Going to the World Cup With Fabian Núñez

As we've been watching the World Cup, we just can't but help think just how much fun it would be to be there. After all, it's soccer, it's beer, it's Katenrauchwurst-- what else do you want out of life? But alas, we were too late to sign up for tickets and our friends who are going didn't take us. What to do...what to do...

Hey, we just found out a way to go-- just give tons of money to Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez? He's taking some of his biggest fund raisers to Germany to watch the Finals. Total cost per person? $25,000. Airfare isn't included, but tickets, hotel reservations, and "welcoming gifts" are. We don't, however, think by "welcoming gifts" they mean "hookers"-- unless Duke Cunningham is involved.

And no, that won't come out of our money, it'll come out of Fabian's Committee to Protect California's Future Campaign coffers, which makes it that much more brilliant-- he's asking his campaign contributors to spend a lot of money so he can take them to Germany so he can hit them up for more money. It's the Circle of Political Life.

Now, you may be thinking, isn't that a lot of money to spend on some political fat cats? Says Nunez flak Steve Maviglio: "This is just like buying tickets to a (Sacramento) Kings game or (San Francisco) Giants game. The only difference is that instead of getting into a car to go to the Kings game, here they are getting on an airplane." Well now that you put it that way, it makes sense. Getting on an airplane and flying halfway across the world/getting in a car and driving fifteen minutes to the ARCO Arena-- no diff. And you may wonder what the difference is between Nunez taking a bunch of fat cats to the World Cup and Arnie taking a bunch of fat cats to a Rolling Stones concert, something that raised the ire of many a Dem, and the answer to that would be....hate the game, not the playa.

Nunez also apparently has tickets to semi-final games too. So if you can't afford to spend big enough money to go to the Finals, you can pony up a little less to go to the semi-finals. Either way, if you happen to be at the Safeway on Market & Church this evening watching somebody put dime after dime into the change conversion machine tonight, that'll be us. We want to protect California's future.