Common Sense

Common Sense is dead

Long Live Common Sense!

The good news first

The good news is that starting tomorrow, Common Sense will be at its new home CommonSenseTX.com.

The bad news is that it is still not really ready. But it is go time and things can be added as we go along.

Happy Easter!!!

From all of us at Common Sense. I don't know what chocolate bunnies have to do with Jesus dying on the cross (they don't even lay eggs), but I hope you eat plenty of them today.

It's Saturday, so I gotta talk about Hooters

A man is suing Hooters for retaliation and sexual harrassment after he contacted the corporate offices to complain about a trainer.

The corporate trainer, Cat, said to the waitresses:

that they were "the ones with the pussys and you are in control because of that." Then she reportedly added, "If you need the extra money, go ahead and suck a d--- or f--- a customer if the money is right."

When 31-year-old Jarman Gray, the manager at the store, called corporate to complain, the owner of the Alabama franchise was incensed and fired him. Now Gray will most likely win his lawsuit and gets oodles of money. Possibly spending it all at Hooters.

I honestly don't know what to do

I'm stuck. Space Monkey is in Austin without me and Common Sense Mom doesn't want to go out to eat. It's going to be another lonely Friday where I eat by myself and watch a really crappy movie like Transporter 2 that I put on my Netflix Queue when I was drunk.

I would really like for it to not come to that, so any of my Waco readers, if you want to get together, feel free to shoot me an email.

It's Good Friday

I don't know what is so good about it, it's the day Jesus was crucified. It should be called Bad Luck Friday or something.

Well that's not good

According to Carole Keeton-Strayhorn the tax plan being offered by Perry and Sharp will end up being $10.6 billion short over the next 5 years.

I know that doesn't sound like a lot... oh wait, it does sound like a lot of money. Details are still sketchy as to how she came up with that number, but I imagine she has the same problem the Center for Public Policy Priorities has with the use of the surplus.

Perfect attendance

There is a kerfluffle.

I got an email Wednesday from the Chet Edwards campaign .

Van Taylor Draws “Fewer than 100” at Event with VP

Challenger brings Cheney to TX-17; gets only 25% of the turnout 2004 GOP nominee had at same event before losing to Edwards

WACO – Van Taylor, the GOP nominee in Texas’ 17^th Congressional District, held a fundraiser with Vice President Dick Cheney Monday that was notable for its low attendance and questionable fundraising success.    Despite bringing in one of the GOP’s top fundraisers, Taylor attracted “fewer than 100” supporters and refused to say how much money he raised, according to media reports. 

Taylor’s campaign fell far short of the modest standard set by 2004 GOP nominee Arlene Wohlgemuth when she held an event with Cheney, despite the fact that the ticket price for the Taylor event was only $150, while the Wohlgemuth campaign charged $200.  In her unsuccessful race against Rep. Chet Edwards, Wohlgemuth drew 400 supporters for her event with Cheney and raised $300,000.  Wohlgemuth then went on to lose Waco and McLennan County decisively, garnering just 35% of the vote in the largest county in the district – a fact that does not bode well for the Taylor campaign.

I decided the journalist thing to do was contact the Van Taylor campaign for their side of the story. Campaign manager Casey Phillips says they didn't even have enough room for the people that showed up. He also pointed out that Arlene's event was a rally and this was an inside-the-ballroom type fundraiser. "Chet's campaign is grasping" at straws, he said.

If I remember correctly, tickets were $150 to $2,100 apiece. With an estimated 150 paid tickets, I would guess the Taylor camp grossed between $22,500 and $315,000. Which would not be bad at all, though I'm guessing closer to the low end of that scale.

It's usually not my place to get into a kerfluffle, and this is no different. I do have to wonder how much was raised and how much was net profit since Dick Cheney has such a long rider.

(Ed. note: I could have linked to this older, but much funnier story. You so owe me for being mature)

Just like a cockroach

Tom DeLay can survive anything. I would venture to say he could actually survive a nuclear war!

Vince is reporting that The Bugman may be on the shortlist to head the OMB (that's Office of Management and Budget for the acronym-challenged). That means he would be in charge of the White House budget and telling us all how big the deficit is and how much everything costs. Hmmmm...

The position is open thanks to some top-level shifts. Andy Card resigned making room for Josh Bolten to replace him was the director of OMB. That's really neat how it all just sort of worked out.

From preboard to pre-born

That is a terrible segue from a post about 9/11 to a billboard seen on my drive to work everyday.

My major gripe with this sign is not the subject matter, but the language used in it. We all agreed on a language, and if you're not going to use it correctly, don't say anything at all.

How can you be pre-born? It's a lot like George Carlin's famous joke about preboarding an airplane: How can you get on an airplane before you get on the airplane? There's getting on or there isn't. There's being born and there is not being born. Two very distinctive states of being. You can be unborn or you can be born. There's no being born before you're born.

Photo credit to Space Monkey.