President Obama delivered a strong populist, pro-middle class speech last night. And being a strong populist pro-middle class kind of guy, I naturally liked it a lot. I wasn’t the only one: voters loved it. Check out this dramatic overnight report from Stan Greenberg . The numbers jump off the page at you, with improvement scores on all kinds of key measures going dramatically higher. So it was a very good night for the President, and a good night for Democrats like me who really hate the idea of either Newt Gingrich or Mitt Romney being the guy giving the State of the Union speech next year. Obama set up the frame for all of 2012 extremely well, and Democrats go into the election year with a fighting chance in spite of a bad economy.

But underneath the surface, below the headlines, something else incredibly important happened last night, and in the days leading up to the speech- something that I believe will have a lot more to do with the President’s re-election than the SOTU speech. If he wants to run against Wall Street in this campaign, he needs credibility to do it, and he took a big step toward getting it last night.

The key word of the day is accountability. The progressive movement in this country came together to firmly and aggressively hold this President accountable, and he responded by announcing something that has the potential to finally- finally, finally- hold the big banks on Wall Street accountable. Now, we have to keep holding the President accountable to make sure the right things happen. But a huge, huge step was taken yesterday, and it may yet result in the biggest win progressives and middle class homeowners have had against Wall Street in many decades.

The backdrop is the ongoing fight over what to do about the deep and pervasive corruption of the big banks in terms of mortgage securitization. If that sounds like an obscure wonky issue, know this: it is at the dead center heart of the 2008 financial collapse, and over whether the housing sector and the economy in general comes back strong any time in the next decade. Over 25% of homeowners are underwater on their mortgages, and until you deal directly and aggressively with that problem, the housing market will remain dead, and the economy will stay flat. The reason that all this economic damage happened is financial fraud on a mass level: what NY AG Eric Schneiderman calls the old pump and dump. Bankers committed mortgage origination fraud, duping both home purchasers and investors who bought their crap, on a massive scale. Then bankers (some of the same and some new ones) intentionally inflated a bubble they knew could not sustain itself, and they did it on a massive scale as well. Then they bought off Moody’s and the other ratings agencies to give Triple A ratings to this toxic mess. And then they commissioned perjury on a massive scale- possibly a million separate counts- through the robo-signing scam to try to foreclose on homes as fast as they could.

They made more money faster than any small set of people in world history, and it was based to a great extent on fraud. And the rest of us have been handed the bill: 8 million lost jobs, the $750 billion TARP bailout, the trillions in Federal Reserve bailout, 25 percent of homeowners underwater, millions of foreclosures. And by and large, the bankers who created this mess have yet to be held accountable in any way: they aren’t in jail, they still have their jobs, very few of them have even had to pay fines.

For reasons I will never understand, certain Attorneys General and some members of the Obama administration started over a year ago going down the path of taking a small subset of these issues, the robo-signing, and trying to do a settlement deal with the bankers that would have been a disaster: a relatively small amount of money in exchange for a wide ranging release for legal responsibility in many different areas. This has been called by some a slap on the wrist, but it was far worse than that, because the bankers who caused this mess would have gotten off the hook for most or all of these sins with no investigations being done and no accountability being had. Fortunately, progressives who follow these issues have been able to build a big movement around stopping this get-out-of-jail-free-card deal, and have been demanding a real, full-scale, wide-ranging investigation that included all the financial fraud issues, with a goal of forcing the banks to be held more fully responsible for the damage they have done to homeowners. Led in this fight by the remarkable Attorney General of New York Eric Schneiderman, who fought and scrapped for the right thing every step of the way, we appear to have won a big initial victory in this fight: Eric will be co-chairing a new inter-agency task force to investigate all forms of financial fraud. I am told by a senior White House official who has been involved in all these negotiations that as far as they are concerned, Eric is considered by them as first among equals, with the power to drive this task force forward. Knowing Eric, if he’s not able to get done what he wants through this investigation, he will walk away anyway.

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Roy Blunt, who was tapped to head the GOP Health Care Task Force said that if an adult has preexisting conditions then they shouldn't be covered. That proves the point Alan Grayson made when he said---don't get sick and die quickly...OK, you know what I mean.

Blunt: ...but access for adults who've done nothing to take care of themselves, who actually will have what I have described every incentive not to get insurance until the day you know you're going to have medical expenses, that's a very different kind of story.

How does Roy Blunt and the Republican party draw the line when people are considered to be "taking care of themselves?" Is he going to have regulations that tell people how to live? The health care industry would love to have a whole host of rules that a person would have to follow before they would be eligible to be covered. Most people don't get sick, but when they do they need health care. If they can't buy it when they need it then what good is our health care industry?

Dean Baker is the Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, and he shares some interesting information with us:

Word has it that President Obama intends to appoint a task force the week after next which will be charged with "reforming" Social Security. According to inside gossip, the task force will be led entirely by economists who were not able to see the $8 trillion housing bubble, the collapse of which is giving the country its sharpest downturn since the Great Depression.

This effort is bizarre for several reasons. First, the economy is sinking rapidly. While President Obama's stimulus package is a good first step towards counteracting the decline, there is probably not a single economist in the country who believes that is adequate to the task. President Obama would be advised to focus his attention on getting the economy back in order instead of attacking the country's most important social program.

The second reason why this task force is strange is that Social Security doesn't need reforming. According to the Congressional Budget Office, it can pay all scheduled benefits for the next 40 years with no changes whatsoever.

