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(note: this is my two cents on Goldy’s earlier post)

I hope Ross Hunter runs for Congress. I’m guessing that Darcy Burner will give it another shot, too [UPDATE BELOW]. Tony Ventrella is already saddled-up and on the trail. Unlike Goldy, I’m not committed to supporting a single candidate. At least not yet.

I think Ventrella is going to have to really earn the support of Democrats. Being a celebrity is not enough to win. Hunter has the resume, but is a “moderate” guy like him going to “fire up” liberal suburban Democrats while reaching out to “guns and butter” conservative Democrats? Does Burner even want to run again, considering her biggest opponent wasn’t even Reichert, but the lying-sack-of-shit Seattle Times editorial page?

I’m excited to see how this thing plays out. It seems all the big shots are lining up behind Hunter, with Andrew and Goldy (and more) with Burner. Tony Ventrella… well, what about Tony? Come to Drinking Liberally, Tony!

In other news, the GOP has a 2-to-1 “precinct committee officer” advantage in the 8th Congressional District. Perhaps this might be more important than the horse race stuff.

UPDATE:
Darcy’s in, according to Postman.

Joel Connelly, a Horse’s Ass “Friend of the Blog” and Drinking Liberally attendee, absolutely savages Mayor Nickels’ tunnel in today’s column. It’s not a surprise; Joel’s been pro-rebuild for a long time, but I can’t help thinking the anti-tunnel trash-talking is played-out.

Why? Simply put, the tunnel isn’t going to happen. It’s going to lose at the polls. Plus, we don’t have the money. We have projected money, but we don’t have cash money. And Frank Chopp hates the tunnel, so it’s “game over.” Joel’s column is titled “It’s time for Nickels to bury tunnel,” as if the thing isn’t already politically buried.

I’d like to see columnists from every paper realize that we’re down to two choices. Do you want an elevated rebuild? Yes or no. The incessant hacking at Nickels and his dead tunnel just short circuits the debate. However, Joel Connelly does address the “surface plus transit” option:

The crowning consequences will come if there is no tunnel, no new viaduct and the tear-down, don’t-replace folks win out.

It’ll send thousands of cars toward Pioneer Square, which in the ’70s was the first place downtown rescued from highway culture. (Garages were to replace historic buildings.)

And, if the predicted 12 hours of daily gridlock comes to pass on Interstate 5, thousands more cars will crawl along the freeway, belching greenhouse gases into the air shed of America’s greenest city.

While cars would go through Pioneer Square on a the new Alaskan Way surface boulevard instead of a Viaduct, lots of people would be able to use new transit investments. That’s a good thing for the historic district. As for cars on I-5 and their greenhouse gases, I’m confused. Do cars somehow emit no gases when their cruising at 40 mph on the waterfront? Oh well… I patiently wait for the column in which Joel interviews Cary Moon or Ron Sims, two prominent “surface plus transit” supporters.

Lastly, I can think of no better way to fight the highway culture than to not build highways.

Just kidding about the headline. I like David Postman. I think he’s a great reporter. And I don’t even know if he drinks. In fact, hypothetically, if I were developing my own online news venture to compete with our city’s two dailies, and I raised enough venture capital to do it right, Postman would be one of the first reporters I’d attempt to hire away from the Seattle Times.

But man can he be sensitive.

Yesterday I critiqued our two dailies’ coverage of the Sonics hearing in Olympia, posting the two ledes side-by-side. I thought it instructive that two papers covering the same hearing should come away with such different story lines. And to some extent, I think that Postman agrees:

I think it’s a good day for journalism when the Times and the PI take different angles or dig up different facts. That’s what makes having two papers important.

Absolutely.

So I’m not really sure why Postman understood my post to be a “baseless attack” on his colleagues, or why he felt the need to characterize me as “wrong-headed”, “fatuous” and, well… drunk?

David Goldstein crows about how he has no pretense toward objectivity. That’s the only way to explain his fatuous bit of journalism criticism today. Goldstein read stories about the Sonics in the Times and the PI, and as he often does, decides that the Times is showing bias.

Actually, I decided that both stories were biased. No doubt I prefer the P-I’s bias, but I never singled out the Times. Indeed, I thought I was rather specific:

I’m not implying any intentional bias on the part of the various reporters, just that bias inevitably exists, and inevitably seeps through every journalist’s work, no matter how hard they try to suppress it.

