"Things Every Man Should Keep in His Car"

 

I keep most of the same articles in my truck all the time, except on road trips, I carry some Freedom Seed dispensers and replacement seeds. extra poncho's umbrella's, a change of clothes and a jacket plus some tools.  Keep in mind, I drive an F150, 

and that truck has cubbyhole's all over it and you don't realize it.  Besides the Lifehammer, I keep a few extra lock blades and dead battery holders er flashlights in the truck and some of those "worklights" that have a bungee cord on them.  Oh and yeah and cop grade OC Spray.  I rather incapacitate someone first rather than ventilate them.

     I shamelessly clipped this from "Art of Manliness"

When I was growing up, I noticed that my father kept his car well-stocked with supplies. A lot of the equipment was for his job busting poachers as a game warden, but most of the things were for emergency situations that could happen to anyone. And there were plenty of times when my dad was able to put those supplies to work.

Be it a maintenance issue or a snowstorm, keeping the following items in your vehicle can save you time and discomfort, and perhaps even your very life, should an emergency arise. Obviously, the necessity of some items depends on the environment in which you live/are driving through (you don’t need an ice scraper in Tampa) and the season (though it’s best just to stock this stuff and keep it stocked, rather than removing/adding things as the seasons change).

1. Paper maps. Sometimes — okay, plenty of times — Google Maps or Waze doesn’t want to cooperate. And if you don’t have service, their reliability is of no import anyway. It’s always a good idea to keep paper maps handy of the areas you’ll be driving through.

2. Snacks/MREs. You never know when you’ll be stranded for long periods of times in your car. And depending on where you are, you could be dozens of miles from the closest source of help. Keep some MREs or granola/power bars in the back of your car to munch on while you wait for a tow truck to come, or to sustain you for a long walk to a gas station to call for help.

3. Cell phone charger/extra battery. Cell phones, and their batteries, are notoriously unreliable and quick-draining in emergency scenarios. It’s like they know when you need them most. Build some redundancy into your car’s emergency kit by keeping both a charger, and an extra battery. No excuses; they’re cheap these days.

4. LifeHammer. Should an accident trap you in your car, this rescue tool could save your life in a couple ways. It has a seat belt cutter, a steel hammer head that easily breaks side windows, and a glow-in-the-dark pin for easy retrieval in the dark. Every car should have one easily accessible!

5. Flashlight. Good for providing light at nighttime when 1) putting on a spare tire, 2) jump starting another car, or 3) exchanging insurance information with the clueless driver who rear-ended you at a stop light. Get a Maglite and you can also thump would-be carjackers in the head with it.

6. Portable air compressor. When your tire is leaking but hasn’t totally blown out, instead of putting on a spare, you can use a portable air compressor to get back on the road. The compressor fills your tire up enough to allow you to drive to a repair shop to get it fixed. It plugs right into your cigarette lighter. Bonus use: no more paying 75 cents to fill up your tires at stingy gas stations.

7. Windshield wiper fluid. Few things are as indispensable as wiper fluid. Dirty windshield, no fluid, and wet, dirty roads? Get used to stopping every 10 minutes to clean the windshield. Always have some in the car for when you inevitably run out and need it most.

8. Roadside flares. When pulled over on the side of the road, you’re basically a sitting duck, hoping that other drivers don’t clip you. It’s especially dangerous at night. Ensure that you and those around you are visible when you pull over by using road flares, or at least a reflective triangle. The old school flaming flares seem to be harder to find these days as people switch to the LED variety.

9. Jumper cables. You walk out to your car after a long day of work, stick the key into the ignition, give it a turn, and…click, click, click. Crap! You then look up and notice you left the dome light on all day. It happens to the best of us. Car batteries die, so be ready with a set of jumper cables. And even if you never suffer a dead battery, it’s always good to have a set of jumper cables so you can help a damsel (or dude) in distress who needs their car jumped.

10. Tow strap. Get your car unstuck from anything with a tow strap. Attach one end of the strap to the front of the car that you want to pull and the other to the hitch on the back of your car. The stranded driver stays in the dead car, puts it in neutral, and gets freed. Easy as that!

