But, of course, NBC won’t say it during the Super Bowl.

This has to be one of the very best pro-life spots I’ve ever seen. And just WHY won’t NBC air it? Well, from LifeNews.com…

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I admit it. I go to YouTube a lot. A LOT. I can’t help it! There are some pretty funny videos at YouTube, along with the weird, the bizarre, the just plain disturbing, and the seriously creepy. I have a YouTube channel of my very own, in fact. Some of my videos are pretty funny too, as well as disturbing. But the relationship between YouTube and conservatives has been rocky and remains so. And of course, they are owned by Barackoogle.

Moe wrote recently about a copyright issue Leon and I experienced with a video at YouTube. It was resolved satisfactorily. They put their ads on our video and will make money from it. Nice.

Well it seems that now other labels are catching on to this. You can’t stop people ripping your music, why not profit from it? And who better, I ask you, to profit from than one Rick Astley? Hmm? Rick-rolling is a phenomenon unparalleled at YouTube, so the potential number of videos they will be able to advertise on and sell music downloads or ringtones from is huge. And apparently, they’ve recognized this. I received another one of those emails from YouTube today, and sure enough they are now profiting off the video … or more specifically the song. Nice, I thought.

But then I had another thought. Didn’t Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi recently Rick Roll the YouTube-viewing nation? Why yes, yes she did. So I wondered, is the official YouTube channel for the House of Representatives going to be sporting cheesy ringtone ads and download links now?

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Or maybe he doesn’t want to win this one. Would you, in his shoes? Via AoSHQ:

Reid to GOP: It’s your fault if stimulus stalls

As the $820 billion stimulus package heads to the upper chamber, Senate Democratic leaders are launching a pre-emptive strike.

In a Thursday afternoon news conference, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid urged Senate Republicans not to line up against the bill, and says Republicans will be blamed for any delay in the landmark economic legislation.

“If we don’t [pass the bill], it’s not our fault, we’re trying,” Reid said. “The president has done a remarkable job covering all the bases on Capitol Hill.”

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Via Ace of Spade HQ’s headlines, and very, very timely.

No explanation or expansion really needed for this one; just go, search, and marvel. And maybe give a Senator or two a call on the subject?

Crossposted at Moe Lane.

The Associated Press’s Beth Fouhy reports that there’s enthusiasm among GOP Governors for the spending plan being debated in Congress:

Most Republican governors have broken with their GOP colleagues in Congress and are pushing for passage of President Barack Obama’s economic aid plan that would send billions to states for education, public works and health care.

Their state treasuries drained by the financial crisis, governors would welcome the money from Capitol Hill, where GOP lawmakers are more skeptical of Obama’s spending priorities.

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This past Tuesday, we celebrated Mozart’s birthday.

Today we celebrate the birthday of Franz Peter Schubert, who was born on this date in 1797.

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42 people dead; communities iced in and without lifesaving power for heat and cooking; conditions worsening — and FEMA nowhere to be found.

This isn’t a lefty caricature of disaster-response under the Bush administration; it’s real-life unresponsiveness under the leadership of President Obama (whose accession was supposed to mark a “return to competence” in government).

“In some parts of rural Kentucky, they’re getting water the old-fashioned way — with pails from a creek,” writes Associated Press reporter Bruce Schreiner. “There’s not room for one more sleeping bag on the shelter floor. The creative are flushing their toilets with melted snow.”

Schreiner continues:

Local officials were growing angry with what they said was a lack of help from the state and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. In Grayson County, about 80 miles southwest of Louisville, Emergency Management Director Randell Smith said the 25 National Guardsmen who have responded have no chain saws to clear fallen trees.

“We’ve got people out in some areas we haven’t even visited yet,” Smith said. “We don’t even know that they’re alive.”

Smith said FEMA has been a no-show so far.

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We now have a new Chairman for the Republican Party. With a new Chairman comes new people and new vendors and new ideas.

When I first wrote on this topic on Christmas Day, the post made it round the world — surprising particularly because the post was written on Christmas Day.

There were five points I made and that I stand by:

1. That you have come to me thinking I am a technologist is an indication of the problem;
2. Luckily for you, I have come to recognize my limits, but sadly there are too many others out there who do not recognize their limits and, unfortunately, offer themselves as solutions to our tech problem instead of offering real solutions;
3. If anyone you talk to says you need to duplicate what Obama did, run the other way as fast as possible;
4. When looking for people, choose technologists who are interested in politics, not political guys who learned tech; and,
5. Look outside Washington, D.C.

In my post, I discussed who Cyrus Krohn is and why keeping him at the RNC is important. Since then, all the thinking we have done at RedState over endorsements, etc. has come down to one this: will Cyrus be kept at the RNC.

