Congress is still fighting over how to fix the federal budget, and as a form of inspiration, perhaps, conservative “taxpayer watchdog” group Citizens Against Government Waste is resurfacing a video ad it created a year ago that went viral.

The ad is set in Beijing, China, and features a middle-aged professor lecturing a room full of students about what makes a great empire fall. The year is 2030, and America has “fallen” as an empire.

The Chinese professor goes on to explain that this happened because “America tried to tax and spend itself out of a great recession,” and blamed President Obama’s stimulus and health care packages as reasons why America is now working for China.

According to Roll Call, this ad will be running for two weeks all over Cable TV, including CNN, Fox News, Headline, CNBC, the Weather Channel, and AMC, as well as on broadcast television in Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Though many people have simply watched it on the Internet — the video has been seeing by more than 1.6 million viewers on the CAGW YouTube channel.

CAGW has reportedly spent millions on the video but is transparent about its own finances.

The ad:

This oft-repeated statement received a revival recently thanks to the work of anti-abortion rights media group Live Action, best known for setting up a New Jersey Planned Parenthood manager who was caught on tape assisting a fake pimp and his fake underage sex slaves.

The film was a wild success for the anti-abortion movement and has been used by Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) and other lawmakers to help pass legislation that defunds Planned  Parenthood in the U.S. House.

Leading up to the Senate vote, this week several youth-led anti-abortion groups began a “Tell Congress” YouTube contest , which asks other teenagers and college students to make anti-abortion videos.

The contest involves Live Action, Students for Life of America, Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust and several others.

Here’s the deal, according to a Students for Life of America blog: Students 14-25 are being asked to make a YouTube video that’s no longer than five minutes on why Planned Parenthood should be de-funded. All entering videos must have the tag “2011 Expose Planned Parenthood Video Contest”.

For inspiration, contestants are instructed to watch Live Action’s videos, which often involve hiding cameras in clinics.

The winning filmmaker will win $1,000; the runner-up gets $500; and the third-place winner gets a Survivors Pro-Life Training Camp scholarship (a supposed $400 value).

The contest ends March 7.

ConsiderThisNews has the video of protesters in New Hampshire, expressing their anger at President Obama. This is the highlight:

“We don’t need illegals,” says a white-bearded protester into his megaphone. “Send ‘em all back. Send ‘em back with a bullet in the head the second time.”

The man goes on to cite Thomas Jefferson, saying “Read what Jefferson said about the Tree of Liberty — it’s coming, baby.”

What Jefferson actually said was: “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”

It’s getting ugly.

The report, “Blocking Faith, Freezing Charity” picks up on a point that President Obama made in his recent speech in Egypt, in which he acknowledged that U.S. policies have made it difficult for American Muslims to fulfill their religious obligations of Zakat, or charitable giving. The problem is that the U.S. government has shut so many Muslim charities down based on suspicion that they support terrorism, and declared the broad power to freeze the assets of Muslim charities pending investigation and without revealing its evidence that the groups have engaged in any wrongdoing. What’s more, anyone who supports any of these suspected charities — even if their intentions are to support legitimate humanitarian aid — can be prosecuted for “providing material support to terrorism.”

The ACLU report notes that “A 9/11 Commission staff report on terrorism financing found that the laws that allow the Treasury Department to designate and seize the assets of charities raise “substantial civil liberty concerns.”

Despite President Obama’s acknowledgment of the problems with these policies, they have, so far, remained unchanged.

According to the ACLU: “Today, the Treasury Department has virtually unchecked power to designate groups as terrorist organizations. Terrorism financing laws are overly broad and lack procedural safeguards that would protect American charities against government mistake and abuse.”

His campaign also released a statement to traveling reporters, but otherwise avoided the topic on Monday night. There was no press release for broader distribution, no mention of her passing on the main page of the campaign website, and, so far, no clips of Obama’s touching remarks posted on his usually thorough YouTube channel. Footage of Obama’s remarks, however, is already making its way around YouTube.

A new clip, taken from cable news, quotes Obama’s statement on the trail in North Carolina. “My grandmother, who helped raise me, passed away early this morning. And look, she has gone home,” says Obama. “And she died peacefully in her sleep — with my sister at her side. And so there is great joy as well as tears. I’m not going to talk about it too long because its hard, a little, to talk about,” he added. Here’s the video:

That was the simple premise of the Obama campaign’s dramatic intensification of its YouTube outreach in the homestretch of this long race.

Obama's channel has hundreds of videos.

New data shows the campaign’s official YouTube channel is breaking records, topping 2 million viewers a day at its peak.  That number does not include the millions of views for campaign-related videos posted by third parties.

Sen. John McCain’s official YouTube channel, by contrast, remains steady at just under a quarter of a million views a day.

The statistics are from TubeMogul and TechPresident.com:

Viewership of Obama's official YouTube channel from the past three weeks.

As I explained last week in Obama Rallies the YouTube Vote, the campaign’s new-media team recently juiced its channel with more videos, topping 10 a day, and more star power — from targeted appeals from Google CEO Eric Schmidt to celebrities like Jay-Z, Nas, Wyclef and Natalie Portman.

Many observers have focused on Obama’s lead over McCain in paid media, such as last week’s prime time infomercial, a pricey ad aimed at undecided and low-information voters. And ads targeting undecided voters are still the most influential megaphone for campaigns. Yet Obama’s success in using free online media, both to energize base supporters and recruit volunteers, appears to be paying huge dividends — and it’s not something McCain can dismiss based on the fundraising gap.

Some spots are short, upbeat videos aiming for mass appeal. This week’s viral hit, “Make History,” for example, broke into YouTube’s top 10 this week. With peppy instrumentals by Velvetron, the spot shows people headed off to vote. Sen. Barack Obama only makes a brief cameo, in a drawing on a post-it note.

On Thursday night, the campaign released a video also aiming for a national audience, Choices, that dramatically reprises memorable lines from Obama’s speeches through the entire campaign.

Other recent videos, however, are locally targeted. One particularly dry segment this week features a monotone briefing by N.C. state director Marc Farinella, detailing surprising progress in the state and appealing for more volunteers next week.

Local or national, most of these videos are aimed squarely at Obama supporters, not those last undecideds that Obama targeted with his paid infomercial. To that end, the campaign has focused on its supporters and volunteers — communing, connecting and inspiring through any medium available.

It looks like it’s paying off. In a new interview with Time magazine, Obama strategist David Axelrod stands by the campaign’s goal of deploying eight million volunteers on Election Day, which would be a record-breaking show of force.

This YouTube push is one more way for the Obama campaign to reach every last volunteer as the clock runs out.

The latest item on Sen. Barack Obama’s official YouTube channel is a wacky, dorky, irreverent video titled, really, “Robots Attack!”

Wonder why they didn’t use this in the prime-time infomercial…

PRODUCTION NOTES: This offbeat video is for voters who feel like they’ve seen everything, because there are no campaign ads like this. A light-hearted mash-up of old movies and a brooding musical score set the tone for an appeal for supporters to volunteer and “contact voters now!”

After the famous infomercial had aired — and while the pundits still traded their meta-analysis on cable news — Clinton made a strong case for why Obama should assume the presidency in a time of great “peril.” It was important symbolism for voters who are still on the fence, as the two giants of the Democratic Party displayed what The Associated Press called “harmony like never before.”

Clinton also went out of his way to focus on Obama’s strengths — crediting his campaign’s massive organization and use of the Internet. You can see it in this clip on Obama’s YouTube channel: