Not sure why they are there (I think the old IE or Netscape did something with it and if they were empty it didn't read that cell, old code I just reuse for centering things), but has no effect if I take them out, tried it, and still off center in Safari, so I left the server version alone.
I see other sites not having this problem, I guess it's time to update my code. I wish i kept track of why I left those tags, comments are great when you use them. All i know it looks fine in all other browsers and now i need to retest once i change the code.