Saturday With Sen. And Mrs. Kerry II

"It's 254 pages written on recycled Attorney General Gonzales e-mails. Actually, we couldn't find 'em. We're still looking."

Who says John Kerry can't tell a joke?

On Saturday, Senator John Kerry and his wife Teresa Heinz Kerry made an appearance at a local Barnes & Noble to promote their new book, This Moment on Earth.

dayvoe of 2 Political Junkies and I we're contacted beforehand and asked if we would like to attend. Along with bloggers from the John Kerry Blog and Democratic Underground we had a few minutes before the event to talk the the Senator and Mrs. Kerry in relative privacy. Sen. Kerry discussed the importance of peer-review saying, "All 928 of peer-reviewed studies find that human beings are contributing to global climate change. Not one study to the contrary is peer-reviewed. Not one." In response to a comment of mine, Kerry said of Sen. James Inhofe, "[He's the] flat-earth caucus leader." The Senator then went on to outline the three things the government can do:

1. Energy efficiency

2. Alternative and renewable fuels

3. Clean coal

The Kerrys addressed an packed house. Summarizing their book, the Senator said: "This book is, really, an optimistic book. It should make you angry for five minutes, ten minutes, we hope, and then transfer that into the inspiration that comes out of the stories of all the people we write about and the great things they've accomplished. Average citizens who've made changes and who fought the government to get the accountability and enforcement that they deserve and the law says they should have."

What separates this book from Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth is the focus on everyday people who have practical solutions to the environmental problems facing us. "I was involved in the first Earth Day in 1970.
Twenty million people came out and said, 'We're gonna change things.' They created the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the Coastal Zone Management Act, and even the Environmental Protection Agency was signed into existence by Richard Nixon in 1972 because of that effort. We made the environment a voting issue."

Mrs. Kerry summed it up best: "This book is a reaffirmation of the quality of thinking and conversation that the American people shared with us on the road."

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ADDED: Global Villiage has her take here.

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Comments

[Rick Albertson]

It was quite the treat to meet up with you guys yesterday. A good time was had by all. We really must do this again sometime.

Some other info & updated links about this particular blip in the space-time continuum are over on The Tall Guy's blogsite at blog.johnkerry.com -- including props to this fine online establishment and links to your post'n'pics, not to mention some finestkind other comments, pics & video content that GlobalVillage put up on Democratic Underground as well during & after the event.

I'll be writing up a more involved assessment of the experience over on that site on Monday too, so if you're in the neighborhood drop by and say howdy.

Meanwhile, be sure to give your Moms a big hug for me, hey? If nothing else, the quizzical look on her face will be worth it.

:0)