Day Deux of David Shuster’s lefties-only blog segment featured a sidesplitter from Jane Hamsher.  The Firedoglaker mocked Republican Eric Cantor for suggesting that taxpayers will foot the bill for the mortgage bailout the president is about to roll out.  Silly Eric!  Turns out, taxpayers won’t be on the hook at all. The money will come from . . . TARP II.  Mortgage manna from heaven!

Shuster set things up with this clip of Republican whip Cantor.

ERIC CANTOR: 93% of America’s families are current on their mortgages, and frankly are out there wondering: who is going to pay for this continued succession of bailouts?  Homeowners now are suffering under skyrocketing property taxes, and if we put the bill for $50 billion-plus on top of all the bills that families have right now, you may very well be set to encourage more foreclosures. We just cannot continue to pay for the kind of things this administration thinks that we can.

JANE HAMSHER: The mortgage crisis is very complicated, and obviously Eric Cantor doesn’t understand it, because if he thinks the $50 billion that is scheduled to help mortgage owners, homeowners, with their mortgages is coming out of property taxes, he has no business being in a leadership position in the House of Representatives. It’s not. They’re looking to the TARP II in order to take that money from. He’s just wrong. But I guess he makes good copy!

Hamsher clearly mischaracterized Cantor as claiming the bill for the mortgage bailout would be added to local property taxes. He said no such thing.  But leaving Hamsher’s twisting of Cantor’s words aside, it really doesn’t matter if the money comes from the property-tax pocket or the federal income-tax one.  It’s still the American taxpayer taking it in the neck.  But Hamsher apparently believes in the TARP Tooth Fairy.

Closing the segment, Shuster was eager to let Hamsher know that “believe me, I agree with you on this!”