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Republicans Love Free Stuff—Walls, Military Expansion, Everything!

While I was campaigning today, a neighbor struggling with his Trump-excusification joked that “Democrats like free stuff.”

Really?

My neighbor’s preferred Presidential nominee says he will build a wall and make Mexico pay for it. Cool—free wall!

My neighbor’s preferred Presidential nominee says he will expand everything in the military and pay for it in part by “respectfully asking countries such as Germany, Japan, South Korea and Saudi Arabia to pay more for the tremendous security we provide them.” Boats, missiles, soldiers, paid for by our allies—free army stuff!

That unstrategic expansion of the entire military would surely contribute to the national debt. My neighbor’s Presidential nominee will add $11.5 trillion to the national debt over the next decade, compared to only $250 billion in new debt under the Democratic Presidential nominee. That’s the Republican proposing 46 times more free stuff than the Democrat.

“Democrats love free stuff”? As I said, my neighbor was joking.

21 Comments

  1. mike from iowa 2016-09-07 17:58

    Be a lotta redneck good ole boy Texans unhappy about reduced access to Mexican brothels. Imaginative Texans will hastily breed badgers to armadilloes to improve tunnel digging capacity so they can meet their true loves some more over there.

  2. mike from iowa 2016-09-07 18:00

    Don’t forget wingnuts have been helping korporate amerika get their incomes and profits nearly free, too.

  3. Don Coyote 2016-09-07 20:00

    @mlia: “… have been helping korporate amerika…” Really? Just goes to show your juvenile mindset. How 60’s & 70’s of you. Yah, yah, I know Kafka wrote a novel titled “Amerika”. Don’t flatter yourself.

  4. leslie 2016-09-07 21:15

    thune’s love of war will lead us here: “https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/09/07/10-new-wars-that-could-be-unleashed-as-a-result-of-the-one-against-isis/?hpid=hp_hp-more-top-stories_10newwars614pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

  5. grudznick 2016-09-07 21:24

    I am a Republican. In fact, a Conservative. I am a past president of the Conservatives with Common Sense, a prolific breakfast group based in and around Rapid City. And I do love free stuff, almost with a libbie bent, if it involves bacon and sausage gravy. Everybody loves free breakfasts.

  6. leslie 2016-09-07 21:25

    “Behind closed doors, Tester, Sen. Charles Schumer

    (N.Y.) — who would likely become majority leader if Democrats recapture the Senate — and retiring Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid

    (Nev.) offered a sober view of the likelihood of winning back the upper chamber, lawmakers said.

    They painted a worrisome picture of a political landscape awash with advertising dollars from Republican-leaning outside groups such as the Senate Leadership Fund and One Nation, which reported raising $42 million in August alone.

    http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/294912-dems-sound-alarm-on-senate-majority

  7. Darin Larson 2016-09-07 22:23

    Hey, the latest free stuff from Trump is the Iraqi oil. He has said in the past and said it again tonight that we should “take the oil” as in take the oil for free from Iraq. You can’t make this stuff up. What will he think of next that we could get for free?

  8. Rorschach 2016-09-08 07:42

    Everybody loves free and reduced price stuff. Look at the reduced price airplane tickets that Republicans are scooping up in Watertown and Pierre.

    When free stuff comes from the government Democrats think somebody ought to pay for it now through taxes, preferably those like Mitt Romney and Donald Trump who pay a drastically lower tax rate than that paid by middle income people. Republicans prefer to borrow the money to pay for free stuff from future generations. They think Mitt Romney’s 13% tax rate and Donald Trump’s 0% tax rate are too high.

  9. mike from iowa 2016-09-08 08:13

    O-Negative- Coyote. Yap me a river.

  10. MC 2016-09-08 10:44

    Free Stuff ? you guys are real riot, Nothing is free, Nothing! Someone had to pay for it, someone had to suffer for it, in some way.

  11. caheidelberger Post author | 2016-09-08 16:25

    Grudz, I generally refuse to stay at a motel that doesn’t offer “free” breakfast (no Ramkota with those expensive restaurant breakfasts for me!). But I also recognize those waffles and O.J. aren’t free; Days Inn is working the price of that breakfast into my bill.

    MC, Trump is the riot. He’s the one thinking he can implement his policies for free.

    Darin, Trump’s victor-spoils foreign policy ought to scare the world.

  12. mike from iowa 2016-09-08 17:30

    I certainly remember the conniptions wingnuts had when the government started handing out surplus cheese, butter and canned beef or pork to the less fortunate. Excess commodities helped keep producer prices lower.