11. Water. For when you’re stranded in Death Valley in the middle of the hottest heat wave on record…or for any other time your car decides to break down on you. Also for when you’ve been on the trail and are parched because you didn’t pack enough in your hiking pack. Always keep a few bottles handy in the trunk.

12. First aid kit. Whether you’re cleaning up a head wound filled with glass shards or fixing a boo boo on your two-year-old, it’s good to have a first aid kit. You can always buy one, but putting together your own in an Altoids tin is more fun.

13. Blankets. Blankets have uses that go beyond emergency situations. It’s always good to have a blanket in the car for snuggling with your gal while you cheer for your team on a cold fall night or for laying it on the ground for a picnic. Get the space-saving (but not very romantic) emergency Mylar variety, or something a little classier like the Paria from Rumpl.

14. Fire extinguisher. Car fires can be especially dangerous because of the flammable liquids coursing through their systems. Keep an extinguisher in the car that can be used not only for your own emergencies, but for others who might be in danger as well. An auto extinguisher is useful, as it will be rated for putting out car-specific fires that are fueled by gasoline and oil.

15. Shovel. There are a couple of instances where a folding shovel might come in handy. The first is when you get stuck in the snow or ice. You can use the shovel to dig some snow out and place some dirt under the tire to get more traction. The second situation is when a car tire gets stuck in a hole or something. You can use the shovel to dig about and create some ramps to help get your car unstuck. Also, it can be used as an improvised weapon.

Winter/Snow-Specific Items

16. Kitty litter. Kitty litter? For traveling with your cats and they need a potty break? Hardly. Kitty litter is extremely useful as a traction device when you’re stuck in the snow or ice after a skid gone wrong. It’s not usually that you’re buried in snow that keeps your car from moving, but the slickness of the surface you’re trying to move on. Throw a handful of kitty litter in front of the tires, and they’ll have some traction to help get you on the road again.

17. Multi-wick candles. If you’re stranded in a broken-down car in the winter, you might need more than just a blanket. An actual heat source will come in mighty handy. Have a multi-wick candle (the single wick kind don’t provide adequate warmth) on hand (and matches!); it can keep your car warm for quite awhile. Candles are expensive, so make your own on the cheap (and you save even more money going scentless).

18. Ice scraper. Don’t be the chump who’s out there scraping their windshield with a credit card at 5AM in the morning. A good ice scraper will set you back just a few bucks from most any convenience store, and it will make clearing your windshield much easier and much faster.

19. Hat and gloves. Along with a blanket, make sure your head and hands stay toasty warm too. The thicker the better here; you aren’t going for fashion, but survival.

20. Tire chains. Not only are tire chains handy in wintery mountain passes, they’re actually required in some states. Don’t get stuck in the mountains; don’t get a ticket for not having chains.

"The Democrats and their "DSA" problem....

 

I have commented for years about the democrats and their fellow travellers A.K.A. The "Democratic Socialist of America", the rebranding of the communist party USA and other far left fringe groups that seem to attract all these nepo and trust fund babies that are over educated and never worked a day in the private sector, "But they know your struggle, and know the cure of all your needs...YES Socialism...Make all those mean rich people pay, YES Pay so you don't have to work and have a life of leisure...because you deserve it because the deck has been stacked against you, and now they MUST PAY and if you vote for us WE will MAKE IT HAPPEN!!"   and once you vote the socialist/communist in, and you lose your freedom,  most of the people that will fall for the siren song of free stuff and other enticements of the socialists already hate this country.  Something like only 20% of democrats believe in this country according to the latest Rasmussen polls.  so the majority would vote to destroy this country after 30 years of continuous agitprop they despise this country.   And you tie in the islamist influence....and we have a problem.

   This is from Michael Smith.

Way back in 2006, when I was just beginning to publicly share my religious and political views, I wrote an article titled "Lying Down With Dogs" about how Nancy Pelosi and the Democrat leadership were getting pretty cozy with Islamists and Marxists, the implication, as the saying goes, when one lies down with dogs, one frequently gets up with fleas.

It has taken 20 years for it to happen and San Fran Nan's run is almost over, but it has finally happened. Democrats pandered to groups that knew they were being played but instead of hoping for crumbs and a pat on the head like black Democrats did for generations, played their own game, leaning into the Democrat political philandering with a knowing wink and nod.