Um… how is this a “baseless attack” on the Times?

Postman is clearly offended, and goes to some length deconstructing my rather brief post in an effort to show how little I understand the facts reported, or the business of journalism in general. His main point?

But Goldstein just isn’t paying attention if he thinks the financing plan was the news of the day.

As for the Renton vs. Bellevue angle, that was, in fact, news. It wasn’t known before yesterday. It was new.

Actually, the “Renton vs. Bellevue angle” wasn’t exactly news either. The choice of the Renton site was leaked way back in December, and widely reported at the time. (I spent an hour on it while filling in for Dave Ross.) If you’re going to say that it is only news when Clay Bennett confirms it, then you might as well just reprint Sonics press releases.

Given the fact that the details were already widely known, I’d say that the news of the day was the hearing itself, and how legislators reacted to Bennetts demands. But then, that’s just one man’s opinion.

Which once again is my point. I don’t know how many times I need to explain it on my blog, or say it to Postman’s face: I love newspapers and admire his profession. But I simply don’t believe that objectivity is humanly possible. I repeat:

The “journalism generally practiced in America” today is an historical anomaly that grew out of the media consolidation that shuttered the vast majority of dailies early in the twentieth century. “Objectivity” was a necessary sales pitch required to reassure readers that one or two dailies could adequately replace the many different voices to which they had grown accustomed. It is also a wonderful ideal, though unfortunately impossible to achieve in reality, for as Woody Allen astutely observed, even “objectivity is subjective.”

I’m not one of those bloggers who long for the extinction of the legacy media, nor do I think this modern American model of an objective, fair and balanced press will ever perish at the hands of us advocacy journalists. But there’s certainly more than enough room for both models to coexist, and to some extent, converge. Both models can be equally honest and informative, as long as the practitioners remain true to themselves, and to their slightly divergent ethical principles…

But in the end, how is my openly biased blog really any different from the op-ed section of any major daily? Facts are facts, and when I get them wrong my readers abrasively taunt me in my comment threads. The rest of what I write is nothing but personal spin and opinion…

Postman writes that “alleging bias in a newspaper reporter is a serious matter,” and he spiritedly defends his colleagues from what he assumes to be a personal insult. But I didn’t allege bias in a reporter or a newspaper or even his profession. I alleged bias in our entire species. That is the human condition. We are all biased. Each and every one of us will experience the same event somewhat differently, shaped by our own unique personal histories and perspectives. Two different ledes were written off the same hearing, and yes I do think it instructive to highlight the difference.

Postman refers to my Tuesday night Drinking Liberally festivities and jokingly implies that I should have slept off my hangover before writing. In truth, the post was admittedly rushed as I was late for a meeting. Perhaps Postman would have been less offended had I taken the time to pen my intended closing: an attack on Times publisher Frank Blethen for his efforts to make Seattle a one-newspaper town.

I apologize, David, for not being more thorough.

Toby Nixon is straight-up freakin’ over Senator Eric Oemig’s plan to put impeachment of Bush “on the table.”

The man Oemig beat in November to win the open Senate seat, former Rep. Toby Nixon, wrote to his supporters today questioning whether Oemig was honest with voters:

Oemig’s campaign web site said (and still says) “the Eastside needs a State Senator who solves problems and gets things done. We cannot afford more of the same old thing. I’m not a politician, and I reject the extremism and partisan bickering of Olympia”. It also says “Elected officials must live up to the highest standards of honesty”. Well, Mr. Oemig, was it honest of you to run a campaign saying you’re going to “solve problems and get things done” and that you “reject partisan bickering”, and to turn around “soon after taking office” and take the lead on impeaching the President? How is that living “up to the highest standards of honesty”. It certainly looks like “extremism and partisan bickering” to me.

Just so you know, Toby Nixon is well-liked here at HA. He even shows up at Drinking Liberally from time to time. Needless to say, I don’t agree with his assessment.