He is that important. We will know whether Michael Steele is serious about bringing change to the party by, ironically enough, whether he brings change to the e-Director’s position. Change in that position will most likely mean he was not serious about change at all.

Allow me to explain:

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Late last night we asked “Is Obama preparing to cut the defense budget?” All we had to work with at the time were personal observations by some who had seen a Fox News report that the president had asked the Pentagon to slash defense spending by 10%. The story had not yet been posted on the FNC website at that late hour.

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Sing it…. “I’d like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony, I feel Obama in the air he makes us all friendly, he’s the real thing” …. OK, maybe that wonderful sentiment can’t last. But, as Andrew Breitbart reports, this emotional high has only lasted the Obamagassed Ashton Kutcher a mere 10 days. 10 measly days was all the love-your-neighbor that Mr. Demi Moore could take.

Not long ago, Kutcher was involved in a video of sycophantic Obamaists from Hollyweird where he “pledged” his fealty to a politician. He also pledged to be a more civil fellow saying that he would “always represent my country with pride, dignity and honesty.” I’d suggest that this young man should go look some of those words up in a dictionary somewhere because with the uncivil tirade he spewed out against his neighbor for early morning construction noise Ashie was being neither neighborly nor dignified.

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Not then.
Not now.
Not ever.

Iraqis vote in landmark elections
Iraqis are electing new provincial councils in the first nationwide vote in four years, with the Sunni minority expected to turn out in strength.

After a slow start, correspondents said voting was brisk, including among Sunni Muslims, who largely boycotted the last elections.

The vote is seen as a test of Iraq’s stability ahead of a general election due later this year.

Security is tight and thousands of observers are monitoring the polls.

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Once in a while there is a short piece spewed forth by some Old Media outlet or another that is so perfect as a primer of left-wing bias 101 that I just have to share it. In this case we have the Telegraph writing on the story, covered at NewsBusters a few days ago, where Barack Obama found himself confused by an outside glass panel he mistook for a door at the White House. Michael M. Bates compared the bemused and easy treatment that the confused Obama received to the vicious attacks that Bush suffered when he was similarly confused by a door that wouldn’t open in China in 2005.

Bates wondered aloud if Obama would see the same sort of hateful attacks on his intelligence that Bush was served up by the ignorati in the media in 2005. We have since seen the answer to Bates’ question. Obama has been given a pass. The Telegraph’s treatment of the story, though, is such a perfect example of the subtle, left-wing bias used to excuse anything a lefty does while still attacking every one else that it really must serve as exhibit “A” in the battle against Old Media bias.

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Michael Richardson of the on-line news group the Examiner wrote recently about some revealing quotes about the modern American Communist Party by a Richard Winger of Ballot Access News.

Speaking about how the Communist Party in the US has for the most part ceased trying to run candidates for office, Winger points out that the CPUSA fully endorsed Barack Obama for president in 2008 and has decided it best to focus on Democratic Party politics and union activities.

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From the early days of his campaign, Obama made with the flourish that, should he be elected, lobbyists would not be welcome in his new tone Washington, his Washington of change and hope. Soon after the election, Obama’s spokesman John Podesta made a great show of announcing that Obama was insisting on the “strictest ethics rules ever applied” to his ongoing choices for members of his administration and his transition team.

In the early November news conference, Podesta proudly proclaimed that Obama was so interested in distancing himself from the old, business-as-usual Washington that they didn’t care if they were excluding people of long Washington experience with their supposed strict ethics rules. Podesta sternly told reporters, “I’ve heard the complaint that we’re leaving all these extra people on the side, that we’re leaving all the people that know everything out in the cold. So be it. That’s a commitment that is one the American people expect and one the President-elect made.”

Yet within weeks it became clear that this new ethical standard was merely so much window dressing. Now, lobbyists abound in Obama’s administration and have since day one. Not only that, but tax cheats seem to be particularly drawn to the new president.

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Never assume that merely because a group of businessmen ally themselves with the Obama Administration, it means that the Administration’s policy wants and desires are consistent with free market principles.

Tad DeHaven explains.

Courtesy of Ike Brannon and Chris Edwards. A key passage follows:

Keynesians thought that fiscal stimulus would work by counteracting the problem of sticky wages. Workers would be fooled into accepting lower real wages as price levels rose. Rising nominal wages would spur added work efforts and increased hiring by businesses. However, later analysis revealed that the government can’t routinely fool private markets, because people have foresight and they are generally rational. Keynes erred in ignoring the actual microeconomic behaviour of individuals and businesses.

The dominance of Keynesianism ended in the 1970s. Government spending and deficits ballooned, but the result was higher inflation, not lower unemployment. These events, and the rise in monetarism led by Milton Friedman, ended the belief in an unemployment-inflation trade-off. Keynesianism was flawed and its prescription of active fiscal intervention was misguided. Indeed, Friedman’s research showed that the Great Depression was caused by a failure of government monetary policy, not a failure of private markets, as Keynes had claimed.

