Dear Readers: It’s going to be Military History Page week on Canto Talk, or so it seems. This Tuesday, we will be joined by Rik Fox, who will be chatting about the famed Polish Winged Hussars. We will also be talking to fellow SLOB Charles Fettinger about a wonderful Victor David Hansen piece,Beautifully Medieval California. (CLICK HERE TUESDAY, MARCH 12 AT 1 PM PST/3 PM CT/4 PM EST for the show podcast).
First, Rik Fox will be appearing 9 pm this Thursday, March on History Canada‘s Museum Secrets show.
Rik Fox on Museum Secrets: Inside the State Historical Museum, Moscow
Museum Secrets is a TV series on History Television in Canada and a website with videos and games; exploring the world’s renowned museums and their most enigmatic objects. Narrated by Canadian actor Colm Feore, the TV series is now in production for a third season. Rik is featured in this episode, as the focus is on a display of Wing Hussar equipment and weaponry. A sneak peak is here:
Victor Davis Hansen’s piece contained many great analogies to Medieval Times:
But feudal California is more than a sense of bifurcated classes and locations. It adopts a closed medieval state of mind too. The Renaissance marked a lessening of the intolerance and censorship of the medieval clergy. Art, literature, science, and philosophy were freed from shibboleths of Aristotle, Church doctrine, and formalistic conventions. But California has of yet had no such renaissance. In our closed, anti-scientific, and deductive way of thinking, Solyndra was a success. Drilling for cheap natural gas in the Monterey Shale formation would be seen as failure. When our governor told Rick Perry that Californians did not need to cool off in 110 degree heat through “fossil fuel”-fed air conditioning, he did not mean that solar panels were energizing green air conditioners in Barstow, but rather that our elites on the coast have natural air conditioning; it’s called the Pacific Ocean. And although wind and solar provide miniscule amounts of California energy, it matters little, given that coastal elites enjoy 70 degree weather year-round and keep their power bills low. PG&E’s and Southern California Edison’s astronomical energy costs are for “little people,” the middle classes in the hot and cold interior and mountains.
However, there is hope: Los Angeles just rejected a sales tax hike:
A follow-up to my post from yesterday, “South-Central Voters Went 60-100 Percent in Favor of Failed Los Angeles Sales Tax Hike on Tuesday’s Ballot.”
And remember, the local sales tax would have surged to 9.5 percent. An Angelino would be paying nearly an additional 10 percent to taxes for each taxable consumer purchase in Los Angeles.
At the Los Angeles Times, “L.A. tax-hike vote patterns tell a tale of two realities“: Those in higher-crime areas, who vote in lower numbers, supported the proposal almost to the same extent that more affluent voters rejected it. The hike was defeated.
One last note: I did say it was going to be Military History Page week! I will also be on Thursday, at the usual time, to chat with Deadliest Blogger Barry Jacobsen about the “Ides of March”.
This will be a great week