But megalomaniacs rarely have a strong sense of avoiding unintended consequences. He'll moonwalk us all into a nuclear war even without intending it.

Shutting down his Ukraine adventure as quickly as possible is the smartest thing we can do

it is my belief that some Russian General would pull out his pistol and shoot him.

A nuclear exchange between Russia and any other nuclear armed enemy would NOT be Hiroshima... we have never seen what modern nuclear weapons would do. As for the "modern nuclear triad" versus a "lesser nuclear triad"... that doesn't matter. it only takes a few of the MIRVs to get through... and millions will die and centuries will pass before either combatants recover ( it it ever does ).

No one in Russia ( and I know quite a few ) wants this to happen. Most don't care anymore about Ukraine and Putin's dream of a new USSR.

"... retired Marine Corps Gen. James N. Mattis said in May 2015 that among world threats “in the near term, I think the most dangerous might be Russia.”

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/dec/6/donald-trump-james-mattis-differ-on-vladimir-putin/

Putin may be power hungry…he’s not crazy.

He’s furious that the west is getting very close to liquidating frozen russian assets, i.e. the nuclear threats.

Plus the upcoming election…. little weak man, has to try and look strong

It's not like they're not making these threats every other week, either directly from Putin, or through surrogates like Medvedev, or russian fascist TV. He sees that it's effective in intimidating the west, so of course he's going to continue using the same strategy.