Overcast and warm this Tuesday afternoon on California’s north coast — looks like it might rain, but that’s just near-natural.
Clouds, but no rain in the forecast — typical for up here.
News movement in the PM is much-about the same as this morning, though, one item appears to be gaining momentum — the bewildering dust-up over the uninhabited Senkakus islands just south of Japan.
Yesterday, a couple of US B-52s over flew the islands in defiance of a Chinese mandate for the island airspace. Spencer Ackerman at the Guardian this afternoon brings us to speed:
US warplanes have directly challenged China’s claims of an expanding territorial air defense zone, flying dramatically and without incident on Monday over a disputed island chain.
The incursion comes on the heels of a scathing statement over the weekend by defense secretary Chuck Hagel rejecting the expansion of the Chinese air defense zone into the East China sea as a provocative threat to regional stability.
But the Pentagon insisted Tuesday that the overflight was not a reaction to the Chinese declaration.
Lieutenant colonel Tom Crosson, a Defense Department spokesman, said the planes were not armed and flew “as part of a long-planned training sortie”.
The Chinese did not in any way attempt to challenge the planes’ flight, Crosson said, nor did the pilots announce themselves to any Chinese authorities.
Crosson said the Pentagon had yet to receive a message from China in response to the overflight.
This is just old hatreds — all three parties to this have hated each other for generations.
Everybody needs to chill, then talk (Bloomberg): The leaders have been purposely avoiding one another. South Korean President Park Geun Hye won’t meet with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe because of his government’s alleged soft-pedaling of Japan’s brutal wartime record. Chinese President Xi Jinping has rejected offers of a summit with Abe, saying that Tokyo must first admit that sovereignty over the Senkakus/Diaoyu is in dispute. Abe refuses to concede even that semantic point.
Meanwhile, CBS’ Lara Logan and her producer have been canned, though, officially, maybe, it’s only “a leave of absence” for the horror of practicing journalism without skills, ethics or good sense.
Logan was the ‘correspondent’ for the “60 Minutes” piece on Benghazi in October, which quickly blew-up in their collectives faces as a bullshit lie, a con-man conned the eye. She’s loaded with baggage.
As Digby points out: In other words, she’s a hardcore, but somewhat shallow, warhawk and her work needs to be seen through that filter. Perhaps 60 Minutes doesn’t care about that and is willing to label her as an advocate for a particular point of view within the military. But she must be labeled that way because that is what she is.
Tee-Vee simple.
And, cow farts are bad, even worse than that: Overall, as the Harvard Gazette explains, the study found methane emissions to be 1.5 times to 1.7 times higher than earlier estimates by the Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR) and the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
The report covers greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture and fossil fuel extraction and processing (i.e., oil and/or natural gas).
Finally, emissions in the wrong place — from the San Francisco Chronicle:
A San Francisco man was arrested this weekend after attacking an acquaintance who urinated on the floor of his home, police said.
Demarea Barnes, 23, allegedly punched and kicked an acquaintance who, instead of using the bathroom, soiled the carpet of his Bayview District apartment Saturday afternoon.
Officers found the 20-year-old victim unconscious on the sidewalk outside the home on the first block of Matthew Court.
The victim was taken to San Francisco General Hospital, where he was treated for head injuries.
Barnes fled after the attack, police said, but later returned to his apartment.
He was booked in county jail on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon.
And on into the evening — and maybe the new episode of “Castle” on Hulu.
(Illustration above found here).