Vera Borisovna's Bunker Blog

Tribune in the Gym

2005-12-08T14:10:00.001-08:00

Tribune in the Gym

2005-12-08T14:10:00.000-08:00

The Neocons

2005-12-04T13:08:00.000-08:00

Rummy and spinning John Rendon

2005-12-02T06:49:00.000-08:00

Tri-Lateral Commission Gym, the comic

2005-11-29T17:31:00.000-08:00

Scalia and Alito, the comic

2005-11-28T08:03:00.000-08:00

The Leak

2005-10-26T04:27:00.001-07:00

Had it not been for Patrick Fitzgerald, the entire Plame leak case would have simply been business as usual among those who ride the exercycles of power here in the tri-lateral commission gym. No, embarassingly, it's on the front pages of papers and on CNN. Of course, half the public hasn't got a clue what the case is about...but still...

The worst is that my boss, Dick Cheney, has had his name bandied about. He comes into the gym like a bear and yells at everyone. I slink behind my desk when he come in and hope he doen't have a reason to see a hatcheck girl. If he sees a CIA guy mullling about, he simply takes out a taser and zaps him. It's not good to be CIA around here right now.

It's not so good beteen Mr. Cheney and the neocons, either. Every meeting becomes a yellling contest. It gets kind of embarassing. Richard Perle ended up tangled in a particularly complicated piece of weight lifting equipment when he mentioned to Jack Hannah that perhaps leaking more CIA agents would take the onus off of Scooter Libby. Make it sort of a common thing to happen in Washington, therefore making the Plame case seem insignificant, so Perle argued. Or maybe he was joking. Either way, it took a half hour to extract him.

I really don't know what the fuss is about. Inevitably, everyone will get a pardon, as the president gets to act as Deus ex Machina in this little play.

I'm not all that worried. I think the Tri-Lateral Commission Gym is here to stay.

Happy at Last

2005-09-14T07:25:00.000-07:00

When Grover Norquist bounces around the gym like a carefree puppy dog, you know the worst is over.

The entire Norquist philosophy of less government but more government money for the total not needy is coming to fruition in New Orleans. The negligence of the Federal government, so much the reason behind the sad hurricane response, works best when doling out cost plus contracts, school vouchers, and every other cause espoused by Norquist and his group, The Americans for Tax Reform. No government oversight means free market forces are draining the Lake Pontchartrain of borrowed money right into the pockets of those who need it least. God Bless America.

Norquist's elation flies in the face of his being implicated in laundering money for Jack Abramoff. But with John Roberts' confirmation hearings going swimmingly, the future of the Supreme Court as total nonentity looks secure. Justice, like government oversight, will cease to exist.

Norquist's good friend, President Bush, has taken the blame for the poor hurricane response. Like Christ who took the blame for all the sins of the world, or any given right wing Christian who is daily absolved of any murder, rape and pillage if they simply own up to pledging their lives to Christ, Bush has cleansed the rest of the government of its previous life so it can get down to the business of giving out contracts to rebuild New Orleans just as it has been giving out contracts for rebuilding Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq.

All in all, it's bodes well for those who ride the exercycles of power here in the Tri-Lateral Commission Gym.

The International Gym

2005-09-08T19:22:00.001-07:00

A lot of people, upon finding out that I work in the Tri-Lateral Commission gym, ask me about the international aspect of the gym. It's a fact, that all the facades having to do with country slough off here, and that there's a great comaraderie which emerges during the course of a good workout. It also has a lot to do with the fact that the majority of people in the gym work in one way or another for large multi-national corporations. Profit above Patriotism, as one gentleman told me.

Relief

2005-09-05T06:40:00.000-07:00

Well, relief has come to the Tri-Lateral Commission gym. Karl Rove has started a campaign to put the blame on the chaos in New Orleans on all the homeless members of local government. The Army Corps of Engineers has decided to use its helicopters to fill the breeches in the levees rather than to rescue people, which means that the hiring of private contractors to finish the job is just around the corner. Finally, Bush nominated judicial nominee Roberts, a long time member of the Tri-Lateral Commission Gym, to be chief justice.

In short, the treadmills are humming again.

The "Whoops" factor

2005-09-02T20:57:00.000-07:00

It's one thing being a racist in the privacy of your own home, but when a city...say New Orleans...finds itself treated worse than a third world country on account of its substantial African American demographic, then a simple "I'm sorry" isn't going to cut the mustard.