Even if a government stimulus were a good idea, policymakers probably wouldn’t implement it the way Keynesian theory would suggest. To fix a downturn, policymakers would need to recognize the problem early and then enact a counter-cyclical strategy quickly and efficiently. But U.S. history reveals that past stimulus actions have been too ill-timed or ill-suited to have actually helped. Further, many policymakers are driven by motives at odds with the Keynesian assumption that they will diligently pursue the public interest.

The end of simplistic Keynesianism in the 1970s created a void in macroeconomics that was filled by “rational expectations” theory developed by John Muth, Robert Lucas, Thomas Sargent, Robert Barro and others. By the 1980s, old-fashioned Keynesian was dead, at least among the new leaders of macroeconomics.

Well, it has come back to life. But only because we appear to be determined to forget the mistakes of the past.

Actually, scratch that. Not “we.” Better to say “some.” Better still to say “mainly the Obama Administration and its Congressional Democratic allies.”

The President who promised us that he would re-engage the world and put to the side the supposed unilateralism and arrogance of the Bush Administration has raised hackles across the world with the news that the Obama Administration is pushing for “Buy American” provisions in the new stimulus act.

Now, the Administration appears to be backtracking on this utterly protectionist proposal. And a good thing too. Because “Buy American” provisions are lousy policy and the rest of the world is mighty ticked off:

The issue may cloud Obama’s trip to Canada on Feb. 19, his first journey outside U.S. borders as president. Officials in Canada, the top U.S. trade partner, are criticizing a part of legislation that passed the U.S. House of Representatives Jan. 28 that requires the use of U.S.-made iron and steel in infrastructure projects.

“U.S. protectionism is about to make Canada’s recession a lot worse,” Ralph Goodale, house leader for the opposition Liberal Party, said today in Parliament.

[. . .]

The U.S. provision is “clearly against trade agreements,” and Canada would be able to file a complaint under either the North American Free Trade Agreement or with the World Trade Organization, said Simon Potter, an international trade lawyer with McCarthy Tetrault in Montreal.

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The Australian Prime Minister could learn a lot from Horwitz, who answers the former’s shibboleths with cold, hard facts.

I continue to chuckle over the contention that we have or had some kind of ultra-free market that caused us to fall into a recession. I guess that Kevin Rudd is yet another person who seems to think that there is just one page of rules and regulations in the Federal Register and has forgotten about the other 69,427. Just how many pages of rules and regulations are needed before people like Rudd think to themselves “gee, maybe the Americans have quite a lot of regulations on the books and people like me are beclowning ourselves in claiming otherwise”?

Those who objected to the selection of Sarah Palin as John McCain’s running mate in last year’s Presidential election sarcastically derided the nature and competence of the McCain campaign’s vetting operation. Surely–the thinking went–the campaign could not have been operating on all cylinders if it allowed a candidate like Palin to slip through its vetting procedures and end up as the Number Two on the Republican ticket.

Fast forward to the present day, which has seen a tax cheat slip through the vetting procedures of the Obama transition process and become Secretary of the Treasury. And since the Obama Administration has decided that the drama surrounding Tim Geithner needed an encore, we now have this:

ABC News has learned that the nomination of former Senator Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., to be President Obama’s Secretary of Health and Human Services has hit a traffic snarl on its way through the Senate Finance Committee.

The controversy deals with a car and driver lent to Daschle by a wealthy Democratic friend, a chauffeur service the former senator used for years without declaring it on his taxes.

It remains an open question as to whether this is a “speed bump,” as a Democratic Senate ally of Daschle put it, or something more damaging.

After being defeated in his 2004 re-election campaign to the Senate, Daschle in 2005 became a consultant and chairman of the Executive Advisory Board at InterMedia Advisors.

Based in New York City, InterMedia Advisors is a private equity firm founded in part by longtime Daschle friend and Democratic fundraiserLeo Hindery, the former president of the YES network (the Yankees’ and Devils’ broadcast network).

That same year he began his professional relationship with InterMedia 2005, Daschle began using the services of Hindery’s car and driver.

The Cadillac and driver were never part of Daschle’s official compensation package at InterMedia but Mr. Daschle — who as Senate majority leader enjoyed the use of a car and driver at taxpayer expense — didn’t declare their services on his income taxes, as tax laws require.

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Ace says he saw it on Fox News, but at this hour, there’s nothing about it on the FNC website. The best source Ace could find is the pay-per-view site InsideDefense.com NewsStand, the services of which I haven’t paid to view. But there’s been considerable speculation that Obama will make cuts in defense. In fact, he has promised to do so. If he intends to make good on his campaign rhetoric, then it’s just a question of when the cuts will come.

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