Google knows that the potential long-term benefits are huge. And those benefits go beyond simple cheaper electric bills. There are things that are (for the moment) difficult to quantify, such as the savings from not having all the downstream* effects of a combustion-based energy infrastructure.

This is not quixotic, it is visionary and inevitable. That a company like Google is leading the way ought to be a given. They've been right about too much to dismiss out of hand.

* Health and pollution based positives, which will manifest themselves once such things become commonplace.

Someone I have known for years won a local election again this wear, and at his victory celebration (a small, but well-attended event) I got into a discussion with a backer of Sen. Clinton. He (yes, he) was adamant that electing a woman was the most important thing we could do.

I asked him if he would feel the same if that elected woman happened to be Elizabeth Dole or Condoleezza Rice. He said yes.

I walked away, knowing that there was literally nothing I could have said at that point to alter his view. And I was not about to try - arguing with fanatics is almost always a waste of time.

We cannot reason people out of positions they have not been reasoned into beforehand. Best not to try.

And over on the Huffington Post, Cenk Uygur raised an honest question: If her name instead was Sen. Hillary Smith, would she be the Dems' frontrunner, or even a viable candidate?

What difference does the reason make (although I hesitate to use the term "reason" when dealing with many of todays' Republicans) as long as Romney loses? The man is a palpable fraud. He never met an issue he didn't take multiple stands on, based on the three fingers he has in the wind at any given moment.

He's a fraud, Giuliani's flat-out nuts, and crooked to boot, Thompson's either senile or just asleep, Ron Paul is right about Iraq and at the same time, wrong about just about everything else, and Huckabee...well, do we really want another secrecy-obsessive* who can not face up to the reality of evolution as President?

* Ask him about those crushed hard drives...

It's not "Don't be imperfect." And it's just fine by me. The guy wants a nice wedding, he can afford it, who cares?

In environmental terms, care more about those hundreds of coal-fired power plants China is building. Care that because the Twin Cities have only one light rail line, and an abysmal bus system, commuters spend a lot of time waiting in traffic. (We're far ahead of our market size in terms of traffic congestion.)

Care that we make ethanol from corn instead of other things, because corn-based ethanol is not energy efficient and raises the price of tortillas for people in Mexico who have no cars in which to burn the ethanol.

Care that as a nation of 300+ million, we have no such thing as a national policy designed to take us further towards energy efficiency on a scale that all the Prius-driving, CFL-lighting, phone charger-unplugging purists will never move us towards in consumer-driven increments. Care that commercial buildings consume far more energy than home computers.

And care that our real problem soon may be water. Whether it's too salty, rising where we don't want it, not where we need it, or full of ag and industrial runoff, we're going to look back on the days of "oil shortages" with fond nostalgia soon enough.

And if all that isn't enough to shut up both the hypocrites and the purity-testers, their motto said "Don't be evil." Mine is "Don't be a self-righteous jerk." Compromise is a part of life for all but the delusional.

Even after only the first page of these LTEs, I'm thinking it's long past time to remove the "anonymous" option.

If you're not willing to put your name on it, is what you have to say really worth saying (or reading) after all?

To "anonymous": You are a coward. You post all sorts of belligerent nonsense and hide behind anonymity. You are not worth the pixels you consume here, let alone the oxygen in the real world.

It makes no difference where it originates. China, the US, India, wherever. Do you think the upper atmosphere cares?

The bottom line, as things currently stand is this: If you live near a coast, consider a move inland. If you live on an island, be sure you have a boat in good order.

I wonder if there really is any hope, given the looming near-50% world population increase. Even dramatic per capita cuts in CO2 output will have little effect if population growth means we still increase our output in absolute terms.

The "religious right" does seem to like the idea of people committing violent acts against their fellows. Where are those of that diseased, repellent faction who outright condemned the murder of, for example, Dr. Barnett Slepian? Or the condemnation of the murderers of Matthew Shepard? Those are just the first two that come to mind, remember. There have been many others. Enough to recognize a pattern when there is one, to be sure.

Huckabee is just one of the many - Willard Romney wants to "double Guantanamo". Giuliani, well, he claims to have roughly interrogated Mafia suspects - those from rival families, we might suspect, given his "interesting" personal history and aassociations, and many of the others in that sorry Repub field are also advocates for torture.

...and you're welcome to him.

In other breaking news, the sun will rise in the east tomorrow, water is reported by some to be "wet", and dogs have bitten men.

Film at eleven...