Democratic National Convention

 

At Chicago’s United Center yesterday, the delegates at the Democratic National Convention reaffirmed last week’s online nomination of Kamala Harris for president. The ceremonial roll-call vote featured all the usual good-natured boasting from the delegates about their own state’s virtues, a process that reinforces the incredible diversity and history of both this land and its people. The managers reserved the final slots for Minnesota and California—the home states of Democratic vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz and presidential candidate Kamala Harris, respectively—to put the ticket over the top. 

When the votes had been counted, Harris joined the crowd virtually from a rally she and Walz were holding at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Last month the Republicans held their own national convention in that venue, and for Harris to accept her nomination in the same place was an acknowledgement of how important Wisconsin will be in this election. But it also meant that Trump, who is obsessed with crowd sizes, would have to see not one but two packed sports arenas of supporters cheer wildly for her nomination. 

He also had to contend with former loyalists and supporters joining the Democratic convention. His former press secretary, Stephanie Grisham, told the Democratic convention tonight that when the cameras are off, “Trump mocks his supporters. He calls them basement dwellers.” Grisham endorsed Harris, saying: “I love my country more than my party. Kamala Harris tells the truth. She respects the American people, and she has my vote.”

Trump spoke glumly to a small crowd today at the Livingston County Sheriff’s Office in Howell, Michigan. 

It was almost exactly twenty years ago, on July 27, 2004, that 43-year-old Illinois state senator Barack Obama, who was, at the time, running for a seat in the U.S. Senate, gave the keynote address to that year’s Democratic National Convention. It was the speech that began his rise to the presidency.

Like the Democrats who spoke last night, Obama talked in 2004 of his childhood and recalled how his parents had “faith in the possibilities of this nation.” And like Biden last night, Obama said that “in no other country on earth, is my story even possible.” The nation’s promise, he said, came from the human equality promised in the Declaration of Independence.

“That is the true genius of America,” Obama said, “a faith in the simple dreams of its people, the insistence on small miracles.” He called for an America “where hard work is rewarded.” “[I]t's not enough for just some of us to prosper,” he said, “[f]or alongside our famous individualism, there's another ingredient in the American saga.”

He described that ingredient as “[a]belief that we are connected as one people. If there's a child on the south side of Chicago who can't read, that matters to me, even if it's not my child. If there's a senior citizen somewhere who can't pay for her prescription and has to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it's not my grandmother. If there's an Arab American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties. It's that fundamental belief—I am my brother's keeper; I am my sister's keeper—that makes this country work. It's what allows us to pursue our individual dreams, yet still come together as a single American family. ‘E pluribus unum.’ Out of many, one.”

Obama emphasized Americans’ shared values and pushed back against “those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes.” He reached back into history to prove that “the bedrock of this nation” is “the belief that there are better days ahead.” He called that belief “[t]he audacity of hope.”

Almost exactly twenty years after his 2004 speech, the same man, now a former president who served for eight years, spoke at tonight’s Democratic National Convention. But the past two decades have challenged his vision.

When voters put Obama into the White House in 2008, Republicans set out to make sure they couldn’t govern. Mitch McConnell (R–KY) became Senate minority leader in 2007 and, using the filibuster, stopped most Democratic measures by requiring 60 votes to move anything to a vote. 

In 2010 the Supreme Court handed down the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision, declaring that corporations and other outside groups could spend as much money as they wanted on elections. Citizens United increased Republican seats in legislative bodies, and in the 2010 midterm elections, Republicans packed state legislatures with their own candidates in time to be in charge of redistricting their states after the 2010 census.  Republicans controlled the key states of Florida, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Ohio, and Michigan, as well as other, smaller states, and after the election, they used precise computer models to win previously Democratic House seats.

In the 2012 election, Democrats won the White House decisively, the Senate easily, and a majority of 1.4 million votes for House candidates. Yet Republicans came away with a thirty-three-seat majority in the House of Representatives. And then, with the 2013 Shelby County v. Holder decision, the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act, making it harder to protect Democratic voters.

