Mexico, Central and South America's have been civilized for over 3,500 years, why are these very provincial, proud and nationalist Latino's escaping their nations for the United States of America, founded a mere two hundred and twenty eight years ago? Because our system works while their's does not. Our system, where we're tossed into the Melting Pot that is America and we coalesce together and like an energized, red, white and blue meatball, rumble towards a common and worthy goal. Rather than celebrating diversity and falling apart like so much ground round. Young reader's, my above comparisons point out why an earnest familiarity of world and U.S. history is vital in keeping America free and prosperous. The America you will soon inherit. The America bought with the unselfish personal commitment, and many times the limbs and lives, of men and women of all heritages, both in our Armed Services and civilian contractors. On this July 3rd, 2004, too many of these same citizens, rather than fearing falling through the bottom of cheap plastic weaved beach chairs and salivating to the sizzling of charcoal-striped Ballpark franks while pondering over the hamburgers resembling small, round, pieces of rubberized asphalt, laying on the white paper plate before them, are instead, hunched down in faraway deserts, gulping down MRE's. Chewing slowly, with salty tears tracking down their dirt dusted cheeks, tears resembling the trickle that marks the beginning of an Arizona flash flood cutting its way across the desert. All the while so dearly wishing they were home with their wife or husband or lover or mom and dad or brother and sister or dog or cat and simultaneously twisting to it's left stop, the clear knurled dial of their Honeywell thermostat, plunging the indoor temperature into the high 60F's. Destroying our American Way of Life is also why the politically power-hungry, future would-be despots, and their lap-dogs, like the bovine-sized, common-man and multi-millionaire Michael Moore, are Rewriting History faster than Bill Clinton can etch his STD'd plagued autograph on his currently best-selling book, My Lie's.

Mr.Wonderful Talks Arizona Politics & Current Events @ www.mrwonderful.org

06/23/2004:
Discount Tire Flattens Wallet
Tuesday morning, as if I were a deep sea predator prowling the bowels of a sunken World War Two battleship, I'm maneuvering the mighty barracuda-silver Sonata through the massive parking lot of my luxury apartment complex, when crawling along at below 8 knots, I noted an unusually side to side motion coming up through the stern. Just past the leasing office, about three hundred feet from my abode, I slowed and pulled to the curb the obviously wounded Hyundai. Leaping out the driver's door, I instantly discovered the vehicle was wearing its third flat tire of year two thousand four. Damn. My hands, covered in bandages, while my immune system continued to fight off the much publicized flesh-eating bacteria, flew to the trunk, removed the Krispy Kreme-sized donut spare and before you could recite the first forty four books of the Jerusalem Bible, I was on the road again. Much later, after my grueling eight hour work day of waving at residents and e-mailing the "Nearly Famous" Barry Young, I drove over to the Discount Tire at 7075 E. Shea Boulevard, Scottsdale, Arizona. Now, don't get me wrong, I have never, ever had any complaints, other than the unavoidable waits, with Discount Tire. For decades I have purchased all my tires from Discount Tire. Mike pulled the flat tire from the trunk and immediately declared it "unrepairable." Because, as he grimly pointed to the slight discoloration of the tire along its entire sidewall, it possessed a fatal "heat ring". He offered to fill it up with air and send me on my way. The only other choice was to purchase a new tire. Being the quiet, unassuming Mr.Wonderful you all know and love, I told Mike that I thought this was just a blatant way to sell more tires. He shrugged and explained that, "The lawyers make us do it." Then he added that the "Tire Institute of Tehran", or some such association determined their replacement-repair policy, not Discount Tire. Inside, I studied the laminated and very official looking placard that displayed a tire diagram delineating all the areas that could be repaired under the T.I.T. strictures. Also shown were all the areas, (a greater percentage of the tire) where if damage were to be noted, the tire would be considered <Ca-Ching!> not repairable. What a gold mine some genius in the marketing department had discovered. How else are you going to increase the sales of a product that keeps getting better and better and lasts longer and longer? Simply narrow the definition of what is and what isn't repairable. (Recall the famous line, "Depends what IS is?") Sadly the new policy must be cutting into the profitability of their $11.50 "For Free Replacement Certificates" because I heard another employee state that they were now pro-rating the certificates on tires that had to be replaced for free. I will weep for them. Another thing that I found distressing, was that, since my Korean Comet was still shod in OEM tires, every time prior to today, that I had gone in for a tire repair or rotation, they apologetically reminded me that I would get a credit for the same dollar amount when I purchased any tires from Discount Tire. However, this blazing afternoon, when I mentioned the rebate to Mike, he told me to bring in the paper receipts. I asked him (since the charges were less than sixty days old) "Aren't they in the computer?" He just shoved aside my question and again asked me to bring in the receipts. I again repeated, adding a but  this time, "But, Mike, aren't they in the computer?" He just stared at me as if he was looking at his reflection in a moon hubcap. Of course, being Mr.Wonderful, I recognized this as the "rebate ploy." This is where sellers offer rebates to draw buyer's in, knowing that about 35% of them will never get around to claiming the offered rebate. Well, they were challenging the wrong guy this time, because I save everything. Forever. I even have the first prophylactic I ever used . . . alone. I reluctantly stepped out into the 103F degree Scottsdale heat, opened my car door, opened my glove compartment, grabbed my receipts, returned to the showroom and claimed my rebate. However, when all was said and done, my wallet was still flattened by the removal of $58.49 in exchange for not a simple rubber repair plug in a nail hole, but for a 205/60R15 "Warrior" tire. Made in Communist China, no less.
Mr.Wonderful Talks Arizona Politics & Current Events @ www.mrwonderful.org

