Stephen Tuttle | Author

Never Forget the Heroes

Sept. 7, 2024

Every year about this time we remind ourselves of the horrors of September 11, 2001. We’ll again see images of the planes hitting the twin towers of the World Trade Center and their subsequent agonizing collapse. We’ll also be reminded of the plane tragically slamming into the P… Read More >>

Buses, Statues, Theaters, and Condos

Aug. 31, 2024

It is again the time of year when those giant yellow school buses will be on the road mornings and afternoons. And once again there will be unthinking, uncaring people driving by stopped school buses endangering our children.

According to the National Safety Council, there were more… Read More >>

Those Medals Aren't Equal

Aug. 24, 2024

Donald Trump has never demonstrated much respect for the military, but his latest denigration is outlandish even by his standards.

Trump, during a rambling campaign event at his golf club in New Jersey, said he thought the Presidential Medal of Freedom was equal to the Congressional… Read More >>

Racist and Dishonest Attacks

Aug. 17, 2024

The Trump/Vance team is having some difficulty settling on a plan of attack. What they’ve been trying so far does not seem to have gained much traction.

This is important for that campaign since they have little by way of actual policy to offer, and what they have offered is n… Read More >>

Controversy They Didn't Create

Aug. 10, 2024

There is no such thing as an Olympics without controversy, and it usually starts outside the arena of competition…though not always.

In the past, we have had significant doping scandals when old Soviet Bloc countries, particularly East Germany, ran full-blown, state-sponsored… Read More >>

Toasting Local Issues

Aug. 3, 2024

Time for a shallow dive into the still frigid waters of some local issues. Our county Republican party can’t seem to do anything without squabbling. Elk Rapids actually considered, briefly, an ordinance that referenced half parking spaces. Garfield Township and Traverse City have an i… Read More >>

Our Climate Is Still Changing

July 27, 2024

Time for our regularly irregular check on how the environment is doing and if we’ve fixed everything (or anything) yet…oh, dear.

The Florida Museum of Natural History reports what is likely the first species of plant or animal to become extinct in the continental U.S. d… Read More >>

We Shoot Presidents

July 20, 2024

Statistically, it is the most dangerous job in the world.

We’ve had 45 presidents, and five have been shot at and missed, three have been shot at and hit (including two former presidents seeking another term), and four have been shot and killed. That is an amazingly violent re… Read More >>

A Knife in the Back

July 13, 2024

National Democrats should be ashamed of themselves.

Democrats have always been experts at devouring their own, masters of the fine art of political cannibalism. Their willingness to so quickly turn on their own incumbent president is extreme even by their low standards. Blind loyalt… Read More >>

Let's Look at the Numbers

July 6, 2024

Some themes have now emerged from the 2024 presidential campaign, and much of it has been consistently inaccurate.

For example, Republicans tell us Joe Biden has rigged the judicial system, weaponized the government, ruined the economy, allowed crime to run rampant over American cit… Read More >>

Indoctrinating Schoolchildren

June 29, 2024

The Louisiana Legislature, with both feet firmly planted in the past, has mandated that every public K-12 school, community college, and university shall prominently display the Ten Commandments in every classroom. They claim it is “a foundational document of our country.”

Justifiable Recognition

June 22, 2024

What did Socrates, Michelangelo, Emily Dickinson, Alexander the Great, Leonardo da Vinci, Richard the Lionheart, and Joan of Arc all have in common? They all may have been gay. (At least as historians can best guess.)

This comes to mind as we near the end of Pride Month, first offic… Read More >>

The Downtown Debate

June 15, 2024

In 1978, Traverse City established a Downtown Development Authority (DDA) in accordance with a Michigan statute passed in 1975. The DDA is a component of the city government and is primarily financed by tax increment financing (TIF) districts, in which baseline property tax values are estab… Read More >>

Rule of Law for Everyone

June 8, 2024

Republican Larry Hogan is the former governor of Maryland now running for the U.S. Senate. Commenting on the Donald Trump trial, he asked Americans of all stripes to “... respect the verdict and the legal process... We must reaffirm what made this nation great: the rule of law.”… Read More >>

Courting Trouble

June 1, 2024

There is something called the International Criminal Court (ICC) located in The Hague in the Netherlands. It was organized by the Rome Statute in 1998 for the purpose of being an independent investigatory and prosecutorial body for what is considered the worst state-sponsored behavior; war … Read More >>

Many Presidential Options

May 25, 2024

Quick now: What do Chase Oliver, Randall Terry, Claudia De la Cruz, Peter Sonski, Michael Wood, Bill Stodden, Joseph Kishore, Rachelle Fruit, Tom Ross, and Paul Noel Fiorino all have in common? No clue?

What if we add Cornel West and Jill Stein? No? Then let’s add Robert Kenne… Read More >>

Good News, Bad News

May 18, 2024

There is good news and not such good news on the climate front. 2023 was the planet’s hottest since official records started being kept in 1850, and it’s not getting any cooler; locations in both Texas and Arizona have already recorded temperatures over 100 degrees this year, a … Read More >>

Protesting the Wrong Target

May 11, 2024

American college campuses have been a protest in search of a cause for a very long time. It is nearly a coming-of-age tradition.

Some would place the start of college campus protests at the “Free Speech Movement” at the University of California, Berkeley in the mid-1960s… Read More >>

A Long Way to Go to Renewable

May 4, 2024

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, we now get almost 20 percent of our electricity generation from renewable sources, about twice what we were generating just two decades ago. But we are still getting at least 60 percent of our electrical power from fossil fuel sources… Read More >>

Resistance from Within

April 27, 2024

It must be difficult to lead when those you hope will follow demand you agree with them 100 percent of the time.

That’s the predicament Speaker of the House Mike Johnson finds himself in after having had the temerity to usher through the House a bill providing, among other thi… Read More >>