have had food poisoning a cuple of times in my life. Good times. Cleans out the pipes. would [not] recommend.

More of these people need to kill themselves off and raise the general IQ of the population.

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Yeah, the raw milk people can be convincing. I've been listening to Rick Rubin's podcast, and he had a recent episode on raw milk, with a guy who is apparently one of the biggest raw milk producers in California, and of course insists that his milk is healthy and wonderful. And like a dummy, I thought, hey, it's Rick Rubin, the great record peoducer, putting this stuff out there. He's a smart, creative person! Definitely knows what he's talking about, right? We'll, further reading on the FDA and CDC's websites reveals: maybe not. It's not just that these agencies are absolutely unequivocal about the dangers and lack of benefit of raw milk. It's that their argument makes sense: in order for milk to be safe, absolutely every step of the "grass to glass" process has to go exactly right. Without pasteurization, which heats the milk to kill bad bacteria, there is no safeguard. Random testing can be and is done, but accidents are still going to happen, with very bad results. I still like Rubin, and I'll still follow his podcast, but you really can't believe everything you hear, no matter how smart or well intentioned the speaker seems to be.

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Great record producers aren’t always the best scientists. 😁

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