Wake me when they make a Penny Arcade [1], PhD Comics [2], or pre-96 Dilbert [3] movie

[1] http://penny-arcade.com/comic/
[2] http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilbert

http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?story_id=12795471&fsrc=nwlehfree

The author takes the opportunity to use it to illustrate differences between Continental European culture and that of the Anglosphere.

The two most interesting parts of the article on the July 20 plot you link to:

The problem with this analysis is that Germany still had a lot to bargain with after the British summer offensive in 1918, too, yet their army and government collapsed as soon as it became known their diplomats were treating for an armistice. No one wants to be the last soldier killed in a war, especially a soldier on the side that is clearly losing. The provisional government (the uninspiring General Ludwig Beck was to lead it) would have been unlikely to be able to control the situation. The Germans armies in the west would probably have simply melted away, rather than wait for an armistice. The government would not have been able to gain control in the homeland: Nazi Germany was a party state, one where the official civil service could do nothing without party cooperation. It would be possible to overcome the party only with the army, but the Home Army was barely sufficient to occupy Berlin. Whatever the Germany armies did in the east, they would have been unlikely to follow orders from Beck’s government in Berlin. Many more of the eastern units were SS after all, and even the regular army types were often committed Nazis. One suspects that they would have diverted whatever forces they could in order to take Berlin and reestablish a Nazi government. That government would then have tried to recoup matters in the west.

and

My guess is that the end result of von Stauffenberg’s bomb would have been to bring Himmler to power. It is not impossible to imagine him negotiating peace with either east or west. Of course, it is also not impossible to imagine him using nerve gas on the eastern front. For that matter, it is not impossible to imagine him making human sacrifices to Odin under the Brandenberg Gate. Perhaps the oddest fact about the very odd history of Nazi Germany is that Hitler was a moderate Nazi. Far more than Goebbels or Roehm, say, he was content to let civil society be, so long as his primary goals of expansion in the east and the extermination of the Jews were carried forward. Himmler, in contrast, may have been the most radical Nazi of them all. The regime he might have created would not have lasted long, but it would have been uniquely extreme.

I think it’s important to separate Hitler’s ‘moderate’ National-Socialism from the possibly meth-fueled madness of the last few years. Whatever coherent policy and strategy the fully-functioning Hitler had once been able to execute collapsed in 1944-1945.

Perhaps an analogy to the July 20 plot is the odd circumstances surrounding the death of Lin Biao [1]. The theory that one of the Leftist leaders of the Cultural Revolution and designated successor to Mao Zedong was conspiring with the Soviet Union to KMT to unite both China and the Communist world under a Breshnevian regime may not be true — but it proves that weird things can happen in the politics of personalities.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lin_Biao

“If the July 20 Plot Had Succeeded…..”
http://www.johnreilly.info/j1944.htm

(IIRC, the historian John Lukacs has reached similar conclusions in one of his books….)

http://www.adbusters.org/campaigns/oneflag

Personally, I’m partial to Wonder Koch’s flag–flag #7, but I guess that’s just me

(7′s a lucky number, no?)

http://www.velociworld.com/Velociblog/Oldvelocity/003316.html

Well, the author of the above doesn’t think so….

“Liberalism, Conservatism, and Families”
Fran Porretto, 12/12/08

http://www.eternityroad.info/index.php/weblog/single/liberalism_conservatism_and_families/

Obliquely-related–perhaps to be non-related at all, but presented as a kind of “thought experiment,” so to speak:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arengo

Now for something “cute”:

http://contrapauli.blogspot.com/2008/12/happy-slip-more-processed-meat.html

Yeah, ’tis a “Filipino” thing, but anyone should be able to get it.
(And I agree that the Best Gift is Money…. [works for me! (At least on the receiving end, anyway...])

It is Louisiana though…

How about Gov. Mitch Daniels in Indiana? I have heard good things about him, especially how he dealt with that state’s budget deficit in the past.