Democrats have been timid as heck, unwilling to stand up to Bush even when he’s been weak and wrong at the same time. Is it bickering to stand up to Bush, even at the local level? Maybe Nixon’s stoking the fires for a run at his old seat (won by Roger Goodman when Nixon ran for Senate). I’ve got a better idea…

Lieutenant Governor! Think about it, Toby… I don’t know anyone who’s “high” on Lt. Gov. Brad Owen. He’s got that ridiculous rock band which he takes across the state, trying to keep kids off drugs (If he had come to my high school, I would have STARTED smoking pot, just to spite him). He endorses right wing judicial candidates and wants to spend tax dollars on a NASCAR track. What a waste!

I guess what I’m saying, Toby, is aim higher! Imagine the satisfaction of swinging that gavel whenever Senator Oemig gets out of line. Sweet revenge, sir. Sweet revenge!!

I’ll be at tonight’s Drinking Liberally at the Montlake Ale House, and I’ll be staying late because I have no radio show to go home to. If you are going to DL, read my question and think about it, and then we’ll argue about it tonight.

Question: Is universal healthcare the same as single-payer healthcare to you? That is, do those two mean the same things to you? Also, would you accept a healthcare compromise that used “conservative” means (ie, the free market, etc) to reach “liberal” ends (affordable, good quality healthcare for every American)?

Think about it, and I’ll see you tonight @ 8pm.

***UPDATE***

Good answers, everybody! Although the turnout was a bit low at tonight’s DL, there were some good answers to the question. Even the right-wing trolls got in on the act. I especially like this answer:

And by the way… nobody is entitled to anything in this world. Nothing. Including health care.

If you want good health care, get off your ass and earn it. It really is that fucking simple…

Unfortunately, lots of the folks without insurance are full time workers, not the “lazy poor”:

Today over 70 percent of the 41 million uninsured Americans come from families where there is at least one full-time worker.

But good try, folks!

Some folks like to knock Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Seattle) for not being like other congressmen, for not being a log-roller or a guy who “brings home the bacon.” The guy is very vocal on Iraq, and does lots of good work on Africa, and pushes a good healthcare plan that will likely never become law, but he doesn’t do things the same way some of his colleagues do them. Some folks (Josh Feit, Joel Connelly and, uh, me) have mused openly about how we’d like to see the guy retire sometime soon in favor of some new blood.

With all of this taken into account, I come across this at Postman:

Congressman Jim McDermott was on his way to an “Open House to Celebrate the People’s House” this morning to celebrate the new Democratic majority and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s ascension.

But he also had some business to do. He was looking to corner Pelosi or Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., to lobby to get 2nd District Rep. Rick Larsen a permanent seat on the Agriculture Committee.

Just then Miller walked by on his way into the Cannon Caucus Room. Or tried to. McDermott grabbed him, pulled out some notes, and gave Miller the pitch: Larsen would be the only Northwest representative on the committee and he’s a good guy doing a good job.
Miller said he’d do what he could. And that was good enough for McDermott. “If you want to make sure Nancy hears it, tell George,” he said.

Fuckin’ nice! A liberal guy like McDermott doing what he can to help out a super centrist like Larsen, that’s class. What’s so great about this move? Rep. Rick Larsen represents the only district west of the Cascades that has lots of agricultural business. This means he’s Washington’s only Democrat to represent agriculture in Washington D.C. This will do good things for Larsen as far as keeping the GOP out of the 2nd District, which also happens to be (I heard this somewhere, correct me if I’m wrong) the only Democratic-held district in WA that is actually trending towards the GOP.

If Jim shows he’s playing the game this well in the majority, we’ll just have to postpone that retirement party.

Note: Jim! Come to Drinking Liberally when you’re back in town! We want war stories!

(Notice! This post is not by Goldy. Read the byline!)

John Madden, the famous football coach, once said about Packers quarterback Brett Favre, “he’s so good, he could beat you with yours.” You see, Favre is so good, he could be swapped to the other and lead the other guys to victory. With all the recent introspection by right-wing bloggers, I’d be a failing our conservative friends if I didn’t put forth my own ideas. Does this Democrat think he could beat Democrats with his own ideas? Hey it’s worth a shot. If they don’t like my ideas they can go back to those bullshit sex offender mailings!

