FDR did all he could to avoid SS being implemented, and when he could avoid it no longer he made sure that it was supported by a cruelly regressive tax.
FDR was just fine with the evil Bourbons: he thwarted the passage of anti-lynching laws.
Private insurance companies, Pharma, etc. are Obama’s fake opposition, his excuse not to give people what they want, so of course he will accomodate them. A single payer system would increase people’s expectations for a more responsive government, something both parties will do anything to avoid, including going to war.

That’s easy: about mid October, Mitt will become the final anti-Romney candidate.

Once elected, an officeholder does not want to appear too effective or too devoted to those he/she represents, since that would increase the electorate’s expectations about what the government should and can accomplish.
Before Reagan, the story was that government could accomplish some good if not unfortunately and invariably prevented by the opposition (what Karp called the “indispensable enemy”). Reagan streamlined the betrayal by convincing many that government intervention can cause only harm (in the domestic sphere, of course, since all foreign interventions are just great for everyone).

Was it Molloy for whom the loss of consciousness was no great loss?

The point, I think, for the governments of both the US and Iran, is that the citizens’ interests not be represented: governments benefit from having enemies; citizens, not so much. Has no one considered the possibility that the governments of Iran and the US are cooperating in order to thwart their citizens’ interests (in a manner analogous to political parties as indispensable enemies, as described by Walter Karp)?

It’s not all we got: we got to watch the 1% “race to the top!”
Obama didn’t merely spurn our hopes, he used slogans to take an ironic piss on them.

Then the Air Force would learn an important skill.

Actually, I don’t they can all leave unless they buy New Zealand or some other place.
So, there will be gated communities surrounded by armed guards and claymores here and there, and everywhere else wil be something like a George Saunders-inspired 2nd Ammendment theme park.

For the endgame, they will quote Marx:
“Hello, I must be going, I’d really like to stay, but I must leave…”

You mean, by making a law? When was the last time a president took seriously his solemn oath to “take care that the laws are faithfully executed”?
The Sherman Antitrust Act has never been faithfully executed (campain speech? check; window dressing? check; shakedown? check), so that’s at least 120 years.
You see, all our presidents since at least Cleveland have been looking forward, not backwards…
Hope and Change! Yeah!

It looks like: when there is nothing more to loot, they will leave.
I suppose we’ll get to flip burgers for those left behind to maintain the nukes….

It was worth it: Wilson’s war and Espionage Act of 1917 left people so bereft of hope that there has been no mass movement for republican reform since.
That “[T]oday American children are taught in our schools that Wilson was one of our greatest Presidents…is proof in itself that the American republic has never recovered from the blow he inflicted upon it.”
(The Politics of War: The Story of Two Wars Which Altered Forever the Political Life of the American Republic, Walter Karp)

TR was for the trusts but punished only a very few of the most egregious offenders, even while giving aid to others, so the others would keep a lower profile and the people would STFU.
The trust-busting image was for 5th grade social studies consumption so that we would learn at a tender age to revere our leaders. Had we been taught real history instead, as Jefferson recommended for a “republican education,” we would be able to recognize power in all its forms and know what secures and what endangers liberty. But the PTB weren’t going to let that happen…

“why do both parties settle for second best when they have people like Alan Grayson kicking around”

Neither party would want someone like Grayson, in part because neither party considers winning elections the most important thing: party discipline is more critical to the survival of the oligarchy than winning elections.
If, for example, Obama had behaved like a progressive after being elected, he would have attracted too many progressives to the party, too many for the party leaders to control, posing a threat to their power.
Neither party will support a candidate whose loyalty to the party is in doubt. If Obama had tried to rely on his popularity go it alone, he would have been Cartered.
Obama has performed exactly as he promised the party he would.
If he weren’t a hack, he would never have been allowed to become president.

Obama is no more a tool of corporations than a mafia thug is a tool of the grocery store he shakes down. He favors some sectors with corrupt privilege, from whom he exacts tribute, while disfavoring others, from whom he can still exact tribute under the threat of honoring, capriciously, the solemn oath he made to take care that the laws are faithfully executed.
Again, for the sake of clarity: Obama is the patron, the corporations are his clients. Such an arrangement has existed since long before democracy was invented.

I think almost every president since and including McKinley has been proud to create or sustain a conflict because it makes him the leader of a nation rather than just the mere servant of a republic.
McKinley made the first stab, Wilson delivered the coup de grace; there has been no republic since and the last serious attempt at restoration was made by the progressive Sen. Robert Marion La Follett, whom Walter Karp called “the last great republican of consequence in American history.”

I’ve been kicked in the balls and I’ve experienced a nerve being assaulted and then murdered by an abscess (it died and became painless while in the waiting room of the dentist). The toothache was worse.

Soupy sez: “Be true to your teeth and your teeth will never be false to you.”

You aren’t being cynical – you have just recognized how the other side operates
The other side is only the other side of the same mouth (Walter Karp’s expression, used ad nauseum in Indispensable Enemies: The Politics of Misrule in America).