As the Republicans skewed the mechanics of government to favor themselves, their candidates no longer had to worry they would lose general elections but did have to worry about losing primaries to more extreme challengers. So, they swung farther and farther to the right, demonizing the Democrats until finally those who remain Republicans have given up on democracy altogether. 

Tonight’s speech echoed that of 2004 by saying that America’s “central story” is that “we are all created equal,” and describing Harris and Walz as hardworking people who would use the government to create a fair system. He sounded more concerned today than in 2004 about political divisions, and reminded the crowd: “The vast majority of us do not want to live in a country that’s bitter and divided,” he said. “We want something better. We want to be better. And the joy and the excitement that we’re seeing around this campaign tells us we’re not alone,” he said. 

And then, in his praise for his grandmother, “a little old white lady born in a tiny town called Peru, Kansas,” and his mother-in-law, Marion Robinson, a Black woman from the South Side of Chicago, he brought a new emphasis on ordinary Americans, especially women, who work hard, sacrifice for their children, and value honesty, integrity, kindness, helping others, and hard work. 

They wanted their children to “do things and go places that they would’ve never imagined for themselves.” “Whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican or somewhere in between,” he said, “we have all had people like that in our lives:... good hardworking people who weren’t famous or powerful but who managed in countless ways to leave this country just a little bit better than they found it.” 

If President Obama emphasized tonight that the nation depends on the good will of ordinary people, it was his wife, former first lady Michelle Obama, who spoke with the voice of those people and made it clear that only the American people can preserve democracy.  

In a truly extraordinary speech, perfectly delivered, Mrs. Obama described her mother as someone who lived out the idea of hope for a better future, working for children and the community. “She was glad to do the thankless, unglamorous work that for generations has strengthened the fabric of this nation,” Mrs. Obama said, “the belief that if you do unto others, if you love thy neighbor, if you work and scrape and sacrifice, it will pay off. If not for you, then maybe for your children or your grandchildren.”

Unlike her husband, though, Mrs. Obama called out Trump and his allies, who are trying to destroy that worldview. “No one has a monopoly on what it means to be an American,” she said. “No one.” “[M]ost of us will never be afforded the grace of failing forward,” she said. “We will never benefit from the affirmative action of generational wealth. If we bankrupt a business…or choke in a crisis, we don't get a second, third, or fourth chance. If things don't go our way, we don't have the luxury of whining or cheating others to get further ahead…we don't get to change the rules, so we always win. If we see a mountain in front of us, we don’t expect there to be an escalator waiting to take us to the top. No, we put our heads down. We get to work. In America, we do something."

And then Mrs. Obama took up the mantle of her mother, warning that demonizing others and taking away their rights, “only makes us small.” It “demeans and cheapens our politics. It only serves to further discourage good, big-hearted people from wanting to get involved at all. America, our parents taught us better than that.” 

It is “up to us to be the solution that we seek.” she said. She urged people to “be the antidote to the darkness and division.” “[W]hether you’re Democrat, Republican, Independent, or none of the above,” she said, “this is our time to stand up for what we know. In our hearts is right. Not just for our basic freedoms, but for decency and humanity, for basic respect. Dignity and empathy. For the values at the very foundation of this democracy.”

“Don’t just sit around and complain. Do something.”

—Heather Cox Richardson

Notes:

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/harris-rallying-wisconsin-same-night-dnc-shes-underdog/story?id=112986237

https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/08/20/takeaways-from-kamala-harris-raucous-milwaukee-rally/74816224007/

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/convention-delegates-will-nominate-harris-for-second-time-less-suspense-but-more-pizzazz-expected

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/aug/20/republican-trump-dnc-speakers

https://www.detroitnews.com/picture-gallery/media/photo/2024/08/20/trump-speaks-in-howell/74875158007/

https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/keynote-address-the-2004-democratic-national-convention

