House GOP Leader Eric Cantor Calls Occupy Protests “Mobs”

House Maj. Leader Eric Cantor.<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/republicanconference/3708404268/sizes/m/in/photostream/">republicanconference</a>/Flickr

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To no one’s surprise, conservatives of all stripes have done their best to dismiss and disparage the Occupy Wall Street protests and the hundreds more Occupy protests springing up around the country. GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney described the protests as “dangerous” and “class warfare.” Right-wing shock jock Rush Limbaugh called the Occupy Wall Street protesters “stupid.” And another GOP presidential contender, Herman Cain, not only told those Occupy protesters without a job to blame themselves for being unemployed, but also suggested the protests were a conspiracy “planned and orchestrated to distract from the failed policies of the Obama administration.”

On Friday morning, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor joined the chorus of doubters, even sounding fearful about the protests. At the Values Voter Summit here in Washington, DC, Cantor said, “I for one am increasingly concerned about the growing mobs occupying Wall Street and the other cities across the country. And believe it or not, some in this town have actually condoned the pitting of Americans against Americans.”

Here’s the video, via ThinkProgress:

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WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

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