Now the Dems (and by extension, America) have a problem. In the process of sucking up for political gain, they let the enemy inside the wire - and they let them gain just enough staying power to influence candidate selection and policy.

The same way the Tea Party refocused the GOP on conservative policies, the DSA is going to refocus the Democrats on extreme left wing actions - and the Dem leadership doesn't have enough gonads between them to stop it. The days of UpChuck Schumer and Extreme Hakeem are numbered.

The only use the DSA has for Democrats is ballot access.

This isn't a political problem to be solved.

It is a problem of twisted, incompatible morality that cannot be resolved by a campaign or an election.

When there are radicals calling for the death of Jews and the erasure of a nation and are willing to commit murder of business leaders on a public street and the founder of TPUSA at a public event, this is a party ruled by simple terrorism.

Mr. Frog, meet Mr. Scorpion. He's going to sting you half way across the river but don't worry, it is just his nature.

Monday Music "Love Is a Battlefield" By Pat Benatar

 I decided to pullo another album out of my stash for my "Monday Music",  so I grabbed this one...

Another "Turtles" purchase.

"Love Is a Battlefield" is a song performed by Pat Benatar, and written by Holly Knight and Mike Chapman. It was released in September 1983 as a single from Benatar's live album Live from Earth, though the song itself was a studio recording. The song was ranked at number 30 in VH1's list of the 100 Greatest Songs of the 1980s. "Love Is a Battlefield" went on to sell over a million records.

The Bob Giraldi-directed music video features Benatar playing a rebellious teenage girl running away from her home with her father (played by actor Trey Wilson) warning her, "If you leave this house now, you can just forget about coming back!" Her mother looks on helplessly and her brother (played by actor Philip Cruise) watches sadly from an upper-story window. She later becomes a taxi dancer at a seedy club to get by in the city, outwardly New York. She writes to her brother, telling him about her exciting new life, while her father seems to feel guilty about being angry at her. Later in the video, she witnesses the club owner (played by actor Gary Chryst) harassing another dancer. Benatar rounds up the women and leads a rebellion against him. As the club owner is cornered by the women against his will, he tries to seduce Benatar only to have her throw a drink in his face. Angered by this, he tries once again to assault her but Benatar and the women overpower and defeat him, then storm out of the club dancing into the sunrise before bidding goodbye to one another, thanking Benatar for their escape. The women escape and strike out on their own and Benatar walks into the sunrise. The final scene shows Benatar sitting in the back of a bus headed for an unknown destination. The video was choreographed by Michael Peters, who appears briefly in the video.

A special dance club remix of the song was created by Jellybean Benitez. Benitez also created an edited version of his mix specifically for the video. It differs slightly in structure and instrumentation, and aside from appearing in the video, has never been commercially released.
The video was the first ever to feature the use of dialogue.The scenes featuring dialogue include the opening scene of Benatar stomping out of the house while being berated by her father and the scene featuring the pimp harassing the female dancer in which she shouts "Leave me alone!"
The video was nominated for an MTV Video Music Award for Best Female Video and is contained on the DVD for the movie 13 Going on 30.

"A Culture of Violent Ressentiment"

 

I'm working and ran across this on farcebook, the name of the writer is "Liam Out Loud,"  He had some food for thought.

   Here is the "Link" to his substack (Hope it works, LOL)

An insatiable lust for violence and destruction is bubbling up in the collective psyche of the worst among us.

An incel Marxist goes on a shooting spree in Montreal and leaves behind a 104-page manifesto. Charlie Kirk was brutally murdered and a significant number of people celebrated. Luigi Mangione assassinated a CEO and countless people called him a hero. Others will tell you, in supposedly polite company, that they wish the attempts on Trump’s life had succeeded. I open X and a post about a trans person murdering someone for misgendering them has thousands of likes from people insisting it would be justified. Elon Musk becoming a trillionaire launched a wave of calls to eat the rich. On Facebook I find a page called Guillotines for a Better America, with a post claiming “all of your problems are because billionaires have heads,” and commenters debating whether they should execute millionaires too. One says all capitalists — which presumably means everyone who owns a business or a home. Another proposes starting with the wealthiest, waiting seven days, killing the next, and repeating until things improve, as though French Revolution-style slaughter were the surest road to prosperity.