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kylegriffin1/status/1826089941530788338

atrupar/status/1825978535896297708

 

Armed and Underground: Inside the Turbulent, Secret World of an American Militia by Joshua Kaplan

 

Last February, some 20 men and their wives gathered for dinner at an upscale restaurant in Spokane, Washington, for their annual Valentine’s Day celebration. The men weren’t just friends; they did community service work together. They had been featured on local television, in khakis and baseball caps, delivering 1,200 pounds of food to an area veterans’ center; they were gearing up for their next food drive, which they called Operation Hunger Smash. A few days after the holiday, the men went camping in the snow-speckled mountains outside Spokane, where they grilled rib-eyes and bacon-wrapped asparagus over a bonfire.

They also engaged in more menacing activities. They assembled regularly — sometimes wearing night-vision goggles in the dark — to practice storming buildings together with semiautomatic rifles. Their drills included using sniper rifles to shoot targets from distances of half a mile. And they belonged to a shadowy organization whose members were debating, with ever more intensity, whether they should engage in mass-scale political violence.

They were among the thousands of members of American Patriots Three Percent, a militia that has long been one of the largest in the United States and has mostly managed to avoid scrutiny. Its ranks included cops and convicted criminals, active-duty U.S. soldiers and small-business owners, truck drivers and health care professionals. Like other militias, AP3 has a vague but militant right-wing ideology, a pronounced sense of grievance and a commitment to armed action. It has already sought to shape American life through vigilante operations: AP3 members have “rounded up” immigrants at the Texas border, assaulted Black Lives Matter protesters and attempted to crack down on people casting absentee ballots.

Now with the presidential election less than 100 days away, AP3 members see the fate of their country turning on a turbulent, charged campaign. They’re certain that Democrats will try to steal — not for the first time, in their view — the White House from Donald Trump. “The next election won’t be decided at a Ballot Box,” an AP3 leader wrote several months ago in a private Telegram chat. “It’ll be decided at the ammo box.” He has said he is ready to force his way into voting centers if need be, or “whatever it takes.”

The public’s impression of American militias is dominated by Jan. 6, 2021. Groups such as the Proud Boys had plotted to prevent the transfer of power from Trump to Joe Biden. They formed the vanguard of the mob that stormed the Capitol that day, according to the Department of Justice. Media coverage since has centered on the prosecutions of participants, with hundreds of rioters sent to prison.

But despite the riot and its fallout, militias are far from extinct. AP3 has expanded at a dramatic pace since Jan. 6, while keeping much of its activity out of view. This rise is documented in more than 100,000 internal messages obtained by ProPublica, spanning the run-up to Jan. 6 through early 2024. Along with extensive interviews with 22 current and former members of AP3, the records provide a uniquely detailed inside view of the militia movement at a crucial moment.

The messages reveal how AP3 leaders have forged alliances with law enforcement around the country and show the ways in which, despite an initial crackdown by social media, they have attracted a new wave of recruits. A change in the political climate has also helped: In a matter of months after Jan. 6, rioters went from pariahs to heroes in the rhetoric of prominent Republican politicians. By the summer of 2021, people were enlisting in AP3, saying that Jan. 6 inspired them to join.

A portrait emerges of a group alternating between focused action and self-destructive chaos and facing a schism over whether political engagement can still address our nation’s problems — or whether violence is the only option. It can be hard to discern the line between bluster and imminent threat in the messages, a perennial struggle for FBI agents who monitor paramilitary groups. But some senior AP3 members grew so alarmed that they quit, scared by the number of people, even high-level leaders, advocating acts of terror.

The materials also shed light on what former national security officials say is the most urgent question regarding militias: Will Jan. 6 prove the high-water mark of the movement’s violence or merely a prelude to something more catastrophic? AP3 leaders have sometimes characterized the storming of the Capitol as a botched job, a failure of ill-formed plans that didn’t go far enough. “The Jan 6 event made the movement look weak and uncommitted,” one wrote a year and a half after the riot in a secret channel. “Had the house been taken for real and held we would all be in a different world.”