06/10/2004:
More Insanity in Arizona
Great. Now taxpayer's are literally footing the bill so that devout Muslim's may, like Jihad Manfoukh (consider his first name reader's and don't even try to pronounce the last name in public) have the option to wash their feet in our precisely fluoridated water prior to ritual praying while at our Phoenix International Airport. Never mind that your Mr.Wonderful is listening to the Book-on-Tape of Skeletons on the Zahara where it is written that (while being incredibly cruel to their shipwrecked Christian slaves) 19th Century Arab's, far closer to the topography and life of the founder of Islam, accepted the Sahara Desert sand as a good enough media for their washing. Why would Jihad need to wash his feet while at the airport? Because he is one of the many Muslim taxicab drivers whose main source of income is ferrying traveler's to and from our Expedia-fed airport. In this era of color-coded national alerts, airport X-Rays, strip searches, and shoe bombs does this situation seem nonsensical? Number one, I'll disregard the fact that if all these Muslim's can do is to drive taxis, they really are not a vital cog in the economy of The Valley of the Sun machine. They are in an occupation that even an illegal alien without a driver's license or any form of insurance could handle (and does) the day after he was smuggled across our border in the trunk of the girl friend of the City of Phoenix's assistant police chief. Number two, does anyone remember the 911 Tragedy? The terrorist attack where only Muslim's crashed airliners into New York City's magnificent Twin Towers and murdered almost 3,000 unarmed civilians costing taxpayers and corporations hundreds of billions of dollars? (At this point you might be reminded of the very few civilians who accidentally perish - many times because these murdering Muslims purposely hide behind and mingle amongst them - in our ongoing world-wide war against these same international terrorists. Terrorists who are, not coincidentally all Muslim's.) Do you recall where the passenger jets came from that these Muslim's merged into the towers of the World Trade Center? Did not they come from airports? Airports where apparently, nationwide, thousands of Muslim's drive taxicabs? My reader's, worrying about gas prices, private school tuition, photo radar intersections and the higher cost of meat due to the vast numbers of dieter's following Dr. Atkins' advice, have not had the time to consider just how crushing to the American and world economy an attack similar to the one on September 11th, 2001 could be. It should be obvious to anyone who has examined the Muslim religion that it is a belief that degrades God's finest creation, Woman, to the level of a house-trained family dog, forces all those who are not Muslim to a third class citizenship not unlike Black American slaves endured prior to being freed by Republican President Lincoln and the soldiers of the Union Army. And finally, for a religion that mandates the following of more rules, regulations and rites than the Steven King-novel-sized 711 onion-skinned paged National Electric Code it offers a single guaranteed path to heaven as written in the Quran 4.74 ". . . and whoever fights in the way of Allah, then be he slain or be he victorious, We shall grant him a mighty reward." The, "fights in the way of Allah" is generally interpreted as meaning as dying in a mullah-declared Jihad, ie., a "Holy War". And "a mighty reward" is accepted to mean a guaranteed trip to Paradise. Understand, any religion that demands ritual after ritual after ritual every day for weeks, and months, and years over an entire lifetime, will necessarily always leave you uncertain of whether you have spiritually crossed every "t" and dotted every "i" while working your way to Paradise. How will you know? When would you know? Now, while being a sane individual, I certainly cannot accuse any of these taxicab drivers (who would today find life in Iraq comfortable, profitable and without discrimination) of terrorism. However, I can guarantee you, with one hundred percent accuracy, that the next act of terrorism in these United States will be perpetrated by a person of the Muslim faith. Does it make any sense to have thousands of these same Muslim's circling virtually every airport in the nation, every hour of the day, every day of the year?

