It's too late, I'm too tired, I know this will come back and bite me, but I'm going to post it.

Actually, I just got a really interesting idea that seems to answer the point of my original intended post. Two-photon emission. That's the only solution I see to the energy budget problem. Even if it were an inelastic collision and energy were dissipated by something other than the electron and CMB photon, another photon seems to be the only viable option.

Now, before Lyndon leaps at the chance to use this, there is a definitive way to predict the energy probability distribution of the second photon based on the energy of the incident photon. I'm just way to tired to hash through the details right now. This could be an interesting way to quantify redshift through each collision as well. I'll pursue this more when I wake up, if someone hasn't pointed out the hole in this that I'm too tired to see. ( )

Oh, heres a potential hole: there may be a spin conservation issue. :-k Hmm. I'll sleep on it. 8-[