This is the story of a militia fighting for its survival, determined not to make the same mistake twice… Click here for the full story: Inside the Turbulent, Secret World of the AP3 Militia — ProPublica

 

Of Stars, Seagulls and Love: Loren Eiseley on the First and Final Truth of Life

 

Somewhere along the way of life, we learn that love means very different things to different people, and yet all personal love is but a fractal of a larger universal love. Some call it God. I call it wonder. Dante called it “the Love that moves the Sun and the other stars.”

Because the capacity for love may be the crowning achievement of consciousness and consciousness the crowning achievement of the universe, because the mystery of the universe will always exceed the reach of the consciousness forged by that mystery, love in the largest sense is a matter of active surrender (to borrow Jeanette Winterson’s perfect term for the paradox of art) to the mystery.

It may be that we are only here to learn how to love.

The paleontologist, philosopher of science, and poet Loren Eiseley (September 3, 1907–July 9, 1977) channels this idea with uncommon loveliness and lucidity in one of the essays found in his superb 1969 collection The Unexpected Universe (public library).

“Writing at the dawn of the space age, when the human animal with its 'restless inner eye' first reached for the stars, Eiseley observes: The venture into space is meaningless unless it coincides with a certain interior expansion, an ever-growing universe within, to correspond with the far flight of the galaxies our telescopes follow from without… That inward world… can be more volatile and mobile, more terrible and impoverished, yet withal more ennobling in its self-consciousness, than the universe that gave it birth.”

Picking up Dante’s thread, Eiseley offers a sweeping meditation on what ennobles our small star dusted lives, beginning with the story of a seemingly mundane accident that thrusts him, as sudden shocks to the system can often do, toward transcendence.

Walking to his office afternoon, deep in thought while working on a book, Eiseley trips on a street drain, crashes violently onto the curb, and finds himself face down on the sidewalk in a pool of his own blood. In the delirium of disorientation and pain, he looks at the vermillion liquid in the sunshine and suddenly sees life itself, suddenly feels all the tenderness one feels for the miracle of life whenever one is fully feeling. And then, with that wonderful capacity we humans have, he surprises himself:

“Confusedly, painfully, indifferent to running feet and the anxious cries of witnesses about me, I lifted a wet hand out of this welter and murmured in compassionate concern, 'Oh, don’t go. I’m sorry, I’ve done for you.'”

The words were not addressed to the crowd gathering about me. They were inside and spoken to no one but a part of myself. I was quite sane, only it was an oddly detached sanity, for I was addressing blood cells, phagocytes, platelets, all the crawling, living, independent wonder that had been part of me and now, through my folly and lack of care, were dying like beached fish on the hot pavement. A great wave of passionate contrition, even of adoration, swept through my mind, a sensation of love on a cosmic scale, for mark that this experience was, in its way, as vast a catastrophe as would be that of a galaxy consciously suffering through the loss of its solar systems.

I was made up of millions of these tiny creatures, their toil, their sacrifices, as they hurried to seal and repair the rent fabric of this vast being whom they had unknowingly, but in love, compounded. And I, for the first time in my mortal existence, did not see these creatures as odd objects under the microscope. Instead, an echo of the force that moved them came up from the deep well of my being and flooded through the shaken circuits of my brain. I was they — their galaxy, their creation.

For the first time, I loved them consciously, even as I was plucked up and away by willing hands. It seemed to me then, and does now in retrospect, that I had caused to the universe I inhabited as many deaths as the explosion of a supernova in the cosmos.

It is often like this, in some small sudden experience, that we awaken to reality in all its immensity and complexity. Eiseley’s blood-lensed realization is elemental and profound: We are not the sum total of the tiny constituent parts that compose us — we are only ever-shifting and regenerating parts operating under the illusion of a sum we call a self. Any such awareness — whether we attain it through science or art or another spiritual practice — is an act of unselfing, to borrow Iris Murdoch’s perfect term.

