Hispanic American immigrants (mostly Mexican) will send nearly $30 billion home this year. That’s nearly twice the amount the United States government gives to foreign governments.

This is money earned fairly and freely in a competitive market and given with love, family-to-family. Compare that to the “foreign aid” donated with caveats and conditions, government-to-government. Which form of aid is more likely to actually help?

Today’s bombing of an Italian base, which killed 25 is exhibit A on why the United States can’t just “hand over” the Iraq mess to somone else.

Hopefully, the Italians, who lost 17 of their own in the bombing, will not pull out as a result of this, but it’s sure not the kind of thing that will dissuade other European nations from keeping their troops out of harm’s way (a novel idea, I know).

Folks like Andrew Sullivan will tell you that the very point of these attacks is to drive the United States and its allies out of Iraq. But we can’t do that, he says — we must show resolve.

Showing resolve is a lot easier to do when all it means is not having to admit you were wrong. When you’re on the battlefield it means you don’t know when or where or how the next attack is coming, it’s kind of hollow.

At this point, the danger to American lives of occupying Iraq far outweighs the danger to American lives of quickly returning sovereignty to the Iraqi people.

Conservatives’ increasingly desperate defenses of the Iraq mess now turn more and more to a simple idea, “Well, it’s too late to stop now.”

They seem to have forgotten the notion of sunk costs, which in economics is the term for any costs already invested into a project which have to be conceded if the project is deemed a failure.

For example, no corporation in America would say, after spending millions to launch a new product, “Well, it’s failing miserably, but we’ve already spent so much money developing and marketing the damn thing, let’s just keep letting the losses pile up.”

No, after a certain point, you stop the bleeding. Call it a valiant try. Call it a mistake. Cut your losses and move on, to hell with your “credibility.”

This is especially the case with an optional war. In a sense, Dubya turned an optional war into a must-win war, because of the seeming alliance between Iraqi insurgents and foreign Islamic fundamentalits. How much of that is actually happening, though, is very unclear.

Still, the weapons threat — assuming there was one — is most assuredly gone now. While attacks targeting civilians in Iraq are obviously terrible, they are not obviously a priority for American foreign policy. Turn over authority ASAP to the Iraqis and come to terms with the new government on keeping a strike force in the country to hunt down any terrorist groups.

It’s this type of smaller-scale, more targeted action that the war on terror seemed to be headed in originally, before Dubya & Co. became obsessed with remaking the entire Middle East. There’s not much of a guarantee that this would go well, but it would mean bringing home the vast majority of the troops, getting out of the nation-building and recognizing when your costs are sunk.

Unlike in the private sector, however, there’s much less incentive for politicians to admit their mistakes, much less work to lessen the damage caused by them. It must be daunting for them to be faced with the fact that nine out of 10 things they’ll try will fail.

The only lever, ultimately, is the ballot box, as imperfect an institution as it might be. Yet the leading presidential candidate for the other major party also wants to stick it out in Iraq, albeit under NATO command. I’m sure it won’t be any problem to get the Europeans on board now that Iraq is a flaming disaster.

Well, Dubya, whadd’ya say?

Another low-wattage celebrity has joined the Libertarian Party cavalcade of mediocrities: Dean Cameron.

“He made his name as a funnyman actor in lighthearted teenage comedies like ‘Ski School’ (1991), ‘Ski School 2’ (1994), and ‘Summer School’ (1987),” says the LP News.

Just wait ’til they promote this in their ads:

“Wow, honey, that guy from ‘Summer School’ is a Libertarian. This changes my whole outlook toward them. No, not Mark Harmon, honey. He was one of the two kids obsessed with splatter movies. Don’t you remember?”

Cameron “has been in the news more recently as the inventor of the ‘Bill of Rights, Security Edition’ for travelers — the first 10 Amendments to the U.S. Constitution printed on sturdy, playing card-sized pieces of metal. The product is designed to set off the metal detectors in airports and force airport security to ‘take away your Bill of Rights.'”

That’s actually not half bad.

Meanwhile, the news brings me yet another sign of my severe underachiever status. Jason Sorens, like me, is 26. Unlike me, he is leading a group of 20,000 libertarians who plan to move en masse to New Hampshire to tilt the state in a more freedom-friendly direction.

You see, his day job as a political science lecturer at Yale University just wasn’t enough to brag about; he had to become a libertarian social revolutionary as well.

This may or may not be a boon to liberty (I rather doubt it), but it’s doing nothing for my self-esteem.

The shocking news is in: Liberals hate Dubya.

Conservatives say this hatred is blinding them to Dubya’s good points and is making it impossible for liberals to rationally take part in the public discourse. Liberals say they aren’t any worse than conservatives were during the Clinton presidency.

I think back to those years and how I felt like a kindred spirit to all those Clinton-hating conservatives.

It seems that, in their turns, I’ve hated both Clinton and Dubya with a considerable degree of vigor. Perhaps I am blinded by my love of liberty.

Lies. Corruption. What else ya got? What else do you need?

Finally, at long last, have you found no weapons, sir?

Nope.

The Sun-Times’ Fran Spielman reports:

Chicago aldermen who will pass judgment on the expansion of Wrigley Field and the Cubs’ request for more night games have each been offered a pair of playoff tickets for as long as the Cubs stay alive.

Scalpers are charging anywhere from $300 to $1,500 a ticket for Games 3 and 4 of the Cubs’ divisional playoff series against Atlanta. Aldermen will pay face value of $35 per ticket for upper box seats.

But don’t worry, it’s just a “courtesy gesture” and “has nothing to do with politics,” according to 44th Ward Alderman Tom Tunney, who’s been leading the fight to get the Cubs permission to play 12 more night games at Wrigley.

Not only have the Cubs finally figured out a winning formula on the field, it looks like they’re on the ball when it comes to prevailing in the political game.