I'm Appalled

The owners of such restaurants as Outback Steakhouse, Bonefish Grill and Carraba's Italian Grill, among others, have decided that their servers are making too much money from tips.

Those dastardly credit card companies have the nerve to take a 3% fee, which is just too much for the restaurants to handle, so they have decided to make their servers chip in 3% of their tips. This means that if a diner leaves a $20.00 tip, the server will get $19.40. Then, he or she shares 3% of that with kitchen help, busboys, hosts/hostesses and bartenders.

Apparently, the restaurant owners of America, who pay servers an average of $2.63 an hour, are under the impression that the servers aremaking out like bandits on their tips. Some of them have as much as said so. This is how they justify picking the pockets of the lowest paid group of workers in the country.

Shame on them!

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A letter to the editor in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette this morning comes from one of these people who, back in the 60's we used to call a "Male Chauvinist Pig". While I am outraged by his letter, he is, in turn, outraged by Jessica Simpson. He seems to think that she is the reason the Cowboys lost one of their games because she selfishly hogged the limelight, as the girlfriend of Tony Romo, "putting her career above his" by distracting him from the business at hand.

He says this "smacks of the women's liberation movement of the '60's and '70's, now in its second generation. " He goes on to say that "all this comes as we prepare to elect the first woman president, born of the same era. We have since then elevated and promoted the influence of women. "

He warns, "We are headed in the same direction and, in my view, with the same results, with social balance at stake...."

Hey, Mister, some of us think this could be a good thing!

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Our very own Huckster is running out of money, but not chutzpah. He called the Kenneth Copeland Ministries, begging for money, so they passed the plate and came up with over $100,000 for his campaign.

Copeland is under a congressional investigation because he refuses to turn over a list of his contributors. Seems Sen. Grassley has a crazy idea that Copeland might be a, dare I say it, charlatan. What? Just because he preaches that God wants Christians to be wealthy? This has been dubbed the "prosperity gospel". Well, Copeland has certainly prospered.

And, so has the Huckster. Stay tuned.

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I have to admit I was surprised that Ted Kennedy endorsed Barack Obama. He doesn't usually endorse anyone, and then backs the person who wins the nomination. So, I am asksing myself, "Self, wouldn't you like to know the real reason behind this ensorsement?" Since he appeared to be pretty thick with the Clintons, was it really Bill's heavy-handed attempt to make the campaign about race?

Or, could it be that Ted doesn't like Bill and Hillary as much as they think he does?