We are told these are all different. And in scale, perhaps they are — some carry lethal consequences, others are only confessions typed into a screen. Most people treat them as unrelated problems, each with its own thing to blame. I believe they are deeply linked. The murderer, the celebrant, and the online daydreamer all hold the same conviction: that blood is the only path to a better world.

In each case, people argue over the cause. With the Montreal killer, one camp calls him an incel, another points to his Marxism, another to his anti-Zionism. Each reading holds some truth. But they share one flaw — they all assume the belief came first and the violent impulse second. That these were ordinary people until an idea entered them, took hold, and drove them to something horrific. Radicalization as infection.

Corrupted people do not stumble into dangerous ideas. They go looking for them.

Ideology can and does corrupt people. But the opposite is the more compelling explanation: that corrupted people seek out ideologies to justify their twisted aims. Centuries before the comment section, Nietzsche diagnosed this in his own time. He called it ressentiment — not ordinary anger, which comes and goes, but the slow poison of those who surrender all hope and autonomy, come to see themselves as perpetual victims, and resent the world for it. And ressentiment is creative. It does not merely sour a person on the inside. It builds values, justifications, entire moral systems designed to make a grudge feel like justice.

Nietzsche wrote that every drive within a person wants to become master, and once it rules, it philosophizes in its own spirit. The feeling takes the throne first. The philosophy is what the feeling dictates. We imagine we reason our way to our convictions and then feel accordingly. More often it runs the other way. The emotion seizes power, then conscripts whatever ideas will make its bloodlust feel virtuous.

These people say they want a better world. The guillotine page talks about co-ops and worker ownership. The killer’s manifesto promises an end to the loneliness that wrecks ordinary men. The activist swears the violence is self-defense for the oppressed. We are told this is idealism that has lost its way. But watch where the energy goes. The guillotine crowd is vivid, specific, and delighted about the killing. The Montreal manifesto spends pages detailing who must be liquidated and how, and offers only a flimsy sketch of the communal society that supposedly justifies it. All of these people — back to Marx himself — spend far more time naming who deserves to be on the receiving end of theft and violence than working out how their ideal society would actually function, let alone building it.

This is the difference between a genuine grievance and a pathological one. Ressentiment only subtracts. It locates the entire source of its suffering outside itself and proposes to remove that source from the face of the earth. Take off the billionaires’ heads. Liquidate the favored men. Cut down the one who said the wrong pronoun. None of these are doctrines aimed at stability or coherence. They are justifications for resentment.

That is why these movements hate the language of self-improvement — why the manifesto sneers at lifting weights, at becoming confident, at building something. It is why all the blame falls on the health insurance CEO and none on the millions living with lifestyle-induced chronic disease. It is why billionaires’ heads become the cause of all your problems. To improve yourself is to admit you have agency over your own life, and agency is surrendered long before ressentiment swallows the soul. That is what the sane are truly up against. Not a single ideology, but the spirit that spawns them all.

"In Defense of Generation X as its moment approaches"

 

As most of my readers know, I have Sirius/XM in my truck, and I listen to the Wilkow Majority in the afternoon on the way home from work.  I have something in common with the host, we both are Gen Xers.  I am an early Gen Xer born in the mid/late 60's. to those that don't know the Generation X crowd are from 1965 to 1980.  We are the last generation to be called the "Latchkey kids" we were free range kids, don't come home before the street lights come on generation.  Something that the later generations lost out on.  The freedom to explore, to have adventures no structured parenting, no social media ruining er running our lives like the kids of today.  We were the generation that had to figure it out with chilton manuals, LOL.  We used to take our dads tools and build forts in the woods with scrap woods with our friends, build bike ramps  that would make an OSHA inspector have "the willies", and if it crashed and burned, well we would find a garden hose and wash off the carnage so the mom wouldn't find out. and keep playing.  crazy stuff like that.  Back then we also knew who the good guys and bad guys were, before Hollywood got weird on us and started supporting the latest craze, we were what I call "The Reagan Kids" We were the last "Honor Generation" as a whole Well in my time, I grew up in the Jimmy Carter years, the end of the Vietnam war, the malais the 21% interest the Misery index, Nanny State 1.0 that Carter was rolling in during his term, so Reagan was a breath of fresh air to me and I voted for the first time for Reagan's 2nd term in 1984.  We listened to music that was fun and excessive, but the music lead by Grunge in the 90's got preachy, and it was a "debbie Downer", that changed the entire landscape.