And every act of unselfing is an act of love — it is how we contact, how we channel, “the Love that moves the Sun and the other stars.” It is the self — the prison of it, the illusion of it — that keeps us trapped in lives of less-than-love. But a self is a story, which means we can always change the story to change, to dismantle, to be set free from the self — and it might not even require a bloody face.

Observing that while other animals live out their lives by obeying their nature, the human animal has the freedom to define and redefine its own humanity, Eiseley considers both the gift and the danger of our malleable and impressionable self-definition.

A decade before James Baldwin admonished in his superb conversation with Margaret Mead that “you’ve got to tell the world how to treat you [because] if the world tells you how you are going to be treated, you are in trouble,” and half a century before Maya Angelou wrote in her staggering poem to the cosmos that “we are neither devils nor divines,” Eiseley reminds us of something fundamental that we so easily forget, so easily abdicate, in these times of social imaging and performative selfing:

“To the degree that we let others project upon us erroneous or unbalanced conceptions of our natures, we may unconsciously reshape our own image to less pleasing forms. It is one thing to be 'realistic,' as many are fond of saying, about human nature.

It is another thing entirely to let that consideration set limits to our spiritual aspirations or to precipitate us into cynicism and despair. We are protean in many things, and stand between extremes. There is still great room for the observation of John Donne, made over three centuries ago, however, that “no man doth refine and exalt Nature to the heighth it would beare.”

With that great countercultural courage of defying cynicism, Eiseley insists that it was the humans who nourished the highest in their nature by means of love, who lived with such exquisite tenderness for life in all its expressions, that propelled our species from the caves to the cathedrals, from savagery to sonnets. (A particularly countercultural point, given he is writing in the middle of the Cold War — an ideology of hate, like all war, under which humans on both sides are taught that those on the other are devils, that power and not peace is the pinnacle of our humanity.) Drawing on his singular access to deep time as a scientist who studies fossils long predating Homo sapiens, he considers what made us human — what keeps us human:

“A great wealth of intellectual diversity, and consequent selective mating, based upon mutual attraction, would emerge from the dark storehouse of nature. The cruel and the gentle would sit at the same fireside, dreaming already in the Stone Age the different dreams they dream today…”

Some of them, a mere handful in any generation perhaps, loved — they loved the animals about them, the song of the wind, the soft voices of women. On the flat surfaces of cave walls the three dimensions of the outside world took animal shape and form. Here — not with the ax, not with the bow — man* fumbled at the door of his true kingdom.

Here, hidden in times of trouble behind silent brows, against the man with the flint, waited St. Francis of the birds — the lovers, the men who are still forced to walk warily among their kind. Millions of years later, Eiseley finds himself one of the lovers as he befriends a large old seagull, grey as himself.

Day after day, he sits on an old whiskey crate half-buried in the sand at the edge of the ocean — that crucible of life, that ultimate lens on its meaning — and watches the gull. “I came to look for this bird,” he recounts, “as though we shared some sane, enormously simple secret amidst a little shingle of hard stones and broken beach.” And then, one day, the gull is gone.

With an eye to what remains — which is what always remains when something or someone we love leaves — Eiseley writes:

“Here, I thought, is where I shall abide my ending, in the mind at least. Here where the sea grinds coral and bone alike to pebbles, and the crabs come in the night for the recent dead. Here where everything is transmuted and transmutes, but all is living or about to live.

“It was here that I came to know the final phase of love in the mind of man — the phase beyond the evolutionists’ meager concentration upon survival. Here I no longer cared about survival — I merely loved. And the love was meaningless, as the harsh Victorian Darwinists would have understood it or even, equally, those harsh modern materialists… I felt, sitting in that desolate spot upon my whiskey crate, a love without issue, tenuous, almost disembodied. It was a love for an old gull, for wild dogs playing in the surf, for a hermit crab in an abandoned shell. It was a love that had been growing through the unthinking demands of childhood, through the pains and rapture of adult desire. Now it was breaking free, at last, of my worn body, still containing but passing beyond those other loves.”