To let a whole city sit without food and water for five days after billions of dollars have been poured into something called "Homeland Security" unfortunately smacks of more than a simple "whoops, we didn't really think that the hurricane would be quite that bad." No it seems more of a "why waste money on a bunch of poor black folk who were told to get out of the city but didn't because they're ignorant."

For an administration that prides itself on a spanky clean image based on the smiling faces of Condoleeza Rice and Colin Powell, this is not so good.

On the other hand, Bush isn't up for re-election, so who cares, really. Which seems to be the attitude here in the gym, even though that business about Public Works I blogged about a few days ago still weighs on the members. Any mention of diverting funds from the corporations, say, for government, is considered impolite for conversation and generally a good reason for expulsion.

So the hurricane has become like an elephant in the gym, no a dinosaur, or a blue whale even. And the spinmeisters working their amazing journalistic treadmills are trying to impose a kind of discipline on the past five days. If all goes well, in fact, those days will never have really existed at all.

Private Charity

2005-09-01T19:46:00.000-07:00

While the entire city of New Orleans lacks a single functioning toilet, and the entire population is newly homeless and jobless, the president of the United States parades out two former presidents. He says here are a pair of guys who are going to get millions of dollars of private donations at some point in the future and it's really going to help everyone out.

It's such an illuminutty thing to do, and typical of the Tri-Lateral Commission Gym. Government money should go to corporations first, and then dribble down to the hoi polloi, maybe. Our members, the guys who ride the exercycles of power, couldn't even begin to think of the world in any other terms. So it's going to take a long time, New Orleans. So sorry.

The Terrorist

2005-08-31T07:10:00.001-07:00

When it comes right down to it, the biggest terrorist is God. Just look what He's done to New Orleans, and all without resorting to bombs, biological warfare or troop deployment.

Today, everything has changed in the Tri-Lateral Commission Gym. Members just sit around in the weight room, their souls to weak to raise the bars. There is no music in the aerboics gym. The televisions on the treadmills are showing only snow. When one perky journalist announced "Well, it could have been worse", three burly Heritage Foundation representatives heaved her out the door.

Coursing through the minds of everyone present are two unspoken but dreaded words, "Public works". For all those riding the exercycles of power, heedless of actually having to do much besides make lots of money, these words smack of socialism and charity and welfare. This is because New Orleans no longer exists, and its citizens are jobless, homeless, and if not already broke, shortly to become so, and with no one to sue but God, who may be mighty but has no tangible assets. It is nigh impossible for our members to ignore such enormous suffering, try as they might. And besides, the hoi polloi won't let them, at least not on such a monstrous scale.

I think in a few days, when the words "Public Works" transform themselves into the words "Contractors", our membership will slowly start to be uplifted. The preachers are already mumbling about faith based charity. Perhaps God is not a terrorist after all, that He has in fact opened up whole new markets, with money to be made. Our membership by and large is very enterprising.

I can only hope that soon the clatter of exercycle pedals will once again fill the gym.

When the Saints Come Marching In

2005-08-27T18:54:00.000-07:00

Well, I haven't posted in a while. That's because the guys from The Center for Reclaiming the Gym had taken over. It happens every so often. Why is it that the guys who don't pay any dues are the ones who like telling everyone else what to do?

Okay, so they came barreling in like the minions of Satan, even though everyone knows they're funded by James Dobson's Coral Ridge ministry. They threw our trainers out and put in their own regimen. Our regular patrons half expected this, so most of them went on vacation.

This, of course, meant that for the month of August, the gym became a Christians Only place of exercise.

And that's when the war began.

It happened when one of our last remaining patrons was exposed for belonging to Opus Dei. The Center for Reclaiming the Gym decided that the self-flagellation characteristic of the group had all the earmarks of a communist plot. They strung the guy up to the Nautilus machine, not understanding that this machine belonged exclusively to members of the Southern Baptist Conference. There were immediate reprisals. The sound of artillery firing across the Olympic sized pool. A heroic stand by a group of masons in the weight room. The unintentional grenade on the tennis courts. Prisoners being marched along the treadmills.

It was a mess. Finally, Dick Cheney had to send in members of the BlackWater Security Corporation to quell the violence. Former Delta Force members, the BlackWater guys made short work of the Center for Reclaiming the Gym, forcing them to withdraw to the distant Center for Public Policy gym. And all Blackwater wanted in return was the diamond mine.

What diamond mine, you might say, but that's another story.

But for now, except for the sound of the Halliburton backhoes and jackhammers, there's peace once again here in the gym.

