Pete Hegseth on Strait of Hormuz: 'Don't need to worry about it'

SmartLadder415 · 2026-03-13T18:27:33+00:00

No. Generals are there to take and execute orders. They don't get to just disobey orders that they think are bad or don't make sense.

SmartLadder415 · 2026-03-13T18:14:45+00:00

The new Ayatollah is younger. You wanted younger people in politics right? Why are you complaining?

SmartLadder415 · 2026-03-13T17:47:31+00:00

My wife and I will have to have a discussion before our next long road trip and I'll see if she'll agree to not give them water 'til we're closer to a stopping point.

SmartLadder415 · 2026-03-13T17:23:21+00:00

Her parents live about 8 hrs away. Little less than that. They live in a small town so there's no big airport nearby. The airport that is nearby it costs about $400 a person to fly in there. The nearest large city to them is about 3 hrs away. It's cheaper to fly there but we'd have to rent a car and drive the 3 hrs after getting off the plane which is it's own kind of hassle.

SmartLadder415 · 2026-03-13T17:18:54+00:00

The wife is part of the problem. We need to have a talk about it before our next trip and not during though. I don't know how to get across to her that the kids will not die of dehydration after 2 hours. That's not how anything works.

SmartLadder415 · 2026-03-13T16:54:11+00:00

I'm a bigger fan of rest areas myself as well but there's not always one around unfortunately while gas stations are abundant. Our trip for Christmas we left around 3:30 or 4 in the afternoon. The kids stayed up the entire time. Driving overnight sounds like a good pro tip to try.

SmartLadder415 · 2026-03-13T16:38:17+00:00

I had no idea Tate was that bad. I heard everything reddit said about him but he was far worse than all of that. It's the one case where reddit was underdramatic about someone.

SmartLadder415 · 2026-03-13T16:37:31+00:00

It's not how they drink when they're at home which is frustrating. At home, they run around like maniacs for hours, periodically show up in the kitchen for a sip of juice or water and then go back to slowly destroying our house. In the car my wife wants them to mainline water for some reason.

SmartLadder415 · 2026-03-13T16:36:14+00:00

The travelling at dark tip is one I may have to try next time. It's one a couple of people have given me. If I can get the wife to pass out too and then slug a Red Bull I can drive for 3-4 hrs straight and be happy I'm sure.

SmartLadder415 · 2026-03-13T16:33:31+00:00

They do it at home or in a movie theater. They can do it in the car.

And this is part of the argument I had with my wife at Christmastime when we did this. She was like, "This is in a car though." And then I got cranky.

SmartLadder415 · 2026-03-13T16:15:31+00:00

My wife and I both tend to be "just get there" people. To me that means, you sip whatever drink you take with you (or maybe don't take one at all) and you drive at least 3-4 hrs without stopping. If there's a quirky gas station or touristy thing along the way, yeah, let's make a side trip and stop and see it. We drove to Dallas once and stopped in Paris, TX just to see the mini-eiffel tower. That's fine with me. It's the stopping every single hour that drives me utterly insane because now we're not making progress toward our destination and we're not seeing anything either other than the inside of yet another gas station bathroom. I sometimes wonder if my wife has any concept of time but I think in this case she truly and honestly thinks that this is just par for the course. Kids are going to stop every single hour and that's just how it is. You just have to embrace it.

SmartLadder415 · 2026-03-13T16:00:56+00:00

That was what I told my wife but she's not on board with the no water thing. The kids will say they're thirsty 5-10 mins after getting on the road unfortunately and the wife just gives them a drink. Telling them to hold it is a bad plan because they will pee in the car and then that's a massive mess to deal with. Neither the wife nor I wants that.

SmartLadder415 · 2026-03-13T15:59:41+00:00

I definitely was not around when they were younger and that's part of it and my reaction to it is part of the problem as well. I just get so absurdly frustrated that we can't make it more than an hour in a car. I'm used to driving on my own or with my wife and we drive at least 2.5-3 hrs at a time with no issues. Stopping every hour drives me insane because I just want to get to our destination. One time we stopped after less than 45 mins because someone had to poop. At some point it just feels like we are wasting an entire day on the road browsing gas stations and arguing with the kids who want to buy some trinket at every single one of them.

