I was surprised at the claim of using only 4300 kWh/year at the Clinton's Chappaqua residence. Even the 14000 number that she implies was the starting number before modifications is pretty modest. It was a pity the interviewer didn't scratch this point further - was the low number due to not actually living at the residence a large part of the year? Should perhaps the Senator's DC address be included in the energy survey? Is she including only electrical energy (probably yes), and if so, how is the wintertime heating supplied, and at what energy use?

I don't want to necessarily find gratuitous fault with the Senator's responses. If she's hedging by reporting on just electricity use in a home that's vacant a lot, that's OK. But I often wish reporters that can gain access to senior politicians had a bit more technical savvy. To me those numbers just sounded crazy low, and if it's reasonable to count the hours Guiliani spent at Yankees games versus Ground Zero in fall 2001, then it's reasonable to ask Clinton the obvious follow-up questions.

And to think I was actually beginning to consider voting for Hillary.

She's for coal, because we have a lot of it and against nuclear because it's politically unfeasible (I'm not even going to address the waste storage issue. There is a place for it. Political games have kept it from being stored there.)

Uhm. Yeah.

I am soooo going to work hard to keep this woman out of office.

Sorry Bill. I'd love to see you as First Lady!

Again and again, easy questions, no challenges, as Salon continues to play the drumbeat cadence to which we are all supposed to march her into the White House.

Afraid not.

Hitlery "Clean Coal" Clinton is just like one of the boys. She knows how the game is played. She is for "dirty" energy. Live with it, libs.

Unfortunately the only way to reduce greenhouse gases by 80% globally in the next 40 years is stop burning coal or to sequester the CO2 from all of the coal you burn. Alternatives can make a dent into coal usage and maybe, just maybe, CO2 sequestration technologies can be developed to make coal "clean" but I seriously doubt it. The world (not just the USA) has to drastically scale up the construction of nuclear power plants in the next 40 years if we are going to seriously reduce green house admissions. There is just no other way to get at the problem of greenhouse gases. It's a shame that Hilary does not have the guts to tell the coal industry or environmentalists that nuclear power is a key component of the solution but most democrats don't have the guts to say it either. As a matter of fact even most of the European advocates of the Kyoto accord don't have the guts to come out and admit it.

Coal is a disaster (As you have just seen) to mine, it takes heavy rail to get it to the power plants, it has to be pulverized and injected with pure oxygen into fluid bed retorts to heat steam for the turbines to crank out the electricity which still gets put up on the national distribution grid system.

There are three sub-businesses in the electrical energy business: There is Generation, Transmission, and Distribution. Two of those three businesses are big money makers, the other one is a dog nobody wants. That's the Transmission business.

When the electric energy business was finally deregulated, greedy companies (Enron for one) bought up whole electric companies and kept only the part that makes money: Generation and Distribution. They wanted no part of maintaining the grid or improving it. Too expensive. Not enough ROI for stockholders.

The days of the big cross-country transmission lines are over. Nobody wants in that business. Not only that, but a national grid is vulnerable to consumer extortion and gouging not to mention the frailties of the damned things. More storms, more downed lines.

Alternative energy is coming. There is enough heat energy going to waste out the vents over the deep fryers and hamburger broilers of fast food joints to power hundreds of houses in every town. Solar panels are getting cheaper and more efficient every day. The wind never stops. Ocean wave energy beats on our coastlines incessantly. All of these energy sources, coupled with more efficient uses of energy, is all we need.

We don't need that damned coal. Hillary is getting bought off, what a big surprise. Not.

Hillary is probably the smartest politician in Washington and this is what drives the Republicans up the wall.

When the GOP shoved Bush into the presidency they wanted an idiot to take marching orders from Cheney, Rove, Rumsfeld, and the other neocon loonies.

Hillary is her own person and this has the GOP worried.

I saw a documentary on PBS where scientists claimed that after Britain started burning huge amounts of coal, the soot in the air cooled off the country by blocking sunlight.

This came along with an increase in respiratory illnesses, and some consequences for wildlife.

Back then it wasn't seen as a good thing to cool the country down. But now things are different. The tradeoff might be worth it now.

In the documentary, the scientists emphasized that clean air efforts have actually accelerated global warming because people have cleared the air of the pollution components that block sunlight, without getting rid of the CO2.

I'm reminded of something either Jesse Jackson or Mario Cuomo said about Clinton's husband -- "we may not agree with everything he says all the time, but he's one of us, and he will listen."

She's cut from different cloth as he -- reserved where he's ebullient, tight lipped where he would grin his bashful grin, and she certainly does not sincerely love everyone or possibly even anyone she meets. But like him she will listen.

Unlike anyone the GOP is nominating.

Anything but the right things seems to be our energy policy these days. Clean coal? Christ. I can't wait for the not-so-Big Three to unveil their new line of coal-powered sedans. Throw some coal in the hopper and drive all day. Come with their own acid rain ponchos and breathing masks to filter out the pollutants. Coal is King! It's morning in America again, koff koff koff!