s them down to what weapons can you use in these smaller conflicts? And so finance is everything. And so when Biden says you can line up your military on the border if you want but at your own peril, it's time for the military financial crossover point. Boom.

Now I submit to you that I do not know if Ukraine is the point in history at which the experts will say yup that's when it happened. From that day on the larger powers just resolve things through negotiating because you had to use your financial tools. Still there will be plenty of wars with these smaller countries with neighboring conflicts and stuff. But anybody who's a big enough country to have a submarine, I'll just use that as my standard. If your country is big enough to have a submarine in your military probably you're going to work it out financially because you can be taken down by the rest of the world.

Now like I say I don't know if Ukraine is going to be the test case that proves the rule forever but the day will come. You know if it's not Ukraine it's Taiwan or you know it's something. But something is going to prove this rule I think. China-Taiwan is a different situation because of the history there. But I don't see the Russia-Ukraine situation becoming a major shooting war.

So test my prediction. My prediction is that Ukraine probably is the point where the shooting war just stopped making sense. Now I will not rule out minor incursion, minor incursion and continued pressure and cyber and everything else. That stuff probably. But I don't see the Russian military moving in force like a major campaign. And the reason is too expensive. Can't afford it. And Putin is not irrational so he would do a slow but steady pressure probably get what he wants in the end you know. That's why I think a lot. So test that.

I think all the talk about NATO and the US sending some of her forces over there and trainers and sending military and all that I think a lot of that is just theater. And I felt like our own military was saying that. You know they were saying that we're not doing it so much to fight Russia we're doing it to show our allies that we back them. So it was really theater. And I think we said it directly. Well it's sort of theater. We're just showing the allies that we back them. We're not really putting a fighting force there because what would a fighting force look like? A fighting force would look like a real fighting force. I don't think we have anything like that in the neighborhood right? So it's really just for show.

And I think that our military leaders to their credit, to their credit, I think they said so directly and they said it multiple times. This is to show our allies that we have their back. It's a show. Okay so I don't know that that show is something we have to worry about militarily.

All right here's my next provocative question. And I'll start with this priming of your brain. Are all of you aware there's a generally accepted parenting practice that if you're a stepparent you don't do the discipline? Are you all familiar with that rule? Is this generally a universally acknowledged rule?

Now the thinking behind it is fairly solid. The thinking behind it is that there is a biological connection for a biological parent that is a sort of unbreakable bond and that you have this unrestricted love that won't be changed by some punishment. But it is assumed that the non-biological parent doesn't have that. And so if punishment comes from a non-biologica