Think my views are extreme? Read what Professor Walter E. Williams writes about the Islamic War against the West.

Mr.Wonderful Talks Arizona Politics & Current Events @ www.mrwonderful.org

06/08/2004:
Insanity in Arizona
How odd is it that our governor "of the comfortable shoes" is so very attentive to the children her angry life-style rejects? Ms. Napolitano demands all-day taxpayer-paid-for-kindergarten as an option for anyone living in Arizona. (At first I typed out  c i t i z e n  but since it has been recently estimated by FAIR that 425,000 illegal's live in this state, I discarded "citizen" as an obsolete, unfair and ignored term implying that you have a legal right to live within the boundaries of the Grand Canyon State.) Our governor claims ADK will immeasurably change the lives of the children fortunate enough to attend. Might I put forth ADK is a clear attempt to buy votes? An attempt to purchase the votes of illegal aliens, because that is clearly the class of individuals living in Arizona, who will benefit to greatest extent. Imagine this scenario, as an undocumented/illegal alien: you pay no taxes and you get free babysitting paid for by all those dolts who do. My reader's interrupt, "But, Mr. Wonderful, illegal aliens cannot vote." So you say. However, it has been unarguably documented that illegal aliens do vote in California. After all, in California, it is illegal for a polling place person to request identification of any person presenting themselves to vote. If you believe illegals do not vote in Arizona, you probably also believe that they have Arizona driver's licenses, carry auto insurance, that their twenty-three year old reconstructed cars, trucks and vans all pass air-quality emission tests and that, as individuals, they have income, FICA, Medicare and Social Security taxes withheld from their paychecks. All Day Kindergarten will allow illegal aliens to drop off their children, on the way to their jobs picking cotton, tomatoes and watermelons (the jobs American's won't do <grin>) one full year earlier than they do now. They can rid themselves of their meal-ticket-non-English speaking bambino's to begin clogging up our educational system two semesters sooner than they do today. It just slays me that our Abortion-Right's pushing, never-to-be-a-birth-mother governor, is so involved with the education of those kids who have been lucky enough to squeeze by the greedy bastards at Planned Parenthood and scumbags like the exposed and imprisoned abortionist Dr. Brian Finkel.
Mr.Wonderful Talks Arizona Politics & Current Events @ www.mrwonderful.org

02/04/2004:
A Taxing Business
Mr.Wonderful has informed my reader's again and again how Government will never be satisfied with less than the entirety of your paycheck. If you have any doubt that, given the chance, the world-wide cancer known as the Revenue Function of Government, would grab every dollar you earn through taxes, you are living in a dream world. In a few Scandanavian countries, for certain individuals legislatively deemed 'too wealthy', the personal income tax rate is over 100% of the amount they earn in any single year. These individuals, are, sadly for themselves just too successful. We must learn to understand that simply because taxing municipalities grab a certain larger percentage of another person's income, that it does not follow that they will, in turn, demand any less from us. Think for a moment, what would you rather have: 50 cents from 3 million citizens (the top 1% of income earners) or 25 cents from the remaining 123 million wage earners? Your top 1% would generate a mere $1.5 million, while your 123 million, paying at one-half the rate, would result in almost $31 million collected. When we defend equity and common sense in the taxation of the most productive of us (many times those same individuals who also invest in the corporations and businesses that the rest of us are employed inside) we surely also defend our own meager incomes. Lately, we have Arizona legislators and our I-Wanna-Be-A-Guy, the Danny DeVito-like, Governor Napolitano, moving to extend the State licensed bars closing time from 1AM to 2AM, claiming the tax take from these inebriatneums, would be increased nearly $55 million. Going purposely unmentioned is the predictable societal and fiscal damage wreaked as thousands of drunks (I include myself, so relax) have sixty more minutes to kill the pain of their lives with Jack or Jose or Joseph Coor's product and then leave the bar for home. I'm wondering what kind of tax dollars might be generated if the clearly un-Constitutional movement to outlaw smoking inside bars is determined to be illegal itself? How many more elbow-benders would be leaning on the polished oak of a public bar rather than relaxing in their back yards, spreading the rails of plastic weaved lawn chairs, thirty ought six lever action rifle leaned against their red, white and blue 30-pack of Bud? How many more corporations might build restaurants and bars in Arizona knowing that smoking cigarettes, a clearly harmful, but not yet illegal act, was to be entirely left up to individual patron's and business owner's rather than say, some meat-pipe-smoking small-town mayor? This is just another avenue for Arizona government to increase their tax take from what they view as the cornucopia (inexhaustible supply) of dollars earned by its citizens. So, we have the tax imposed by photo radar (yes, fines are actually disguised taxes) and we have the tax dollars skimmed from the take of the formerly illegal casinos built on the land of the Indian Nations, and we have the tax dollars collected by the state for the formerly illegal 'numbers' game, i.e., The Lottery, and they still aren't enough to fulfill the dreams of the cadre of social engineers who find their homes behind the levers of government and governmental power.
Mr.Wonderful Talks Arizona Politics & Current Events @ www.mrwonderful.org