First off, my GOP friends, who’s running things back at HQ? Mike Hargrove? After Chris Vance quit as party chief, the GOP base passed on the ‘establishment’ candidate to replace him and picked Diane Tebelius. She was supposed to be a departure from “Vance-style centrism,” which irritated the base. While Tebelius can’t be blamed for everything, she has to go. A huge loss like this must result someone (other than your candidates) losing their job.

Education. Here’s a haymaker you can use on Democrats. Why not call their bluff on teacher pay and per pupil funding? Try this: Increase teacher pay by 100%, but make it much, much easier to fire the bad ones. Pay science and math teachers more than others. Keep superstar teachers from leaving their field for higher paying jobs at Microsoft. Young teachers will love it, and good teachers will earn more money.

While money isn’t everything, our per pupil spending is too low. We’re at about $9,000. Instead of bumping it up a few hundred bucks, let’s really show folks we’re serious about educating our kids by boosting that number up to, say, $15,000. Now hold your (Gold)water, my conservative friends. Instead of sending that money directly to school districts, let’s send it to the parents of school children so they can choose which school is best for their kids. Contrary to the fears of liberals, most parents won’t leave their public schools. Parents with kids stuck in bad schools with have a real ‘out.’ The problem with most GOP voucher plans is that they are stingy with the money!

Speaking of money, let’s talk taxes. Let’s say it: Income tax. Folks, it’s coming whether we like it or not. This stuff is complicated, but one thing is sure. Our tax system sucks. Let’s swap the B&O tax for a state income tax (one that WA taxpayers can write off on April 15th). Let’s do like Rep. Toby Nixon said: a flat income tax with plenty of write-offs for poor and middle class folks. Liberals will yelp that it’s not progressive, but that’s the beauty of it. If you get there first, you can set the terms of the debate. The Democrats can’t amend the state constitution without your votes, so bargain hard and make ’em squeal.

One final note, and it’s on transportation. You guys got murdered in the suburbs. No wonder… THEY LIKE ROADS, AND THEY LIKE TRANSIT!!! I know how much you guys hate Sound Transit, but face it, dudes; it’s looking a lot better these days. Do like the GOP did in Denver: approve big increases in the sales tax to build light rail to the suburbs. When moderates, swing-voter suburbanites start taking the train, they’ll reward the folks who brought it to them. Make sure that’s Reagan Dunn and not Ron Sims! While GOP stalwarts like Kemper Freeman may not like light rail, try this instead: run light rail right under Bellevue Square! It’ll bring folks to his mall! As for highways… well, you’re going to have to give up on I-605, or any such nonsense. We’re out of the freeway business, boys. It’s better to focus on keeping current infrastructure maintained.

I hope ya’ll find this useful. It’s the best I can do. If you want to discuss this more, feel free to drop by Seattle’s Drinking Liberally every Tuesday at 8:00pm. I’ll be there… with the rest of the winning team.

The polls just closed in parts of Indiana and Kentucky, and I feel like a kid on Christmas Eve the first night of Chanukah. I’ll be starting my evening around 5PM at the Montlake Alehouse where our Tuesday night gathering of Drinking Liberally will be meeting a few hours early to watch the East Coast returns, and I invite you all to join me. I’ll then set out party-hopping, before ending the night in Bellevue with Darcy Burner.

I’m not sure how much I’ll be blogging throughout the night, so I think I’ll just start this running thread where I can post occasional updates and observations. Tune in throughout the night for what I hope to be some well-deserved gloating.

3:43 PM
Dems are pretty optimistic in Louisville, where John Yarmuth (D) is leading Rep. Anne Northup (R) in KY-03 51.1 to 47.6 with 15 percent of precincts reporting. Interestingly, exit polls showed Yarmuth winning by, tada… 51-47.

Why am I so interested in KY-03. Well, it’s the only competitive race reporting, but it’s also a bit of bellweather as it only recently moved into the “toss-up” category during the last couple weeks, and Hotline only rated it the 36th most competitive House race. If Dems are comfortably beating incumbents in Kentucky, well… we’ll see.

4:07 PM
More exits polls show close Senate races in Tennesee, Missouri and Arizona, and the Dems running away most everywhere else. (Lieberman is apparently winning by 5 points in CT… I’m not sure what party he is.) And… Vermonters have just elected our nation’s first Socialist Senator, Bernie Sanders.

