Stephen Tuttle | Author

Lying About Crime

Aug. 23, 2025

First, you spend years and years denigrating and devaluing institutions on which people rely. You call the data they produce “fake news” or a “hoax” or a “scam.” When the numbers and reports do not emerge exactly the way you want, you fire whoever is repo… Read More >>

Going Backward

Aug. 16, 2025

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth isn't making our military great again but he is making it about a century old. How? No women leaders, no men of color as leaders, no hesitancy to honor traitorous generals who took up arms against this country, no room for service members whose only offense… Read More >>

Nothing Will Change

Aug. 9, 2025

On July 28, a man entered a building on Park Avenue in New York City and shot three people to death before killing himself. The same day, a man opened fire at a casino in Reno, Nevada, killing one and injuring a second person.

On July 29, a shooting at a park in Conway, Arkansas, ki… Read More >>

Third Party Futility

Aug. 2, 2025

Elon Musk says he wants to start a third political party. We’ll take a short break here until you stop giggling.

The U.S. has been basically a two-party system since the mid 1850s, though some would claim we’ve been a two-party system since 1796 when John Adams—a m… Read More >>

More Storms, Less Warning

July 26, 2025

The Big Beautiful Bill is big and it is a bill, but there is little in it or about it that is beautiful. Those of us who are not corporations or billionaires won’t find much in the legislation that will do anything but make our lives more challenging.

Let’s see…it… Read More >>

Disasters Natural and Human-Made

July 19, 2025

According to our president, it “has never happened before” and “nobody could have seen it coming.” He was talking about the recent horrific flash floods in Texas’ Hill Country. He was wrong on both counts.

There is a reason this part of Texas is called … Read More >>

Climate Conspiracies and Lies

July 12, 2025

We can’t seem to move away from magical thinking when it comes to doubting climate change reality. Never mind the overwhelming science now decades in the making, and never mind the evidence piling up before our very eyes with one catastrophic weather event after another.

Even … Read More >>

Billionaire Benefit Bill

July 5, 2025

The United States Senate has passed the so-called Big Beautiful Bill (BBB) and sent it back to the House as this is being written. Some version of this travesty may already be law by the time you read this, but it is crystal clear it isn’t going to help most of us.

The bill, a… Read More >>

Legal Protection Would Be Better

June 28, 2025

As Pride Month fades for another year, it might be wise for us to take a look at what’s happening with the LGBTQ+ community. It has not been an especially good year for their members.

According to the Center for American Progress (CAP), discrimination against this community is… Read More >>

A Tradition of Violence

June 21, 2025

There was a certain inevitability to it given the increasingly violent rhetoric spewed by our president, elected members of both political parties, and way, way too much of the general public. Now an elected political leader in Minnesota, and her husband, lie dead for no rational reason.Read More >>

Old-fashioned Term Limits

June 14, 2025

According to Pew Research, Ballotpedia, and pretty much all other public opinion research companies, the approval rating for Congress hovers right around 30 percent. So seven out of 10 adult Americans think Congress is doing a crummy job of which they disapprove. One suspects if more people… Read More >>

Selective Humanitarianism

June 7, 2025

A word first coined by a Polish author in 1944, “genocide” is defined by Amnesty International as the killing or destruction of specific ethnic, racial, national, or religious groups or nationalities with the intent of fully destroying them.

Sadly, these kinds of horrors… Read More >>

Nothing Is Better than a Tree

May 31, 2025

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

So begins Joyce Kilmer’s classic ode to our leafy friends. He’d likely be displeased if he was still alive and lived around here these days; we’ve found plenty of reasons to remove plent… Read More >>

The Lie That Won’t Die

May 24, 2025

Be thankful your children don’t attend public schools in Oklahoma. Superintendent Ryan Walters has interesting ideas on what schools should be teaching and how they should teach it.

Walters has proposed, unsuccessfully, mandatory teaching from the Bible and required that every… Read More >>

Climate Changes, We Don't

May 17, 2025

As summer approaches, it is time for a quick climate review while information is still available from reliable sources. More than 1,000 employees have been laid off at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), including from the National Weather Service (NWS) from which we… Read More >>

A Formula Playing Out

May 10, 2025

First, we have to tear things down, demonizing both people and institutions.

Human enemies are easy enough to define—we’ll call people here illegally rapists, murderers, released prisoners, and mental patients. We’ll describe Muslims, and most anybody from a Muslim… Read More >>

Watching, Counting, Turning

May 3, 2025

As always, there is plenty of activity in Traverse City. Issues pop up like trilliums this time of year. Some are old and reliably and perpetually unsolved, like affordable housing or what to do with the homeless population, and some show up uninvited, like how to make up for cuts in federa… Read More >>

Follow the Rules

April 26, 2025

There is not a section, paragraph, sentence, or word in the United States Constitution that says the Legislative and Judicial branches of the government are subservient to the Executive branch. Not one. The Founders conceived of three equal branches of government checking and balancing each… Read More >>

DEI Overreactions

April 19, 2025

Most people consider equality to be a good thing; equal opportunities, equal pay, equal consideration. We also like the idea of being included, and diversification is almost always a recommendation for investments and collections of all sorts. That’s why DEI (diversity, equality, incl… Read More >>

Big Protests, Bad Bets

April 12, 2025

The Hands Off! protests of a couple weeks ago were impressive in their size and scope. According to various media reports, gatherings took place in some 1,400 American communities with nearly 600,000 people signing up in advance (per CNN), and even more participating.

Locally in Tra… Read More >>