Blogging the Texas Democratic Convention - Chris Bell!

Allison Bell is up talking about her husband. She starts in on the TAKS test, saying we don't need to teach to a test, instead we need to teach a real curriculum. Speaks about her breast cancer. She introduces a film about Chris.

It has lots of back story on Chris. Chris has some funny moments. He really focuses on education. Health care - we have a moral obligation to do stem cell research. Good stuff!

There are a lot of reminders at this convention that Chris Bell brought the first ethics charge against Delay when he was a congressman (almost two years ago tonight). REMINDER (in case you are hiding under a rock): Today is Tom DeLay's resignation day! Yippee! Lots of celebrating going on here at the convention.

Chris Bell is up! Starts in on our schools - they are competing with Arkansas and Mississippi. Ouch. Slamming on Rick Perry and Strayhorn. "You say you want a revolution?" He'll make building the best public school system in the nation his top priority. This will be the best economic development program this state has ever seen. He does not like TAKS! Too much teaching to the test. Too much reliance on high stakes standardized testing. We need to get teacher's pay up to the national average.

"Rick Perry is a miserable failure as governor!" Standing ovation. Besides education, he is also a failure on health care.

Back on to schools. We have such old textbooks in our schools, that some of our social studies books still refer to Ann Richards as the governor of Texas. :)

Chris is pro-science! I like hearing about this from both General Clark and Chris Bell. This is important. The Bush administration is flat out anti-science on so many fronts and Bush's science advisors are a joke.

He's not kidding about being pro-stem cell research. Good for Chris.

Chris has a message at this convention that I heard him talk about at one of the caucuses I went to today: we need to learn how to win again. And, we are not going to win again if we sell out to the lessor of two Republicans. Strayhorn and Perry are two sleeves of the same empty suit. Makes points about how Strayhorn has helped Perry maintain his reign of error. Strayhorn is a politician in search of a parade and now she is trying to be our buddy. We don't need that, we need someone who will be consistent with us.

Join Chris in making our state great again!

Burnt Orange Report (Damon McCullar is blogging next to me on the convention floor) has a transcript of Bell's remarks.

Ahh, the music is Say You Want a Revolution!! Cool!!!