Lane game loses vote for Berke
I am not a business owner, but I am a resident of North Chattanooga who commutes back and forward on North Market Street. I am very disappointed in Mayor Andy Berke.
First, you put one-lane roads on Frazier Avenue, which wasn’t bad. Then you said you were going to do one-lane roads each way on North Market; instead, you made one-lane roads each way all the way up Dallas Road to the Mississippi Avenue intersection.
The speed limit is 35 mph, but when you get that one driver who wants to drive 25 mph (like I did a few days ago), it backs traffic up and people start passing everyone in the “bike lane.” How safe is that?
Now you say you are going to make Cherokee Boulevard the same way all the way up to the tunnels. It’s going to be a big mess for all the people who commute this way all the time. I’m sorry, mayor, but I cannot vote for you again!
David Donohoe
Hate speech not politically correct
It has been obvious that Jay Greeson is better suited to the simple black-and-white of sports rather than political and social commentary. His latest page A2 effort is a ham-fisted attempt to defend Islamophobia as a problem of “political correctness.” He follows the Republican “group think” that any crime can be defended by claiming it was only “politically incorrect.”
When Republicans engage in hate speech whether it be sexism, racism, homophobia, or xenophobia, they want to defend themselves by claiming that they were only being “politically incorrect” and thus persecuted by the “politically correct police.” It’s like a murderer claiming he is only guilty of malicious mischief.
Claiming Mexicans are rapists and murderers is racism. Claiming Meghan Kelly was bleeding out of her “somewhere” is sexism. Comparing Mulims to Nazis is xenophobia. If Republicans want to use hate speech, that is their right, but don’t expect the rest of us to stand by.
Terry Stulce, Ooltewah
Hammond’s sound comments welcomed
Thank you, Sheriff Hammond! More people need to speak their minds about what is going on in this country.
One of the major business channels revealed where funding comes from for mosques.
And if the good Muslims are good Americans, as they claim to be, they should be turning in the radicals.
They know who they are.
Linda Meyer, Ringgold, Ga.
Sheriff should adopt closed-mouth policy
One of the best bits of advice my father stressed to me during my formative years was that it is better to be thought stupid than to open your mouth and prove it. Evidently, Sheriff Jim Hammond never received such advice or, if he did, cast it aside.
Following such a rubric would certainly relieve the sheriff of his foot-in-the-mouth disease and the expense of maintaining an orthodontist on retainer.
Dennis Westmeier, Red Bank
Cook’s correlation doesn’t click
In response to David Cook’s Aug. 30 column, “Grief and the Violence of July 16”: I see no relationship between the planned deliberate killing of the servicemen on July 16 by Abdulazeez and the repeated acts of violence in our city.
Sybil H. Eldridge