4:31 PM
I’m heading to the Alehouse. So far, I’ve heard nothing that indicates we aren’t in the midst of a big blue wave. We’ll know a lot more over the next hour.

5:31 PM
I’m at the Alehouse, and they just called the PA Senate seat for Bob Casey. Rick Santorum has been retired. Congratulations Dan Savage, we owe it all to you.

5:55 PM
I’m sharing a pitcher of beer with Stefan Sharkansky. He bought. I guess I’m a beer whore.

As for the election, Ken Blackwell didn’t win the governor’s race in Ohio. So I guess we still have a democracy afterall.

7:02PM
Still at DL. Santorum just conceded. The crowd here broke into chants of “dog on man.”

10:14PM
Nationally, it’s a wave. The Dems have taken the House, and most likely the Senate. I’m at the Dem party at the Sheraton, and everbody is hopped, but I’m heading out to Bellevue where Darcy is currently behind in a tight race. I’ve got no idea where any of the numbers are coming from, so I don’t know what her prospects are, but as always, I’d rather be ahead than behind. Cantwell won, the bad initiatives lost, and we’re picking up a bunch of seats in the state legislature. Darcy would be the icing on the cake… but the cake’s pretty damn tasty on its own.

It’s been a bird-free day — no Seahawks, no Eagles — so tune in for some political football tonight on “The David Goldstein Show” on Newsradio 710-KIRO, from 7PM to 10PM.

7PM: Do Republicans have a prayer? Seattle P-I political columnist Joel Connelly spent the day checking out the spirit at some of our local mega-churches, and he joins me in the studio to talk about Tuesday’s midterm election, and how the latest sex scandal might impact its outcome. We’ll also be getting a field report from fellow blogger TJ of Loaded Orygun, whose been following some very interesting ballot return trends that could have the red team feeling awfully blue down in the Beaver State.

8PM: Is flipping off the President a fireable offense? An Issaquah school bus driver gave President Bush the finger, and his fellow Republicans cheered when Rep. Dave Reichert took credit for getting the woman fired… credit which Reichert now says he doesn’t deserve. Taking Reichert at his word (that is, his latest word) what does this say about the first-term congressman’s character that he would actually brag about getting the single, working mom fired, when he says he had nothing to do with it? Chris Dugovich from the Washington State Council of County and City Employees will call in to give the driver’s side of the story, and we’ll be playing audio and taking your calls.

9PM: What do you get when you pack four drunken bloggers into the KIRO studio? Will, Mollie and Carl join me almost every week on Podcasting Liberally, recorded live at Seattle’s Montlake Alehouse, and they’ll be joining me in the studio for a Drinking Liberally roundtable discussion of electoral push. Is this the year a big blue wave sweeps the Democrats into power? Or will Karl Rove prove that American democracy is dead, and that nothing short of a violent revolution can dislodge the GOP from the reigns of power? Give us a call and let us know what you think, before all of us liberal bloggers are shipped off to Gitmo.

Tune in tonight (or listen to the live stream) and give me a call: 1-877-710-KIRO (5476).

For those who missed this week’s “The David Goldstein Show” (Newsradio 710-KIRO, Sunday nights from 7PM to 10PM,) the commercial-free podcasts are now available for your offline listening pleasure.

Hour 1: Are we on the brink of an historic military defeat in Iraq? Philip Gold is a former Senior Fellow in National Security Affairs at the conservative Seattle-based think tank the Discovery Institute. He predicted a Jihadist terrorist attack on US soil months before 9/11, and was one of the first prominent conservatives to warn that an Iraq invasion would lead to disaster. Now he fears that our current foreign policy could lead to our biggest ground defeat since the loss of the Philippines in 1942. Tune in and find out why this “former lifelong Republican” will be voting a straight Democratic ticket.

Hour 2: Q&A with Darcy and Peter. Two of the hottest House races in the nation are right here in Washington state, and both Democratic challengers, Darcy Burner and Peter Goldmark, joined me to talk about the election and their legislative agenda.

Hour 3: Do you believe what you read in the papers? Well, maybe the comics. Former Seattle Weekly columnist Geov Parrish came into the studio to give his kiss-and-tell account of the alt-weekly’s recent political purge, and to join me in ragging on the local media in general. Believe it or not, we had some harsh things to say about the Seattle Times editorial board. Go figure.

