If there’s anything American cinema can teach us, it’s that the Russians don’t succeed when they face a scrappy underdog.

Of course, the US embassy in Kyiv has been quick to explain they’ve been around longer than Moscow.

I, meanwhile, still want to spell it, “Kiev,” and had to look up when society deemed that unacceptable.

We learned from Rocky III that if I can change and you can change, everybody can change. Perhaps Vladimir Putin might want to screen the film.

Surely, this fight over Ukraine is not about egos. Putin has supported independence for other places… Texas, for instance.

But an independent Texas might put us at odds with Putin. I can count at least three separate occasions when Governor Abbott has used some form of this joke: “Texas has the 9th biggest economy in the world, bigger than Russia. So I guess that makes me a bigger deal than Putin.”

Back when he was at the Dallas Regional Chamber in 2017, though, Texas was still #10. It wasn’t until last year we rocketed past Brazil. But I feel like, “I’m a bigger deal than Bolsonaro” doesn’t sound as magical.

But all this big deal-ness has made us a target. Abbott has put the state police on alert for cyber criminals.

I discussed this issue with a guy who started an IT company. He explains Russia, China, Iran and North Korea have long sponsored cyber criminals, but Russia is now getting bolder.

Now, Russia’s fixin’ to hack into our fantasy baseball leagues, draft Nikita Khrushchev and start him at second base. Everyone knows Khrushchev was a stronger corner outfielder. But he did, after all, apparently invent the game, so maybe we should just play him wherever he wants.

Michael Moore with M3 Networks says cyber criminals will just keep hacking away until they find a vulnerability in a company’s computer system or find one person who will gleefully click on links without wondering if it’ll make traffic lights start shooting lasers at people.

“Could you explain this in a way that seems like Bruce Willis could fix everything?” I asked.

He gave a list of things you can do to protect yourself from cyber criminals, which includes using “pass phrases” instead of passwords. He suggests running your password by passwordmonster.com to see how long it would take to guess.

I tried one of mine and was happy to see the results:

You’ll spend a thousand years trying to guess the unlikely combination of former Major League Baseball players and TV game shows that popped into my head when I chose this password several years ago.

Which brings up another point: change your password more frequently than every several years. And also maybe don’t give people clues.

We’ve all been whipped by the constant drumbeat of COVID over the past two years, but I’m thinking of writing a letter to Putin. You’re all welcome to sign on:

Dear Vladimir Putin,

When we all said we missed the good ol’ days, we meant pre-COVID, not the Cuban Missile Crisis. That’s our mistake; we should have been more clear. But at the same time, nothing could help unite our fractured nation more than Rocky Balboa defeating Ivan Drago again.

Best wishes,
Scaia

When President Biden talked about this yesterday, he said America stands up to bullies. We stand up for freedom.

“That’s who we are,” he said, unfortunately leaving out the part about how Rocky brought us all together.

Meanwhile, Sean Penn just showed up to take a look around.