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By Jeremy Schiffres, Daily and Sunday Freeman, Kingston, N.Y.

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Romney, Russia and CNN

So Mitt Romney thinks Russia is the greatest geopolitical threat to the United States.

Never mind Iran, North Korea, Syria and al-Qaida. Our greatest worry, according to the presumptive presidential nominee of the Republican Party, should be Russia — an ALLY of ours.

Yikes.

This is a akin to Gerald Ford saying in 1976 that there was no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, or Sarah Palin saying in 2008 that the proximity of her state, Alaska, to Russia gave her the necessary foreign policy qualifications to be leader of the free world.

Call them gaffes, if you like, but to me, they're indicators of lacking a grasp on world realities.

And while we're on the subject of Romney, shame, shame, SHAME on CNN for allowing a poster that said "Repeal Obamacare" to appear in a shot with Romney as he was being interviewed by Wolf Blitzer this week. The shot, as seen by viewers, had the poster on a wall to the right of Romney. The camera operator most certainly could have closed in for a tighter shot and shown only Romney's face.

And lastly, while we're on the subject of CNN, I received the most bizarre text alert from the network on my mobile phone yesterday. It said that, according to a new CNN poll, one in three Americans thinks President Barack Obama's healthcare plan should be overturned. Wouldn't the news, then, be that two in three Americans think it shouldn't be overturned? I thought the purpose of polling was to gauge what the majority thinks about a given issue. But I guess I'm in the minority in thinking that.

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