Thank You, Robin Ficker!

We offer a hearty congratulations and our deepest thanks this morning to an obnoxious pain-in-the-ass loudmouth whose very name has been little more than the punchline of a joke for the past three decades. Robin Ficker is an anti-tax gadfly in Montgomery County - someone who has railed against tax-and-spend local government for decades - and someone who had become accustomed to being roundly ignored by both local lawmakers and voters.

Ficker is known mostly for getting anti-tax referendums placed on county ballots - referendums that have been soundly defeated, until now. After a count of absentee ballots, Ficker's latest amendment has actually been approved by voters. The measure, which requires a unanimous vote of the county council to increase taxes beyond a cap set by the county's charter, will likely have little effect, and will likely be reversed as soon as lawmakers can figure out a way to do it.

But in passing Ficker's amendment, voters have done two things. They have told lawmakers to find other ways to generate revenue aside from increasing taxes. And more importantly, they have reminded elected officials that there IS more than one valid point of view in Montgomery County. Ficker himself told the Washington Post, "As evidenced by this vote, there are a lot of homeowners who feel their voices are not being heard," he said. "Someone is going to give these bipartisan homeowners a voice."

When I was a news director, I didn't take Robin Ficker very seriously, and neither did anyone I worked with in the media. Thank God for his thick skin and stubborn determination. Thank you, Robin Ficker.

Reasons To Be Thankful

Sure, the economy sucks, and yes, it's scary to think that things are going to get worse before they get better. But the fact is that human nature (or is it simply being American) dictates that we spend more time obsessing over the things we don't have instead of appreciating the things that we do have.

Check out this video by comedian Louis C.K. with Conan O'Brien. C.K. recognizes that we take too many things for granted. Yes, he's doing a stand-up comedy routine, but he makes some excellent points! So the next time Tivo clips off the last minute of a program you had recorded, don't be angry... Be thankful!

More Inauguration Bullsh**!

Two items of note on the inauguration today...

First, it looks like organizers (well, everyone but Mayor Adrian Fenty) are now backing away from yesterday's rediculous report that as many as four million people could be on the Mall for the inauguration, and now the top figure seems to be 3 million. As mentioned yesterday, I believe four million is logistically impossible, and I don't think they'll get to three million, either.

Charlie Gibson mentioned on ABC's World News last night that 3 million would exceed:

• Reagan's First Inauguration
• LBJ's record-setting 1.2 million inauguration
• Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have A Dream" speech and
• The Million Man March

COMBINED. He also mentioned that the region's 90,000 hotel rooms could accomodate three million people - as long as folks didn't mind sharing 33 people to a room!

It's heartening to see other media call B.S. on this Inauguration crowd story, but there's not a whiff of crowd size revision in this morning's Washington Post.

The Post does redeem itself somewhat by reporting in Marc Fisher's blog that Montgomery County School chief Jerry Weast has called B.S. on an online petition from students and teachers asking for an extra day off to observe the inauguration. Weast says he doubts very many students would actually try to go down to the Mall, and he says, in any case, they'd learn more by watching the ceremony in school where it could be discussed in class - a point I made in this space last week!

Happy Birthday, Mickey Mouse!

I would be remiss in letting this day go by without wishing a great big happy 80th birthday to my personal friend, Mickey Mouse! "Born" on November 18, 1928, when his film, "Steamboat Willie", the world's first cartoon with sound, made its debut at the Colony Theater in New York. Mickey's creator, Walt Disney, had created Mickey after an unscrupulous film distributor pulled a fast one on Walt, and retained the rights to Walt's earlier creation, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. Oswald remained the property of Universal pictures until just a couple of years ago, when NBC/Universal traded Oswald back to Disney in exchange for agreeing to release "Monday Night Football" host Al Michaels out of his contract with ABC Sports in order to join NBC's new primetime football broadcast team. Oddly enough (or not), Oswald bore a striking resemblance to Mickey, with long ears instead of round ones, but no matter. The rest, as they say, is history.