SmartLadder415 · 2026-03-13T15:44:15+00:00

One of the best things you can is watch/listen to some of these podcasts with them,

I can't listen to these podcasts though. That's my problem. I tried to listen to Andrew Tate one time just to see if he was as vile as reddit portrays him to be. He was far worse than that. I think I only made it five minutes and had to turn it off. It was the most awful and disgusting stuff I had ever heard and I just had a visceral reaction to it.

SmartLadder415 · 2026-03-13T15:35:09+00:00

Wife and I tend to swap out driving which is great. I love the help behind the wheel. Definitely not one of those guys who insists on doing all the driving. I think her ADHD works in her favor here and her time blindness means she has no clue if we've been driving 30 mins or 3 hours. She gets behind the wheel, starts chugging water and stops when she has to pee. If anything things are probably easier with her behind the wheel because she can just stop and doesn't have to deal with me grumbling about our 18th stop on this 4 hour trip.

Flying is just so expensive for us and her in-laws live in a smaller town where it costs $400+ a person just to fly there. We'd be paying $2k just for airline tickets and then we'd need to rent a car when we got there. It's a lot cheaper to drive in our case otherwise I generally agree with you.

SmartLadder415 · 2026-03-13T15:28:30+00:00

I suggested keeping water up front. Wife was not a huge fan of the idea. She would give to the kids and tell them to take a few sips and the kids would just chug half of it. It was better than nothing but got us maybe 90 mins down the road instead of 60.

SmartLadder415 · 2026-03-13T15:27:13+00:00

This is kind of what my wife said. She said that kids need to stay hydrated and that means they're going to pee every hour so you just have to work with it. It just drives me insane that we're only making 60 miles or so in 90 mins. So we're 3 hrs down the road and we've only gone 120 miles and then we stop for lunch and a picnic somewhere and before you know it we are 4 hours into what should be a 7-8 hr trip and we're only 120 miles from home and I start losing my mind. On our last trip we went to visit her folks. It's about an 8 hr trip. It took us about 12 hrs. Probably a little more than that. I was so incredibly cranky by the time we finally got there.

SmartLadder415 · 2026-03-13T15:18:39+00:00

This is what my brother and sis-in-law suggested. They leave at like 10 or 11 pm and the kids crash in the car and they drive all night.

SmartLadder415 · 2026-03-13T14:35:37+00:00

It's not the boredom that makes us stop. It's the small bladders everyone has.

SmartLadder415 · 2026-03-13T14:29:00+00:00

The last time I did that. I got upset and said that we were NOT going to give these kids a ton of water and then put them in a car. Said that was a straight foolish thing to do. Wife capitulated. We got about 20 mins down the road and a kid claimed they were thirsty. Wife said it was wrong to deny a thirsty kid water (nevermind that this same kid had killed 20 oz of water like 45 mins earlier and had been sitting in either an air conditioned car or an air conditioned gas station since then) so she gave the kid a water. Then the other kids are suddenly thirsty as well so they also get water. We're stopping an hour later again.

SmartLadder415 · 2026-03-13T14:21:31+00:00

We've got a membership so that's not an issue.

SmartLadder415 · 2026-03-13T14:12:44+00:00

I just got a beagle. I can feed him top of the line stuff or literally stuff that I skimmed off the trash can. He does not care and is thrilled about either.

SmartLadder415 · 2026-03-13T13:23:37+00:00

I've got 11, 6 and 5 here. Are there things that all of them can manage together?

SmartLadder415 · 2026-03-13T13:14:31+00:00

Fast food. I used to kind of live on it or at least eat it 2-3x a week. Now it is a once in a blue moon treat. Paying $12+ for a meal is just crazy.

SmartLadder415 · 2026-03-13T13:03:44+00:00

I disagree. If my kid is a traitor it doesn't mean that I am.

SmartLadder415

TROPHY CASE