I was listening to Andrew Wilkow's show "The Wilkow Majority and he had a guest on "Scott McCay" and he was talking about "Generation X" and political shift.  This is where I got the article from.   They referenced the article a lot.

I was on A.J. Rice’s Dangerous Laughter podcast recently, and we got into a discussion about Generation X.

Actually, that’s not quite right. I’ll explain in a minute.

What brought on the subject was that “Right Here, Right Now” column I wrote after Callais v. Louisiana was decided at the Supreme Court, and state legislatures across the South started redrawing congressional districts. I opened that column with an aside, part of which was that as a proud member of Generation X, I’m ready to see the boomers and the leftovers of the “Greatest Generation” — as though Mitch McConnell and Bernie Sanders qualify for that — get out of the way and let my people run the country. (RELATED: ‘Right Here, Right Now’)

I didn’t expect that aside to be what generated so much of a reaction. I didn’t mean to insult anybody by saying it, and yet the boomers came out of the woodwork to vocalize their offense. I found that bizarre — most of the baby-boom generation are in their 70s, or at least their late 60s. That means retirement age. It means you aren’t generally running anything in the private sector anymore, though there are exceptions. And if younger, stronger, more stamina, more curiosity work in the real world, it’s not off the wall to think it also works in government.

Particularly when you look at the performance of those old farts in control in D.C., most of whom even the boomers don’t generally have much use for.

I just thought everybody would understand that point. But apparently I was wrong.

And that’s OK, because after I wrote it, I got calls to do a bunch of radio and podcast interviews about that subject. It was perplexing, because the column wasn’t really about the intergenerational conflict piece but rather the fantastic development that Southern Republican state legislators have been freed of the sins of discrimination their Democrat forebears committed all those decades ago.

I dunno. Maybe the generational thing is a bigger story. A.J. apparently thought so. And his was one of the podcasts I did after that column came out.

We started with Generation X, and then, as tends to happen when A.J. is involved, we wandered through Red Dawn, the Cold War, Steve Jobs, social media, helicopter parenting, cultural decline, and a whole host of other topics that all seemed unrelated until you started connecting the dots.

Here’s the whole thing. It’s an hour or so, but I thought it was a pretty fun watch. And A.J.’s guys went crazy with some of the AI imagery, of course. I don’t have a Scottish tartan suit. Though maybe I’ll have to get one soon.

What emerged from that conversation was something I’ve been thinking about for quite a while now: Generation X may be the last generation in American history that grew up before technology became the dominant force shaping everyday life.

We experienced reality before it was filtered through algorithms.

That’s not a complaint about technology. It isn’t nostalgia, either. I’m not interested in pretending the world was perfect in 1985. Of course it wasn’t. We had plenty of problems, plenty of bad ideas, and plenty of dysfunction. But there was one thing we had that has become increasingly rare: we experienced reality before it was filtered through algorithms.

Generation X grew up in a world where technology was present but not omnipresent. We watched television, played video games, listened to music, and eventually got access to computers. But those things occupied a place in life rather than becoming life itself. Nobody spent their teenage years building an online identity. Nobody curated a digital existence for public consumption. Most social interactions took place face-to-face, and if you embarrassed yourself in public, there was a reasonable chance the evidence wouldn’t exist forever.

Parents generally had a different attitude as well. Mine certainly did. If you’re a Gen Xer, most of yours probably did too.

When school ended, the kids went outside. You rode your bike around the neighborhood. You figured things out on your own. You got into trouble occasionally. You learned how to solve problems because there often wasn’t an adult standing three feet away ready to solve them for you. Looking back, some of that freedom probably made our parents nervous. They just didn’t organize their entire lives around that anxiety. And given some of the stuff the boomers were into in the 1970s and 1980s, that wasn’t surprising.

Today, the situation is dramatically different. Children are monitored constantly. Every activity is scheduled. Every risk is managed. Every moment is documented. And at the same time, the culture has become far more comfortable allowing corporations, social media platforms, and digital systems to exert influence over people’s thinking than it ever was when allowing children to ride a bicycle down the street unattended. (RELATED: Who’s Teaching Those AI Machines Your Kids Will Learn From?)