We will soon make full archives available online at PodcastingLiberally.com, where you can always find my weekly podcast for the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally.

SEIU president Andy Stern will be stopping by a special Monday night edition of Drinking Liberally, from 5:30PM to 7PM, to talk about his new book, A Country That Works. So please join me tonight at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E, for a pint of beer, free appetizers, and some fascinating conversation with one of the modern labor movement’s most influential leaders.

Don’t know who Andy Stern is, or what the letters SEIU stand for? Check out David Postman’s latest post.

Missed last night’s show? Starting last week, 710-KIRO is now podcasting my eponymously named “David Goldstein Show” so you can listen to me rant and rave at your leisure. Each commercial-free hour comes in at a manageable 35 minutes.

Hour 1: Is it time to stop electing judges? Former WA State Insurance Commissioner Deborah Senn joined me to discuss the hundreds of millions of dollars the US Chamber of Commerce is spending to influence local judicial races, and what we can possibly do to stop a corporatist takeover of our courts.

Hour 2: Tunnel, rebuild or no-build… can we afford to replace the Alaska Way Viaduct? The Stranger’s senior political correspondent Erica C. Barnett joined me in the studio to discuss the stunning new cost estimates on the Viaduct and 520 Floating Bridge replacement projects, while represents from the People’s Waterfront Coalition and the Sierra Club phoned in to present the case for a surface-street option.

Hour 3: Is torture an American value? National blogger Dave Neiwert joined me to discuss pending legislation that would permit the US soldiers and intelligence officers to commit acts of torture banned by international law and accepted norms of common decency.

We will soon make full archives available online at PodcastingLiberally.com, where you can always find my weekly podcast for the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally.

Token-Republican Jim Nobles showed up at Drinking Liberally last night, as promised, breathalyzer in hand. Now all we needed was a victim test subject to conduct our scientific experiment to see exactly how many drinks it takes to score a .17 blood-alcohol level — what the Urban Dictionary will one day define as “Mike McGavick Drunk.”

Sandeep’s years at The Stranger certainly left him well trained for the event, but he was too sleight of frame to approximate a 35-year-old McGavick, whereas as Nigel, at 240 pounds, was definitely too big. As for me, I’m too much of a pussy; I don’t think I could get through a six pack with throwing up.

Then in walked a newbie, Patrick: about 30-years-old, 185 pounds, and brashly proud of his Irish heritage (“I could drink McGavick under the table,” he bragged when I challenged him to donate his liver to science.) Best of all, he arrived with his own designated driver, his wife Tara. We’d found our man.

Patrick raised his first Mac & Jack’s at 8:25, and determinedly worked his way through four pints over the next hour with nothing but a hummus plate and some roasted garlic to buffer the alcohol. “I’m definitely drunk… I shouldn’t be driving” he told us at 9:25, before he courageously knocked back another pint.

At 9:35, five beers and an hour and ten minutes into the experiment, Patrick blew a 0.125, well past the legal limit of 0.08, but far short of McGavick’s state title.

At this point, I should take a moment to talk about what constitutes “a beer” or “a drink.” In my earlier posts on McGavick’s DUI I pointed out that all the online blood-alcohol calculators and charts suggest that it would take 8 to 9 drinks over the course of any hour for a 200 pound man to reach a 0.17, but of course, different beers have different alcohol content. For example, a Pyramid Snowcap might pack a 7.0% alcohol wallop, while it may surprise you to learn that at 4.0% Guinness has one of the lowest alcohol contents of any beer.

McGavick claims to have been drinking beer that fateful night, and we can be pretty damn sure that back in circa 1993 DC, he wasn’t drinking hopped up microbrews. Corona and Rolling Rock were pretty hip with the East Coast in crowd back then, both of which come in at 4.5% alcohol, while imports like Becks, Heineken and St. Pauli Girl top out at about 5.0% (as do standards like Coors, Budweiser and Miller.) So for the sake of comparison, let’s just assume that McGavick was drinking a 5.0% beer.

Patrick on the other hand was drinking a heftier, 5.5% alcohol Mac & Jack’s… at least he was until 9:48 when half-way through a sixth pint he switched to whiskey because he was getting too full.