    Unfortunately, the commodity give away was before free Obama SUVs and Obamaphones and allowing the poor to buy lobsters and steaks with SNAP cards. Us unfortunates didn’t get to take real advantage of those boon times. Had we done so, we’d all be wealthy butter owners.

  13. grudznick 2016-09-08 20:53

    Mr. MC hits it on the noggin’. Nothing is free. Despite Mr. Obama’s free stuff, we’re all paying for it. Libbies take note: nothing is free

  14. grudznick 2016-09-08 21:05

    Mr. H, the breakfast is free if you aren’t buying a room there and you just show up and have some of the gravy and biscuits and chat with the guests in the dining room. Then it’s free to me but it’s worked into the guests bills. That’s like the way that welfare works.

  15. Darin Larson 2016-09-08 22:17

    MC & Grudznick, there are lots of things that are free: sunshine in SD most days, the air we breath, the arrogance of many politicians, the comical genius of a reality TV star playing GOP presidential candidate, the free time that Trump says he will give to our US military generals after he fires all of them, the free association of Trump as things pop in and out of his head, the second tie you purchase from the made in China Trump Collection, Trump’s praise for Vladimir Putin, and Trump’s fourth bankruptcy.

  16. grudznick 2016-09-08 22:50

    Mr. Larson, your entertainment is mostly free to us all as well. Mr. Trump is not entertaining, he is frightening. Very, very frightening. Have you not noticed? And if you enjoy being frightened, be advised that you may well have to pay for that fear you enjoy at some point.

  17. caheidelberger Post author | 2016-09-08 23:01

    Only half-wrong, Grudz: that’s how corporate welfare like the Future Fund works. Rich guys help themselves to what we regular folks have paid for.

    In useful humanitarian assistance like Food Stamps and unemployment insurance, we recognize that our neighbors are in need (and that even we ourselves may fall on hard times), and so we designate a portion of our common wealth to help each other get through hard times. That’s not free stuff; that’s a rotating trade, a promise we make to take care of each other, an investment we make in keeping society whole.

  18. grudznick 2016-09-08 23:15

    It’s only useful humanitarian assistance when it’s not a perpetual gravy train for the lazy and the freeloading. We need to start tracking how many people get food stamps and then get through the hard times and move on to being productive, versus how many are just on that free ride for life. Socialism is a free ride for life for the lazy. If you want to get ahead and make a better life, work harder people.

  19. Darin Larson 2016-09-08 23:39

    We can certainly agree that Trump is frightening. My jokes are a defense mechanism. The horror of his potential election is too frightening to contemplate. As I said before, if he is elected, it won’t be free for me because I will be buying gold and ammunition.

    I actually don’t think people take Trump seriously anymore. He has said more crazy things then all the presidential candidates in my lifetime combined. He has laid out plans that could easily be described as autocratic, anti-democratic, and fascist. His supporters dismiss his rhetoric as hyperbole.

    Some of his latest craziness: He’s going to fire all the generals and hire ones that he picks out that will do his bidding. He would violate international law, the Geneva Convention, and other treaty obligations in the way he wages war. He thinks our military is a disaster. He has fanned the flames of hate and discrimination and taken a racist movement mainstream. He has pandered to nationalistic sentiments at the same time he is flirting with the notion of cozying up to a Russian dictator. He has challenged the legitimacy of our current president. He has bragged about owning politicians and political corruption. He paid $25,000 through his PAC to the campaign of the Florida AG shortly before she decided not to investigate Trump University. After the Florida AG announced she would not pursue an investigation against Trump, he held a big fundraiser for her. (I guess it is not free to commit fraud on the public; there is a price to pay and it is apparently about $25,000).

  20. Rorschach 2016-09-09 15:34

    According to Mike Pence, Donald Trump is a humble truth teller. In fact, Trump is so humble that he won’t even reveal his humility except in private. You just can’t make this stuff up!

    “”Their styles are different, surely, between Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump, but I think both men are truth tellers,” Pence said. He added that comparison applies to one of his favorite adjectives to describe Reagan: “Humble.” As Bash questioned how that word could describe a man with his name on so many buildings, Pence said Trump reveals his “humility” in private.”

    http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/08/politics/mike-pence-on-donald-trump-vladimir-putin/index.html

  21. mike from iowa 2016-09-09 15:45

    Mike Pence looks exactly like you’d imagine a KGB agent to look like. Where is James Bond when he’s needed?

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