10/22/2003:
Driving in Arizona
After another exhausting eight hours at the guardshack, I was driving down Dynamite Road in the afternoon being tailgated the entire two miles from Pima west to Scottsdale Road. To top it off, as I turned the mighty Hyundai south onto the four-laned Scottsdale Road, I was hit with a short 'blapp!' from the same jerk who had been drafting me while I was on Dynamite. Shortly, a 1970s white Dodge K-car, accelerated by me, a huge white Nike checkmark covering the rear window. (Of course, displaying the leg-sized Nike logo is the same as hanging a 3 foot by 6 foot banner declaring "I am an illegal alien.") Scottsdale Road has a 55 MPH limit, and often sees your Mr.Wonderful pushing the mighty Sonata to speeds nearing 62 MPH. Even though the heavily trafficked boulevard is regularly patrolled by Scottsdale police in unmarked Crown Victoria's, citizens and non-citizens alike zip along at speeds approaching 85 MPH. What follows is why you never, ever, piss off MW: 211 seconds after turning south onto Scottsdale Road, about 1/4 mile in the distance ahead, I see a beach ball sized puff of black tire smoke bouncing across the road after having magically appeared in the inside lane. And then a white flash flying a mere 100 yards front of me, quickly settling onto the dirt shoulder on the west side of Scottsdale Road. To avoid being rear-ended myself, I quickly stab my brake pedal again and again, and I smile as my Korean built machine scoots by the halted K-car that has cotton candy-like steam billowing from the cracks in the hood and a slowly deflating airbag still cradling the startled Jose's face. The Garcia had apparently not been able to display the same patience he deigned to expend on me earlier and had instead simply rear-ended the maroon Lexus in front of him, which I could see pulling off the road several yards ahead of me. Of course, being the good citizen I am, I immediately dialed 911 to advise the authorities and possibly catch the stunned undocumented alien prior to his awakening and trucking it across the desert.
Mr.Wonderful Talks Arizona Politics & Current Events @ www.mrwonderful.org

