It’s great to write you as we leave ’06 in our wake.  Along with Kelly, Eric and Kevin, I want you to know how privileged we at “The Randy Tobler Show” and “Vital Signs” feel to count you among our friends. 

We look forward to another great year planning for some great listening on Saturday mornings.  . 

Vital signs will continue to address the medical, health and wellness world in a way we hope makes real sense, with our unique twist to make it fun too.  And the RT Show will I’m sure stir the pot now that D.C. has a new hairdo.

So as a political analyst, and of course with sensitivity for your health, let me ask you (watch out, this is a trick question):

How are YOU feeling about the coming year?

I hope you are doing OK with the goings on in the Beltway, but I’m a bit queasy.  Why? As I write this, the media is ablaze (or should I say giddy) as the Democratically controlled 110th Congress convenes.   I’m queasy as the smell of Pelosi, Frank, Clinton, Kennedy, Durbin and Obama wafts through the formerly pure American air.  I’m queasy realizing that the United States of America is functionally marching towards a new and troubling reality---the Centralized Socialist Democratic American Union.  I’m queasy that the politics of victimization, entitlement and political correctness is alive and very, very well.   Some predictions, if I may…..

The Democrats’ first 100 minutes, hours and days will outline completion of the Communist Manifesto they initiated while in control of public policy for the four decades leading up to 1994. They’ll trumpet mandates for the extraction of   “fair” minimum wages from supposedly ‘independent’ businessmen, begging the question:  “If 7 and a quarter is barely a living wage, why not 15, or 20 bucks an hour?”  That sure will encourage education, invention and entrepreneurialism, won’t it?  Next watch for the Dems to ensure a legacy of war- by -committee by endorsing  the 911 commission’s entire slate (to make us “safer” from the multitude of terrorist attacks here since 9/11).  This truly will be a “No Spine Zone”, eh?  And the Union payback continues as unions will be allowed to coerce employees into organizing through petition without secret ballots, along with measures designed to funnel dues into campaigns.  I call it the “Money for Well Oiled Campaigns” initiative (they borrowed it from Saddam, rest his soul).  Don’t forget the retroactive tax hikes that will be significant and early, targeted for the folks who sign our checks, but borne of class envy and cutely spun under the guise of “paying for what we spend”.   Of course we’ll all feel better when the “Social Security for An Illegal Immigrant…..And All His Illegal Family” bill hits the floors of Congress and is signed by our now lame President as he helps Bob Barker come out of retirement to inaugurate a new game show called “The Price is Right….For a Few Million Votes”.  Then there’s Iraq, the cornerstone of November’s negative, and mostly justified Republican defeat.  You’ll see careful jockeying in support of a rapid retreat, I predict under 100,000 troops by year’s end, while the cowardly Dems repeatedly remind us that none of this should have happened if only we’d have listened to them….after their politically expedient flip flop.  

By  2007’s twilight, the Clinton/Obama ticket will have a full head of steam heading into ’08, roaring out of the gates with a tank full of government dependency and an engine throttled down severely by even more permanent entitlements, regulation and bureaucratic sludge.  The teeter totter carrying the productive on one side and the dependent on the other is about to teeter us into economic calamity, my friend.  This is not about the unavoidably dependent that truly need our help.  This is about the ‘victimized’ dependent who expect bucks in exchange for votes, and the dependent in government who expect votes for our hard-earned bucks.   I doubt we can do much about the former, but we can influence the latter.  That’s where you and I and the entire 97.1 FM Talk lineup comes in.  The decision makers listen to talk radio….and they will hear us roar.

Be assured that my every waking (and sometimes sleeping) moment will remain dedicated to exposing threats to our Constitution and our way of life, and bringing them to you so that we can engage the common enemy for the common good.  I know you are an Insider not only to 97.1 FM Talk but to the American experience as well, and I look forward to exchanging thoughts every week in the coming year. 

THIS JUST IN….. Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), chair of the newly formed Committee for Political Correctness,  will introduce a bill  outlawing “intolerant, critical or otherwise potentially disturbing language targeted against any non-white, Christian, heterosexual person in America”,  punishable by 2 weeks of  solitary confinement listening to the complete archives of NPR’s Daniel Schorr and Juan Williams.

OK, I made up that last one, but hey, all that comes courtesy of the Dems will make for great talk radio…as long as we’re not censored!  Here’s to a healthy, independent and truly blessed 2007 for you and yours.

Randy