If I Were Paranoid…
By Mitch Berg
…I’d look at the deaths of Vince Flynn and now Tom Clancy within a few months of each other…
…and connect it with all the other top-secret hanky-panky with the NSA, the IRS and the Justice Department…
…and figure there’s a government conspiracy to knock off conservativsm’s few iconic pop-culture figures.
Good thing I’m not paranoid, huh?
(Just in case, though? Be careful, Gary Sinise, Ted Nugent, Joe Perry, Tom Selleck, Fred Thompson and Angie Harmon).
UPDATE: Steven Green: “Is it really possible that Larry King, who’s looked like day-old scrambled eggs for thirty years, outlived Tom Clancy? Stranger things have happened, but this one I’m taking a little personally. “
October 2nd, 2013 at 12:21 pm
Always remember that just because you are NOT paranoid doesn’t mean people aren’t out to get you.
Due to the fact that I generally keep my fiction reading confined to time when I’m sentenced to fly somewhere for longer than three hours wheels up to wheels down, I’ve only read one each from both Flynn and Clancy. I’ve heard both interviewed and found both to have a common touch (might explain why: interviews were on non-state-sanctioned media) and I could relate to their backgrounds as writers who didn’t come to their craft through the writers workshop/graduate school wringer that stifles any dissent from the usual line of USA bad, enemies of USA good (or at least misunderstood). Tom Clancy, RIP.
On another note, you may want to add Tom Hanks to your list above. Seems like for a Lefty (actually like all filthy rich Lefty’s), he definitely has a supply siders heart.
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2013/10/tom-hanks.html
October 2nd, 2013 at 3:04 pm
In reference to your post seflores: I wouldn’t have considered myself paranoid. But I find it frightening that any state can determine how many days a free person spends within that state…regardless how high profile.
October 2nd, 2013 at 5:44 pm
People avoiding being in a particular jurisdiction to avoid taxes goes back to at least the first swamp drained in Florida to put up retiree condos if not back to the Old World.
It’s that a committed Lefty like Hanks would do something to avoid paying taxes when he supports with his money and fame the very same politicians that would like to tax the ‘rich’ who aren’t as mobile thats funny to me.
If you get audited you will have to prove where, when and how on everything going back at least seven years. I don’t begrudge Hanks following and taking advantage of the tax laws (loopholes !!11ty!! to our low information readers), it’s the American (and the worlds) way and I say more power to him.
October 2nd, 2013 at 9:41 pm
There was a CEO who resisted NSA spying. He was prosecuted soon afterwards. http://wapo.st/16QI6jf