On September 2^nd, 1945, the formal ceremony ending World War II took place aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay.

It took the United States 1366 days to help end World War II after the attack at Pearl Harbor.

This is the 1263^rd day of the Iraq War.

It is time to invoke “Momma’s Rule for Meals”: you can’t go back for more, until you finish everything on your plate. Until Afghanistan and Iraq are over, don’t even think about Iran.

If they are going to act like whiny pre-schoolers, treat them like whiny pre-schoolers.

PSotD tagged his blogroll asking about Labor Day, and I’m at a slight disadvantage because for a big chunk of my life it was celebrated as May Day where I was living.

It is rather unique, as it is the only holiday I’m aware of that was imported from Canada where it’s spelled Labour Day.

When I was an elementary school student, it marked the end of summer and beginning of school, but it is a rare holiday in the South as there is no tradition of blowing things up in celebration. There is also no tradition of honoring labor in the South, and labor unions are considered communist conspiracies.

Things were different in New York, as it was considered respectable to belong to a union and at various times I belonged to two, and was actually elected treasurer of my AFSCME local.

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More than two millennia ago a guy wrote a story about the unintended consequences of lying to people.

The IAEA inspectors reported back to the Security Council that they don’t know if Iran wants to build nuclear weapons. The Shrubbery said that if you can’t prove that Iran is not building weapons, then it’s obvious that they are and we must impose sanctions on Iran. The Europeans and the Russians aren’t buying it.

What bothers the Europeans and Russians is the fact that the Iranians are saying: You want sanctions? Well, we can impose our own sanctions by reducing our oil exports by a third. Because of the spike in oil prices, the reduction in output won’t affect the Iranian budget, but the loss of that much oil could double the price of a barrel of crude.

It was interesting to listen to the Robert Siegel piece, Negroponte Hopes to Prevent Intel ‘Fiasco’ :

Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte says he hopes that U.S. attempts to gather intelligence on Iran’s nuclear weapons program are productive — and accurate.

Someone must have warned Negroponte about the job Siegel did on Michael Chertoff after Katrina, letting Chertoff tell the world that there was no one at the New Orleans Convention Center while John Burnett was on the other phone reporting from the Convention Center. How nasty can those NPR reporters get – live fact-checking of government spokesweasels? It would never happen at Faux.

Negroponte also said he didn’t play Colonel Klink and Chertoff swore he never modeled for Edvard Munch. [You must include gratuitous snark on the weekend.]