2005-06-07T13:38:00.000-07:00

Last night, my boyfriend, J-Block, took me to see this gross Korean movie called Oldboy. It's about this loser rich guy who imprisons his loser schoolmate in solitary confinement for fifteen years. I'm around those kinds of people all day long in the Tri-Lateral Commission gym, J-Block, rich guys who have nothing better to do with their time and money than make everybody miserable. Why would you think I'd enjoy watching this movie?

It's like this, J-Block, they voted themselves a huge tax cut, then they voted themselves a war.

The Renditioning in the Weight Room

2005-06-03T11:40:00.000-07:00

Mr. Cheney passed out a mysterious directive regarding the weight room this morning. It said I needed to do a full body search of anyone whom I might deem "having a proclivity to sneak pictures out of the bunker".

I've never done a full body search in my life, and neither was I about to start. Nobody gets into the Bunker without being fully compromised by either banking irregularites or sexual peccadilloes which have been thoroughly investigated then catalogued by our excellent research department. In short, they've all had a the type of full body search which keeps on searching, so to speak.

The fact of the matter is that we've had some top level Al Quaeda operatives renditioned to the weight room here in the bunker. All Mr. Cheney needs is those dogged Amnesty International guys come up with some pictures of what goes on in the weight room to blow the lid off of not only the Tri-Lateral Commission gym, but of the entire bunker. Since the neither the bunker nor the gym are supposed to exist at all, this would be expecially bad.

But he really needn't worried. We here in the bunker have grown quite fond of the guys sitting in the cages in the weight room. We pet their little heads and we scratch behind their ears and sometimes we even take them out for walks before they get a good stretching on the Nautilus machine provided by the Department of Homeland Security.

Also, I might add, all the Korans in the bunker are guaranteed not flushable.

2005-06-02T06:23:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, Chuck Colson came to the gym fit to be tied. For one thing, he was late for his "Sweating for Christ" Aerobic Class due to an unusually full day of interviews. Everyone in the media wanted to hear his views on Deep Throat, aka Mark Felt, and how vile Felt was to expose the entire criminal activity of the Nixon White House. Colson was scheduled up to the gills and couldn't quite get here on time. For another, he'd left his gym clothes at home, which meant he had to lead the class in an Armani Suit. He hasn't done too shabby for himself post Watergate, prison term not withstanding.

Colson's class consists of Senators Brownback, Santorum and Sessions, former Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed, James Kennedy of Coral Ridge, Congressmen Tom Delay and Bill Thomas, President of Free Congress Association Paul Weyrich and Karl Rove. No one really seemed much in the mood for sweating, and it became sort of a bull session on the topic of how each member of the group would deal with anyone who might expose THEIR criminal activity, of which, of course, they were only speaking theoretically.

When I think of it, the class had the same bluster that Ann Coulter's "Step Aeobics for Patriots" in which a portion of the class is dedicated to "Crush the Liberals Stomache Crunches". She can be so creative. Other names for her exercises are "Punch the Raghead Thrusts" and "Stomp the Left Wing Treason Lobby Faces." You can imagine how popular her class is.

Afterwards, Colson seemed in better spirits. It just goes to show you that working out in the Tri-Lateral Commission gym is not only good for the body, but for the soul.

Deep Throat

2005-05-31T19:05:00.000-07:00

Today's Vanity Fair revealed a senior FBI agent to have been Deep Throat. The Tri Lateral Commission office pool was up to fifty five million, three hundred thousand, six hundred and seventy two dollars and fifty three cents and had to be divided between Prince Bandar, Barbara Bush and C. Boyden Gray. How those guys were able to figure out the truth, I'll never know.

The next biggest pool has everyone guessing the location of Osama Bin Laden. Between you and me, I suspect he might be hanging around the gym, having been surgically altered to resemble Magic Johnson.

Other than that, French president Jacques Chirac threw a hissy fit after finding out his own country wouldn't ratify the EU constitution. He had been hoping to field an EU basketball team in the gym tournament, but that's all shot to you know what. The by-laws state, no basketball team without a constitution. Ever the optimist, he promptly fired his prime minister, replacing him with Dominique de Villepin, a well known point guard and surveillance specialist. They spent all afternoon hunkered down in the steam room with a bunch of private contractors. I have a feeling that next time this constitution business comes up, they'll be ready with the same Diebold machines that helped out the American president, then watch out Tri Lateral Tigers.

Getting started

2005-05-28T15:09:00.000-07:00

This is a brand new blogsite to add to the plethora of blog sites. Isn't life good?