Regarding the Grasshopper Soup 11/16/11, and#8220;Renegade lives up to his nameand#8221;:

The Sierra Sun seems to have completely abandoned any editorial or journalistic standards. As the late New York Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan once remarked (paraphrasing), and#8220;Youand#8217;re entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts.and#8221;

And the fact is, President Obama never said and#8220;Americans are lazy (or we are lazy).and#8221; The full context of what Mr. Sweigert is referring to is in remarks the President made at an APEC CEO forum on Saturday the 12th in Hawaii in which he states: and#8220;There are a lot of things that make foreign investors see the United States as a great opportunity: our stability, our openness, our innovative free market culture, but weand#8217;ve been a little bit lazy over the past couple of decades; weand#8217;ve kind of taken for granted, well, people will want to come here and we arenand#8217;t out there hungry, selling America and trying to attract new businesses into America.and#8221; End quote.

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Mitt Romney and Rick Perry both got a hold of that and conveniently turned it into the flat out, bald faced, lie: and#8220;Oh, wow! Obama says the American people are lazy!and#8221; And millions of Americans like Sweigert (who really is lazy and#8212; intellectually, that is) will see that and swallow it hook, line and sinker!

And the Sierra Sun allows right wing talking points, regurgitated by Mr. Sweigert, to be propagated by printing this demonstrably and provably false meme. Opinions are OK and#8212; taking things deliberately out of context arenand#8217;t.

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Just to be clear, once more, President Obama never said Americans are lazy, as Mr. Sweigert claims.

The people of North Lake Tahoe and Truckee deserve better from our local newspaper.

Elena Nyhan

Truckee