Here, in this scientist’s farewell to life, we find an echo of Dante and of Larkin’s timeless insistence that “what will survive of us is love,” we find the first truth of life, which is also its final truth. (This too is why we, fallible and vulnerable to the bone, ought to love anyway.)

by Maria Popova, The Marginalian

 

Dementia: Possible Risk Factors

 

Nearly half of all dementia cases could be delayed or prevented altogether by addressing 14 possible risk factors, including vision loss and high cholesterol.

That is the key finding of a new study that we and our colleagues published in the journal The Lancet.

Dementia, a rapidly increasing global challenge, affects an estimated 57 million worldwide, and this number is expected to increase to 153 million by 2050 worldwide. Although the prevalence of dementia is on the decline in high-income countries, it continues to increase in low- and middle-income countries.

This third updated report of the Lancet Commission on Dementia offers good news and a strong message: Policymakers, clinicians, individuals and families can be ambitious about prevention and reduce dementia risk; and for those living with dementia and their caregivers, support their quality of life using evidence-based approaches.

The new report confirms 12 previously identified potentially modifiable risk factors from two previous reports, published in 2017 and 2020. It also offers new evidence supporting two additional modifiable risk factors: vision loss and high levels of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, often called “bad” cholesterol.

Our study of published evidence found that collectively, addressing 14 modifiable risk factors could potentially reduce the prevalence of dementia by 45% worldwide. Even greater risk reductions could be possible in low- and middle-income countries and for people with low income in higher-income countries given the higher prevalence of dementia, health disparities and risk factors in these populations.

The report further indicates that reducing these 14 risks can increase the number of healthy years of life and reduce the length of time with poor health in people with dementia.

Additionally, the report cites clinical trials showing that nonpharmacological approaches, such as using activities tailored to interests and abilities, can reduce dementia-related symptoms and improve quality of life.

We are a general internist and an applied sociologist and intervention scientist, and our work focuses on memory and wellness in older adults. Together with 25 other internationally recognized dementia experts under the leadership of psychiatry professor Dr. Gill Livingston, we carefully reviewed the evidence to derive recommendations for prevention, intervention and care.

Why it matters

The rapid growth of aging populations worldwide is a triumph of better public and personal health throughout the entire life span. Yet, given the lack of a dementia cure, this report highlights the importance of prevention as well as supporting quality of life for those with a dementia diagnosis.

In the new report, our team proposed an ambitious program for preventing dementia that could be implemented at the individual, community and policy levels and across the life span from early life through mid and late life. 

The key points include:

• In early life, improving general education.
• In midlife, addressing hearing loss, high LDL cholesterol, depression, traumatic brain injury, physical inactivity, diabetes, smoking, hypertension, obesity and excessive alcohol.
• In later life, reducing social isolation, air pollution and vision loss.

     Together, these add up to the Lancet Commission on Dementia’s estimate that 45% of dementia risk can be reduced. And an abundance of new research shows that when risk factors are addressed, such as exposure to air pollution, they are linked with improved cognition and likely reduction of dementia risk.

     New evidence supports the notion that in high-income countries, reducing dementia risk can translate to more healthy years, years free of dementia and a shorter duration of ill health for people who develop dementia.

What still isn’t known

     The 45% reduction in dementia risk across the world’s population is based on a calculation that assumes that risk factors are causal and can be eliminated. It shows how dementia prevention is critical and the impact it would have on individuals and families.

     The commission emphasized the need for more research to identify additional risk factors, test risk factor changes in clinical trials, provide guidance for public health efforts, and identify and evaluate strategies for implementing and scaling evidence-based programs that support people with dementia and caregivers.

   The updated report has worldwide public health and research impact and is being widely disseminated. It serves as a guideline to clinicians and policymakers and outlines new research directions.

The Conversation: The Research Brief is a short take on interesting academic work.

