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[PaceAdvantage]

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Putin did it and that makes sense until you thought about it for just a moment. Vladimir Putin may be evil. They tell us that he is evil, but is he stupid? Probably isn't stupid and yet and, here's the strange part, if you were Vladimir Putin, you would have to be a suicidal moron to blow up your own energy pipeline. That's the one thing you would never do.

Natural gas pipelines are the main source of your power and your wealth and most critically, your leverage over other countries. Europe needs your energy now more than ever with winter approaching. If you can't deliver that energy, then countries like Germany have no need to pay attention to what you want. You're in the middle of a war, an all hands-on deck war, so you need all the leverage you can get. Under these circumstances, there is no chance you would blow up Nord Stream 1 or 2.

Not now, obviously. In fact, it's so obvious that even as our famously dim secretary of State, Tony Blinken, seemed to acknowledge it, sabotaging Nord Stream, he said today is "clearly in no one's interest." Right, but really only half right. It is true that blowing up Nord Stream does not help Vladimir Putin. He would not do that. Why would he? But that doesn't mean that other countries wouldn't consider doing it. They would consider it and we know they have considered it because at least one of them has said so in public. In early February, less than three weeks before the war in Ukraine began, Joe Biden suggested on camera that he might take out these pipelines.