THIS seems pretty significant.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFFmeDw4wfc

 Uh-oh! Rep. Eric Cantor, the second-ranking Republican in the U.S. House, is DISSING the teabaggers and Rush Limbaugh.

 How soon will the loonies label him a RINO?

THIS KIND OF THING was inevitable, I suppose.

 One of our semi-regular commenters here at Applesauce has opined, without any supporting evidence, that the tragedy at Ft. Hood is the result of the U.S. military infringing on the religious rights of its personnel.

 One wonders what this fellow might think of THIS CASE, in which it is alleged that government finger-printing requirements are a violation of religious freedom.

 Follow me on this:

 Unemployment figures released today are said in some quarters to portend a one-term presidency for Barack Obama.

 Another harbinger of tough-sledding for the president looms in the likelihood that his approval rating in the Gallup poll will soon slip below 50 percent. (It’s at 52 percent as this is written.)

 But before we write Obama’s political obituary, let’s put these numbers in historical perspective.

 First of all, we have the fact that the current rate of joblessness is the highest since 1983. If I recall correctly, that was the third year of Ronald Reagan’s presidency. And in the following year, he was elected to a second term.

 Nor should we read too much into Obama’s approval rating falling below 50 percent (if, in fact, that happens). History shows that two out of the three presidents who won re-election in the past three decades (Reagan and Bill Clinton) both saw their Gallup approval numbers slip below 50 percent during their first year in office.

 Mind you, I’m not saying that Obama won’t face tough challenges in a re-election bid in 2012. Indeed, he might not make it. But let’s not forget how grim the situation looked for Reagan before he won a second term.

 As we’ve pointed out here before, opposition to gay marriage is much more common among older Americans than younger folks.

 Eventually, then, most of the homophobes will just die off.

 HERE’s a chart that dramatizes the demographic gulf on the issue.

 While I don’t want to make light of people facing medical emergencies, I can’t help but note the delicious irony in THIS ACCOUNT of a teabagger rally staged yesterday at the Capitol in Washington:

 ”By the time it was over, medics had administered government-run health care to at least five people in the crowd who were stricken as they denounced government-run health care.”

 UPDATE: By the way, Michele Bachmann is FALSELY DECLARING that the aforementioned rally was completely spontaneous and “was nothing that we organized, nothing that we planned. We didn’t order one bus, one carload. Nothing. Complete word of mouth.”

THIS STUFF is hilarious. Be sure to watch the video, wherein Stewart perfectly mimics the Beck style.