BuzzMachine

Out
: I know that the Barney’s Warehouse Sale has been out (as opposed to in) for years now. But I still go. That’s where I get my suits (protective coloration at Conde Nast, as a colleague says). I’ll confess that but for the grace of a half-hour, I would have been stuck there when the lights went out a week ago (boy, would that have been embarrassing).

Anyway, as the sale sputters to its close this weekend, I must sadly report that it ain’t what it used to be.

They closed off whole hunks of the floor at the 17th Street warehouse; they are simply selling less.

The suits included hardly any designer labels; it’s just Barney’s private-label stuff (which is nice, but it’s no Boss and certainly no Aramani).

The crowd was clearly thin; today they shut down the downstairs checkouts.

What am I going to do? Pay retail?

Cold crime
: Who’d have thought that there was crime in Antarctica?

A boat was nabbed for poaching endangered Chilean Seabass — which is the ingredient for Nobu’s signature dish.

What will New Yorkers do?

Poor us
: Joi Ito says it appears that America’s infrastructure is falling apart. Can we argue?

Hyperlocal
: My experiment with hyperlocal blogging continues, in fits and starts. I attended — no, covered — my town meeting last night.

Remake
: Howard Dean is trying to deftly remold his war posture and it’s getting noticed. Glenn Reynolds quotes Dean: “We have no choice. It’s a matter of national security. If we leave and we don’t get a democracy in Iraq, the result is very significant danger to the United States. . . . bringing democracy to Iraq is not a two-year proposition.” And then he says:

Howard Dean is right. And he’s the leading Democratic candidate at the moment. And that’s bad news for the terrorists, whose only hope is that we’ll fool ourselves into thinking otherwise, and give up before the job is done.

And Michael J Totten points to this Washington Post story on the topic.

The challenge for Dean now is to transition from champion of the antiwar, anti-Bush left to electable Democrat without losing his steam and solid liberal base, according to Democratic strategists.

That will be a challenge, since he’s already alienated me and a whole lot of other Democrats. And making the right noises isn’t enough. He needs to be genuine. I’ll see right through him if he is not.

This transition is no easy task for the most outspoken critic of the Iraqi war…

No kidding.

I think what you’re seeing, from Totten at least, is simply the disaffection that comes from looking at the present Democratic field. Realistic Democrats, like us, are starting to ask ourselves whether we could go for Dean… and there’s no good answer, yet.