9/1/2003:
The High Price of Gas
While feeding the Blue-Beast the other evening, my teenage son stopped at ten gallons of unleaded. Yesterday morning, as one of two customer's at the Shea Boulevard Superpumper, I topped off the mighty Hyundai. A total of 24.7 gallons for a mere $52.20. It is reported that the Phoenix area has the second highest gas prices anywhere in the country. I wonder if that includes American Somoa? Amongst all the cries of gouging is forgotten the fact that something like an invisible 65¢ out of every gallon goes to various city, county, state and federal agencies. The liberal morons who know as much about economics as a Sperm Whale knows about soccer, are screaming their Polo-shrouded pecs off. "Price gouging!" is their rallying cry. As evidence of this, they blubber that, "The prices went up in a day, but they'll take weeks to go down." After the unthinking morning DJ's on one of the most listened-to FM stations in the Valley whined about possible gasoline shortages, they, and their nothing-better-to-talk-about radio-wave cohorts, actually managed to create an "Out of Gasoline" reality. So serious was this transportation crisis, that Governor Butch Napolitano, who wouldn't cancel her recent canal float to meet with United States President, G.W. Bush, did come home early from her Governor's conference to "fix" a problem that government has no business fixing in the first place. The owner of the ruptured pipeline, Kinder-Morgan, who holds no petro-chemical investments, only makes money when they deliver the product. In this particular case, automotive fuel. They were losing millions of dollars per day and somehow the Midget Napolitano is winging back to Arizona in order to provide them yet even more incentive to repair the break? When the gasoline prices went up, you probably noticed that service stations either had no gas or gas lines. Now, that everyone has calmed down, gas lines have evaporated, but the high per gallon prices remain. I imagine our current high prices are due to the fact that gasoline retailer's themselves paid an increased price to fill their tanks. And possibly signed high priced gasoline contracts to assure uninterrupted delivery into the future. That's the way the 'commodity markets' work folks. One reason the prices are not declining at the same rate as they inflated, is because Valley drivers are not panicked and constantly topping off the fuel tanks of the two, three or four vehicles they drive, thereby emptying the gas stations storage tanks. Now I know, the socialists and liberals would like these operator's to sell their go-juice for less than they paid for it, but that isn't going to happen. And if the Arizona Legislature is idiotic enough to enact a "price-gouging" statute, I believe they should first go after law firms who charge $300 an hour for work done by a $25 per hour para-legal. When they've handled that, then maybe they could go after the mattress retailers who charge $3,000 for a mattress that cost them only $800. Ever wonder why there are so many mattress stores?
Mr.Wonderful Talks Arizona Politics & Current Events @ www.mrwonderful.org

8/20/2003:
"Pipeline to Nowhere!"
Shouts the mellifluous voice of Marty Manning's mock news announcement on KESZ FM's Beth and Bill Morning Show to nowhere. It doesn't matter if you drive a twelve cylinder Lamborghini Countach or a Toyota Prius that when the red needle falls to the left side of your fuel gauge, you will most likely waste at least twenty minutes in a gas line. So you might imagine, in an effort to conserve gas and delay waiting in a line for said gas, Valley driver's slowing down to within 15 miles per hour of the speed limit, right? No way. Many driver's continue to fly down the road like a last minute rush of their pregnant wife to the hospital. Morons. That's why Arizona (and the entire Earth) needs Mr. Wonderful. I understand that in some gas lines, arguments and the occasional fist fight are breaking out. My friend Tom, who drives a diesel-powered 4x4 Dodge truck, brashly pulled up to the ribboned off diesel dispenser at BJ's Chevron on Paradise Village Parkway. He then began filling up his 38 gallon tank with the dark foul smelling stuff. He told me, that in minutes, every yellow-bandoliered Chevron pump was mated with a gasoline starved vehicle, whose pilot assumed that Tom was filling his Ram 1500 with unleaded gasoline! Some stations, surely the independent's that we all have mourned the passing of, are charging over $3.50 per gallon. I've also discovered that wildcat tankers are coming in from other areas, rigs most likely sloshing with cheaper gasoline that doesn't meet the expensive EPA regs set for the Valley, and, in the hopes of picking up a tidy $9,000 or so mark-up on a single visit, are offering their gallonage for sale at prices far higher than what they paid for it. Chatting with Governor 'Butch' Napolitano last night, I learned that the EPA has agreed to issue a temporary emergency order which sets aside the stringent 'Clean-Air' requirements for fuel coming into the Phoenix metroplex. This will free up millions of more readily available gallons of gasoline to be sold in the Valley of the Sun. Driving to work this morning along north Scottsdale Road, I was greeted with either gas stations striped off like an everyday West Valley crime scene shooting or with lines of vehicles stretching out into the street. An interesting time we are living through. Radio news stations are announcing that the forty-eight year old Tucson to Phoenix pipeline managed by Kinder Morgan is not patch-able and must now instead be replaced. However, I think with the lifting of the EPA regs, and the routing of many more tankers to the Phoenix area, resident's will be able to fill up their vehicles at will, albeit, not without a sometimes considerable wait. I hereby suggest that 'the government' take over the distribution of fuel in Arizona. That act would guarantee both long lines and high prices for fuel far into the future. Hell, we would even see a new retail niche evolve, that of the "Gas-Line-Retailer." A vendor who earns his livelihood from hawking goods and services (most certainly cell phones, Starbuck's and DVDs) to the tens of thousands of Arizonan's fuming their lives away while part of monstrous, snaking, barely moving, processions in an unending quest to fuel their only reliable and safe means of transportation.
Mr.Wonderful Talks Arizona Politics & Current Events @ www.mrwonderful.org