65 years ago this morning Japan did this in front of Douglas MacArthur (video)

Today is the 65th anniversary of Japan's surrender, officially ending World War II.

Since so many alive today were not back then, return with us now to those moving 20 minutes on the deck of the battleship Missouri moored in Tokyo Bay on that overcast day of renewed peace six years and one day after the war began.

And the simple and thus enduring words of Gen. Douglas MacArthur about that morning and that era's titanic global struggle:

"These proceedings are closed."

 

 

There's also a fascinating photo gallery on the surrender over here.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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Unpopular wars = unpopular presidents; Obama's moves on Iraq and Afghanistan as 2012 nears

No wonder President Obama used only his second Oval Office address to get the Iraq war so publicly off the domestic debate table this week, just nine weeks before his first midterm elections.

He even flew VP Joe Biden over for another quick tour of duty in Baghdad to underline for the public (media) the occasion of the end of U.S. combat operations -- officially, at least, since 50,000 U.S. troops remain there.

Wizard Gary Langer, the chief numbers-crunching consultant over at ABC News, has been tracking the effect of unpopular wars on presidential approvals. Not surprising, not good.

Harry Truman (Korea) lost 25 points during his conflict. Lyndon Johnson (Vietnam) dropped 32. And George W. Bush (Iraq) plummeted 43. Even without formal wars, foreign incidents can pummel pols back home; just ask helpless President Carter about the Iranian hostage crisis that helpfully elected Ronald Reagan in 1980.

Four years into peacetime, albeit the Cold War, Truman had 54% approval in 1949. That fell to....

Joe Biden update: Turning over the keys in Iraq

With the administration's Top Talker in a made-over Oval Office doing his thing about the end of U.S. combat in Iraq -- to mixed reviews -- Joe Biden was dispatched to Baghdad to talk about what's really happening: The end of the beginning for the U.S. and the beginning of the end for the next stage.

The next stage is not about shock and awe; it's about politicking and diplomacy down to the sandbox level of that troubled country. You won't see that much of it on the TV news in coming months, just the explosive interruptions of ongoing IEDs.

But as always with this Chicago-born-and-bred administration, there's a political point: To put the official Iraq fighting in the nation's rearview mirror. Whether that helps Obama's Democrats on Nov. 2 is dubious. The success of President Bush's once-controversial troop surge has long-since diminished that war's divisiveness and attention that was so critical to Obama's political ascent.

Now, he's stuck with his own war in Afghanistan where the Democrat has already ordered twice as many troop surges as you-know-who from Texas. And the U.S. is now witnessing the increased casualties that accompany increased troops.

But in terms of successfully transitioning from Saddam Hussein's playground to possibly a stable sort-of democratic country in a volatile region, this next stage is at least as important as the first -- and will probably last longer.

As usual in such speeches, there are numerous flourishes, thank yous, recollection, applause lines, yada yada. But here for Ticket readers in a hurry are the guts of what Biden had to say:

"Perhaps the most important development of all is that in the aftermath of a....

Social media wrap: Glenn Beck, Jon Stewart, Rachel Maddow and the battle of TV's talking heads

In social media, it rarely matters whether you’re loved or hated. In the old theatrical adage, if you’re entertaining, it means “bums on seats.”
 
The Ticket gleaned this from a fascinating new social-media study that examined the leading eight “talking heads” on TV and their effect on users of social-media networks including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Digg.

Perhaps unsurprisingly in light of his recent rally on the steps of the Lincoln Monument, Fox News host Glenn Beck is by far the most liked -- and disliked -- of TV’s talking heads on social-media networks, ranking ahead of Jon Stewart ("The Daily Show"), Bill O’Reilly (Fox News) and Rachel Maddow (MSNBC) by a large margin. 

Beck consistently generated the highest volume of “chatter” across social networks, or a plurality at more than 50% of user comments on public forums. Stewart placed second in both volume of ...

Social media wrap: Obama retweets his own Iraq speech [Updated]

So far, the most prominent politician to comment on President Obama's Iraq speech is President Obama.

Doesn't anyone else care?

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FOR THE RECORD:
Added at 4:13 p.m.: An earlier version of this post and its headline were based on the assumption that President Obama tweeted four times during his Oval Office address. In fact, the tweets appeared after his address.

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The president tweeted four times after his 19-minute address -- all via automatic tweet feeder HootSuite -- the most interesting of which was:
 
"There were patriots who supported this war and who opposed it. We are united in appreciation for our troops and our hope for Iraq’s future."

Perennial Facebook poster Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana chimed in criticizing the president and Sen. John McCain took time out from tweeting with Snooki to say the president's withdrawal policy "will doom us to failure."  But then, silence. From either side.

Compared with the bipartisan outpouring in reaction to Justice Elena Kagan's ascent to the highest court in ...

Obama speech: Official end to U.S. combat in Iraq, but so many But's

Barack Obama gives weird Oval Office addresses.

After becoming the first president ever not to address fellow citizens from that strangely clear desk during his first year in office, the Democrat gave his second Oval Office speech in 11 weeks Tuesday night to mark the scheduled end of U.S. combat ops in Iraq after seven years and 4,421 American deaths.

Obama had to mark the occasion because his entire Democratic political personna was based on opposition to the Iraq war. (Also closing Guantanamo; but that's another story.) And there are midterm elections looming Nov. 2 with polls predicting a stateside surge in Republican troops.

But Obama couldn't celebrate the combatless occasion because, truth be told, there's still a lot of killing to be done over there, even with American forces reduced to 50,000 from a peak of 176,000. Nevermind President Bush's "Mission Accomplished" gaffe, Obama has his own embarrassing "Recovery Summer" scar still unhealed.

The first-term president learned a few things from his previous....