 

What else is the common housefly attracted to besides excrement?

 

"And while not interested in biting (the fly doesn't have the equipment for that), the common housefly, or musca domestica, does want to suck up the salt, dead skin, oil and whatever they find edible on the exposed epidermis [of Donald Trump's cheek] with its straw-like tongue."

Photo by Jeenah Moon, Reuters

Dining Out Today?

 

Low-tech, time-tested tips for avoiding bad meals when dining out:  

Use your nose

One detail that links inferior restaurants is an absence of (good) cooking smells when you walk in. A steakhouse should be fragrant with beef, an Italian dining room should whisper garlic, and the air in a Korean venue should fairly tingle with chiles. A blank smell — or sometimes worse, a blast of bleach or ammonia from cleaning products — should send you back onto the sidewalk.

Listen for problems

Loud music early at night almost always signals a restaurant that doesn’t care about diners’ comfort or staff’s health. A boom box posing as a dining room isn’t prioritizing food. Exhibit A: the chain STK, so thunderous at the Washington branch that diners can’t tell whether servers are greeting them or asking their water preference.

Trust your first impressions

If a restaurant is short with you on the phone, chances are good the in-person service will match. (In fairness, diners should call at off-hours, not at high noon or dinner rush.) If a website fails to list prices or continues to post its Mother’s Day specials in summer, the restaurant is asleep at the switch. A good establishment wants to welcome diners, not send them to competitors.

Look for activity

See that beautiful host armed with menus outside a restaurant? Keep walking. A reputable restaurant doesn’t need to use shiny baubles to lure people inside. Inside a place, look for servers who appear happy (proud to work there) and some bustle (diners willing to wait for a table). A slow sushi joint, for instance, is best avoided. You want to see a busy counter and lots of turnover.

When reading reviews, use some skepticism

Particularly for glowing reviews from major publications, check out the date they were published. Anything older than a year is iffy; restaurants are like live theater, with the possibility of changing casts and scripts. It also helps if the author or endorser is still alive. If Julia Child or James Beard approved the place, well, she died 20 years ago, and he passed in 1985. As for Yelp and company, consumers are getting information from an anonymous crowd whose credentials aren’t always obvious. (Whether you agree or disagree with me, my bio and body of work are easy to find and I aim for fairness by visiting restaurants multiple times.)

Take hints from the menu

Be wary of places with menus that have lots of typos, exclamation marks or point out that a dish is “cooked to perfection.” Sloppiness and hyperbole don’t bode well for the rest of the dining experience. Nor do lists that go on and on, like Barbra Streisand’s memoir. Lots of photographs are suspect, too. See: Buffalo Wild Wings.

Keep it clean

I’ve eaten in some great places where the restrooms were less than tidy. But I’ve never had a memorable meal from a chef whose jacket is stained, or in a dining room where floors are sticky or tables go uncleaned for more than a few minutes. Such sights suggest inattention and understaffing.

Use the transportation test

Are there lots of in-state license plates in the parking lot? Step inside the restaurant, especially if Porsches and beaters are in the mix. (Seafood shacks are universally beloved.) Buses, on the other hand, should be viewed as a stop sign — a tourist trap of the first degree.

 -Tom Sietsema has been The Washington Post's food critic since 2000. He previously worked for the Microsoft Corp., where he launched sidewalk.com; the Seattle Post-Intelligencer; the San Francisco Chronicle; and the Milwaukee Journal. He has also written for Food & Wine.

P.S.

My additional advice: CHECK THE RESTAURANT'S BATHROOM BEFORE ORDERING FOOD.

Shell USA Company Foundation

A foundation associated with Shell, the Shell USA Company Foundation, donated $544,010 to religious right and conservative organizations, many of which deny that climate change is a crisis, tax records reveal. Fourteen of those groups are on the advisory board of Project 2025, a conservative blueprint proposing radical changes to the federal government, including severely limiting the Environment Protection Agency.