And people wonder how the surveillance state could ever have come about

As I discussed with A.J. on the podcast, technology for Generation X remains a tool. We use it because it’s useful. We appreciate what it can do. But we also remember a world where it wasn’t necessary. That’s a perspective younger generations simply don’t have.

For someone born after the internet became a permanent fixture of American life, social media isn’t an innovation. It’s normal. Smartphones aren’t revolutionary. They’re expected. The constant flow of information, commentary, outrage, entertainment, and manipulation is simply the environment.

That’s not a criticism. It’s an observation.

But it does create a meaningful difference between the generations.

Generation X possesses something increasingly valuable in modern America: a point of comparison.

We know what the country looked like before the digital revolution transformed everything. We remember when friendships were maintained without apps. We remember when news organizations had gatekeepers. We remember when political arguments happened in bars, living rooms, churches, and workplaces rather than being amplified by engagement-driven algorithms designed to maximize conflict.

That doesn’t mean everything was better. But it does mean we’re in a position to recognize what has been gained and what has been lost.

The same thing applies politically.

My generation spent its formative years during the final phase of the Cold War. We grew up with the understanding that there were competing systems in the world and that not all of them deserved equal moral consideration. We watched the Soviet Union collapse. We watched a failed ideology disintegrate under the weight of its own contradictions. And because of that experience, many Gen Xers developed a healthy skepticism toward utopian promises, fashionable political theories, and grand schemes to reinvent human nature.

Reality was always the final judge.

That mindset shaped a lot of people in my generation, whether they realized it or not.

It’s also one reason why Gen X often finds itself politically homeless. We tend to distrust centralized authority, but we also distrust cultural fads. We don’t automatically assume institutions are virtuous, but neither do we assume every institution deserves to be torn down. We generally prefer practical solutions to ideological purity because we’ve spent most of our lives watching ideological purity fail. And that’s why so many of us yawn when the Boomerific Bushie Republican crowd screeches about Donald Trump’s supposed apostasies from conservatism.

Bill Cassidy is a perfect example. Last week, when Trump signed that Memorandum of Understanding to put at least a temporary stop to the Iran war, Cassidy posted on X that “Reagan is turning over in his grave.” What a crock. Cassidy, who’s about as Boomer a Boomer as ever Boomed in politics, is a perfect example of a Bush Republican who tinkled all over Reagan’s legacy and now wants to pretend that’s who he is. Never mind that Reagan didn’t even bother to get a peace deal in Lebanon before pulling the Marines out once Hezbollah blew up the barracks in Beirut. He saw that military action there wasn’t serving his interests anymore, so he dumped out. Back then, Democrats weren’t so interested in making political hay out of the situation. Today, even Republicans are willing to do it. (RELATED: Bye, Bill)

And Cassidy wonders why my generation was so eager to get rid of him.

During my conversation on Dangerous Laughter, A.J. made the case that Generation X may be uniquely positioned for leadership because we’re the bridge generation. I think there’s something to that.

We’re old enough to understand the analog world and young enough to understand the digital one. We built much of the technological infrastructure that transformed modern life, but we weren’t raised by it. We understand innovation, but we also understand limits. We appreciate technology’s benefits because we remember what existed before those benefits arrived.

That’s a useful combination.

And frankly, it may become even more useful in the years ahead.

The biggest challenge facing America isn’t whether technology will continue advancing. That’s inevitable. Artificial intelligence, automation, digital communication, and technologies we haven’t even imagined yet are going to continue reshaping society at a breathtaking pace.

The real challenge is making sure human judgment keeps up.

A country can’t outsource wisdom to a machine. It can’t delegate citizenship to an algorithm. It can’t allow technology to become a substitute for culture, community, family, faith, or common sense. Those things still matter, and they always will.

Generation X doesn’t have all the answers. No generation does.

But we do have something worth contributing to the conversation.

We remember what life looked like before the machine arrived.

At a moment when more and more Americans seem content to let technology tell them what to buy, what to watch, what to think, and even who to be, that memory may turn out to be more valuable than most people realize.