10:05, halfway through a generous double Jack & Coke, Tara notes that her hubby of four months was “gettin’ loud,” and at 10:12, 1 hour and 37 minutes, and 7.5 drinks into the evening, Patrick blew a disappointing 0.14.

Patrick was clearly having trouble keeping up with his liver’s alcohol-processing capacity. Squinty-eyed, he started to question the test results

“I’m drunk… I’m so drunk you don’t even know,” Patrick slurred. “If I got in your car right now, I’d hit the car in front and behind me. FURTHERMORE, we need to look at how far he drove, because I couldn’t even make it a block.”

But drunk as he clearly was, he still wasn’t Mike McGavick Drunk, because he still had the common sense to know that he shouldn’t drive.

Still, nothing gets an Irishman’s Irish up like a challenge unmet and a drink undrunk, and so Patrick soldiered through yet another Jack & Coke. Finally, at 10:55, two hours, 30 minutes, and 8.5 drinks into our experiment, Patrick blew a .216.

Considering that McGavick blew his .17 nearly 90 minutes after being pulled over, we considered Patrick’s goal to have been met. Plus, we started to feel sorry for him, so we called the experiment a success.

Adjusting for alcohol content, I’d say Patrick’s 5 and a half nearly-topped-off pints of Mac & Jack’s was approximately equivalent to about 7 12-ounce bottles of Heineken, giving Patrick a McGavick-adjusted total of 10 drinks over 2 and a half hours. But what makes McGavick’s accomplishment all the more impressive is that he maintained his BAC over several hours, and still managed to blow a .17 at least an hour and half after he stopped drinking.

But however you want to compare the two’s alcohol consumption, there is one thing our little experiment proved beyond a shadow of a doubt: .17 is stinking drunk… well beyond the level of intoxication that even a drunk man would consider to be within the safe driving range. McGavick had been quoted as saying that he knew he shouldn’t have been behind the wheel the minute he was pulled over. But I’m pretty sure he knew he shouldn’t have been behind the wheel the minute he got behind it.

As for me, after my usual three Manny’s (5.5%) over a typical two and a half hour evening, I blew a .039%, less than half the legal limit. So there.

I’d like to perform an experiment, and I’m looking for a couple of volunteers.

First, I need somebody with a good quality, professional “breathalyzer.”

Second, I need an approximately 200-pound man, willing and able to consume eight drinks in a single hour. (Sorry Sandeep, you don’t meet the weight requirement.)

If we can get both of these to this Tuesday’s Drinking Liberally, I’d like to see exactly how many drinks it takes to achieve a 0.17 percent blood-alcohol level, and a general idea of the associated level of impairment. In fact, in the interest of accuracy, I am graciously extending an invitation to Mike!™ McGavick to join us as our test subject.

Send me an email if you can volunteer either or both. Drinks are on me, as is the ride home.

There’s lots of news besides the McGavick lawsuit to talk about….

• Catch Richard Wright on KUOW (94.9 FM) this morning
• A former Bush White House policy adviser will plead guilty to theft
• Examine this progress report on the reconstruction efforts in Iraq. Man…and Wingnuts complain about WSDOT!
• A Reichert ad with a veracity “issue” gets fixed
• Kansas science education isn’t in Kansas anymore
• I-Seattle Times (a.k.a. I-920) qualifies for the ballot
• (not) Breaking News: The President’s ignorance is dangerous
• In Pennsylvania, the Green Party is now a wholly owned subsidiary of the Republican Party
• The dot-blog bubble bursts: Washington State Political Report folds
• Remember the collective gasp (followed by a reluctant sigh of relief) when we learned that Dick Cheney boldly ordered United Flight 93 to be shot down if necessary? It was a total fucking lie! Listen to the NORAD recordings for yourself
• In related news, the 9/11 commission felt deceived by the Pentagon (hat tip: Upper Left)
• My excellent adventure with Willy J.
• Andrew at NPI has a pile of other news

Update: This week’s Podcasting Liberally was hosted by Will with guests Mollie, Gavin, Nick, and Carl. The 57:06, 39.4 MB show is available here (mp3). The show was recorded at Seattle’s Drinking Liberally and produced by Confab creators Gavin and Richard.