To celebrate Mickey's milestone, we present his greatest film role - as the Sorcerer's Apprentice in 1940's Disney classic, "Fantasia".

OK - I'm calling Bullsh** On The Washington Post!

Earlier this week, the Washington Post's media critic, Howard Kurtz, made the observation that the so-called "Mainstream Media" is falling all over itself to fawn over the Obama administration. I can find no better evidence of that than in Kurtz' own newspaper this morning, where the Post is warning that as many as four million people could fill the Mall and environs for Inauguration Day on January 20th.

I have no doubt whatsoever that President Obama's swearing-in will smash all previous inauguration records, but the premise that it will draw a crowd of that size is logistically impossible - and the Post knows it.

The largest crowd in recent history occured during the Million Man March - pictured above - and that crowd fell well short of a million, despite any political assertions made otherwise. When the US Park Police set the figure at closer to 400,000, march organizers threatened to sue, and Congress ordered Park Police to no longer provide crowd estimates for events.

But let's set aside political motivations, and ask logistical questions instead.

• How will four million people get to the Mall? The busiest day in Metro history carried 850,000 thousand passengers - and most of those were round-trips, so that accounts for about 450,000 people. Can you tell me how Metro is going to increase its passenger load by a factor of 8 or 9?


• They will park buses at RFK Stadium, and some people will walk from there. If they had a thousand buses - an extraordinary number - and they each had 50 people on board, that is still only 50,000 people. A pittance when you're trying to get four million people on the Mall.


• Where will four million people eat and sleep? There are 90,000 hotel rooms in the area. Even with four people to a room, you need to find basement floors for millions of more houseguests to sleep in. And when those four million get to the mall, where will they go to the bathroom? Are there even enough porta-johns in the DC area to accomodate four million people?


• This event is in January - Where will these four million people be when it rains or snows?

Look, I get the excitement that the Obama inauguration will bring, but there's just no way, short of having people camp out for days in ideal weather, that even half that many people are going to be on the Mall or on Pennsylvania Avenue on January 20th. The government is doing its job by preparing as much as it can for huge crowds, but the Washington Post is NOT doing its job by not calling B.S. on those kinds of crowd estimates... So I'm calling B.S. on the Post!

Live Long And Prosper!

It's a Slow Tuesday morning, so until I come up with something scintillating to entertain you with, please enjoy the just-released trailer from the new Star Trek film, coming to a galaxy near you next May...

Monday Musings

Just a few random thoughts and news notes from over the weekend...

• If the Redskins don't get a pass rush, they might end the season 6 - 10.


• I have a small rant. I will admit up front I am a bit of a lead-footed driver, and I've written about that before, more than once. But why is it when motorists drive past speed cameras, they slow down below the speed limit? It drives me insane. People who are tooling along at 40 in a 35 mile-an-hour zone will slow down to 25, when they'd be perfectly fine if they had just stayed at 40. The law in Montgomery County states that the camera will be triggered only for drivers going 10 or more miles over the speed limit. As these cameras mature, you have to wonder how effective they are. Everyone knows where the cameras are, so one-block stretches of roadway are being protected. Beyond that - not so much.


• I filled up my minivan for 30 dollars yesterday at the Costco in Frederick, where the price for regular for $1.89 a gallon. I've been trying to remember the last time I paid this little for gas, and I just can't. I know this is a really bad indicator for the economy, but at the moment I just don't care. I can't wait to fill my Civic for less than 20 bucks! You can't help but wonder what shape the US auto industry would be in if this plunge had happened a year ago instead of now... But then again, if this had happened a year ago, a whole lot of things about the economy - and perhaps the outcome of the election - would have been different.

Finally - A video for you that harkens back to the days when jet fuel was cheap, but jet travel was not. A time before baggage fees and sardine class seating - when people would wear their Sunday best on planes, instead of their pajamas. It's Pan Am - 1958!