The third reason that this effort is pernicious is that this talk of reform is occurring with the baby boomers just as the cusp of retirement. Due to the reckless policies of the Rubin-Greenspan-Bush clique, this cohort has just seen their housing equity wiped out with the collapse of the housing bubble. Tens of millions of baby boomers who might have felt reasonably secure three years ago are now approaching retirement with little or no equity in their homes.

Similarly, if they had been fortunate enough to accumulate any substantial amount of savings in a 401(k) account, they just saw much of this wealth vanish with the plunge in the stock market. The median late baby boomer household (ages 45-54) has a net worth of just over $80 including the equity in their home. This means that if they took all of their savings, they would have less than half of their home (assuming a median price $175,000) paid off, and nothing else.

The median household among older baby boomers would be doing a bit better. With a net worth of $143,000, this household could have most of their home paid off, but nothing else. And of course, half of the population has wealth less than the median, so they would be less well-prepared for retirement.

In short, the vast majority of baby boomers will be approaching retirement with little other than their Social Security and Medicare to support them. And now President Obama is apparently prepared to appoint a commission that will attack these only remaining pillars of support.

John Amato: If Obama touches the third rail of politics, he is truly clueless. How did that work out for Bush? I really don't get it. The konservative krowd have been trying to destroy it ever since FDR put it in place.

This keeps coming back mainly because Democratic politiciansin explicably keep using it as a yardstick of "fiscal responsibility." It's actually the opposite.

Any Grand Bargain that includes negotiating with conservatives on social security must be off the table. They want to destroy it. They always have.

Booman Tribune; Congressional leaders on Thursday demanded that the Veterans Affairs secretary explain hefty bonuses for senior department officials involved in crafting a budget that came up $1 billion short and jeopardized veterans' health care.

Facing South: A special U.S. House task force voted yesterday to open a federal investigation into last November's disputed District 13 congressional election in Sarasota County, Fla., where more than 18,000 ballots cast by touch-screen machines recorded no vote for either candidate.

PERRspectives Blog: GOP quotes of the week, Iraq veto edition

denialism blog: Discussing the problem of denialists, their standard arguing techniques, how to identify denialists and/or cranks, and discussing topics of general interest such as skepticism, medicine, law and science. Mark Hoofnagle be taking on denialists in the sciences, while brother, Chris, will be geared more towards the legal and policy implications of industry groups using denialist arguments to prevent sound policies.

William K. Wolfrum: Tips on how to 'civilize' your blog posts

The Orstrahyun: Australia faces the world's most extreme 'climate challenge'.  How long before the mass evacuation of cities begins?

Following up on my LA Times story, Nikkie Finke from the LA Weekly has more info about David Hiller taking over the LA Times:

New Publisher Was Rumsfeld Friend & Part Of Controversial Reagan Administration U.S. Immigration Policy Calling For 'Concentration Camps--I'm told that Hiller was in charge of the task force on immigration for the Justice Department and was instrumental in dealing with all sorts of policy initiatives including plans for mass deportations back to Mexico of Mexicans in the U.S., illegal alien internment camp proposals, and calls for indefinite imprisonment for Cuban boatlift refugees. All this tested the waters for the Reagan administration and eventually laid the legal framework for the Bush administration's present-day Guantánamo policy....read on

Also noted is that his good buddy Donald Rumsfeld was a mean squash player. That's just beautiful. Have fun with that one.

Duncan has the before and after story. You know the one where he suddenly resigned to possibly spend more time with his family-and then the real one when he was arrested."

Update: Digby found more.

"in the early days of Katrina, the White House Katrina task force was being run by Claude Allen."

Very odd. In the worst natural disaster in American history the Bush administration's response was assigned to a shoplifting religious extremist and a crony from the arabian horseshow association while the head of homeland security flew off to give a speech. The president and John McCain laughed and ate cake. This is Republican governance....read on"

Wasn't there a court case with Cheney and a judge going fishing? Yea, Scalia.

Vice President Dick Cheney and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia spent part of last week duck hunting together at a private camp in southern Louisiana, just three weeks after the court agreed to take up the vice president's appeal in lawsuits over his handling of the administration's energy task force...read on

A White House document shows that executives from big oil companies met with Vice President Cheney's energy task force in 2001 -- something long suspected by environmentalists but denied as recently as last week by industry officials testifying before Congress...read on"

WOODWARD FILE: He's been lying for years, but apparently, posing as a journalist while actually functioning as a White House stooge doesn't pay enough money. Michael Stickings has more on the unbearable arrogance of Bob Woodward and over at TPMCafe, Greg Anrig. Jr. notes that back in 1996, Joan Didion pointed out Woodward's fatal flaw. Finally, Will explains how he became a journalist inBob and me.

Pam's House Blend: Slave wage...er..Slavery in the Gulf

The WitList: White House Scraps Plans for 'Tickle Me Gitmo' Doll

State of the Day: Why the Cheney Energy Task Force Docs Are Now Fair Game
Bob and me.

Pam's House Blend: Slave wage...er..Slavery in the Gulf

The WitList: White House Scraps Plans for 'Tickle Me Gitmo' Doll

State of the Day: Why the Cheney Energy Task Force Docs Are Now Fair Game

Big Oil Lies

Scarborough did a report on Big Oil and their lies-lies-lies. Some great clips from the hearing with Sen. Lautenberg-asking them directly if they had any meetings. Barbara Boxer comes out swinging also.

Download | play -WMP Download | play -QT

The WaPo broke the story that they did meet. "A White House document shows that executives from big oil companies met with Vice President Cheney's energy task force in 2001 -- something long suspected by environmentalists but denied as recently as last week by industry officials testifying before Congress."

All Spin Zone has more: Lying to Congress - Feh, Who Cares?