Are we already in world war three?

1. Ukraine cannot beat Russia no matter how many arms we send them.

2. If the U.S. is committed to Ukraine, we will get drawn further and further into the conflict.

3. U.S. troops will be directly involved in fighting Russia (if they aren’t already).

That sounds like the definition of WW3, and it will only escalate.

How do we get out of this?

People say, “you can’t let a bully get his way.” “We can’t let Putin keep what he stole.”

Maybe in some fantasy, Barbie world, but in real world everything comes down to this: at what cost?

It would be better to have peace — even if that means that Russia gets all the Russian-speaking parts of Ukraine — than to keep going on the path we’re going, which will lead to a nuclear war.

I would like to pin this insanity on the idiot in the White House, but he’s just one shuffling, bumbling part of the coalition of morons who are leading us down this path. And many of them are Republicans and so-called “conservatives.”

Brief review of the Republican debate

My ranking in terms of who won, in descending order.

Desantis. Too scripted. A little stiff and sour. Good on the issues. Didn’t get negative. Best of the bunch

Vivek. Too silly at first. Came across as young and not seasoned. Haley scored on him with “you have no foreign policy experience, and it shows,” and he never got a chance to reply. He was good on policy and scored his own zingers against most of the others.

Pence. Slow. Strange combination of boring and too aggressive / obnoxious. Came across as an establishment figure.

Haley. I don’t like her. She was mostly uninteresting and consistently obnoxious. She also made a flatly sexist comment. (Female privilege.) I’m putting her in this spot because she did stand out a bit.

Scott. Good, but not breaking out. He was polite and positive and had some good things to say.

Christie. Uninteresting, and his anti-Trump approach is going to kill whatever small chance he might have had.

Burgum. Surprisingly interesting at some points, but not smooth, and no chance.

Hutchinson. He’s delusional if he thinks he has any chance. He’s a lame candidate with nothing to recommend him.

My version of “word of the day”

Somehow I ended up getting a daily email with a “word of the day.” It’s somewhat interesting, but often the word is too show-offy for me.

For example, today’s word was Idée fix, which means “An idea or desire that dominates the mind; an obsession.”

My attitude is that you should know such words, but not use them. Use “obsession” instead. So my “word of the day” email would explain a difficult word and then give five ways to say the same thing with simpler language.