I try again. In my view, taken from a under-lined thought stolen from The "Hippocratic Corpus,"...a view that administered here is good meds.

*Each has a nature and [mental] faculty of its own, and none is beyond help or treatment; most of us are curable by the same thing that caused the serious (individual/social) harm. One thing nourishes one thing, another another, but sometimes also harms it. The physician/Law must know how to discern the season (Perfect) for restoration of proper nourishment treatments for growth and it is imperative NOT to increase the illness but to wear it down and watch it waste away. What is contrary dies away and what is healthy will eventually prosper and flourish.*

We've lived to see a great illness in our times. The Salon does provide good mends that can kill some ill-patients who refuse treatments and intervention. It's sort of a national purge and purification. I was going to end the idea by saying, Holy Mother of Migratory Espinoza or holy margarine. I pledge I won't act stupid. Glenn doesn't and we should follow his counsel for our best sanity and health. He should have taken a course in nutrition and been a big-PHD in homeopathy or become a Law-physician?

What is at stake is American democracy itself. A country without all the significant news, points of view, and information its citizens need to be informed voters is risking the loss of democratic rights. Voters without genuine choices and without the information they need to choose what meets their own needs and wishes has produced something alarming: on Election Day our voters are forced to vote for what is the narrowest political choices among all industrial democracies of the world.

The New Media Monopoly, by Ben Bagdikian, describes these dominant media giants, how they cooperate with each other in the manner of a cartel, who runs them, and how this all came to pass in such insidious ways. It reminds a whole generation that has forgotten, for example, that the public owns the air waves, not the broadcasters. The book describes how all our media grew, including the Internet (and intriguing information like the first time in history that a computer crashed).

This book is designed to inform, to raise the alarm, and at the same time be readable in the living room and classroom.

Recall the Clinton years, the press hounded the Clinton administration even from before the time it took office. I recall hearing in the press that the Clinton administration was a failed one even during what is normally thought of as the "honeymoon" period.

If the "access" hypothesis were valid then Clinton would have gotten the same treatment as did Bush in the months before 9/11/2001, that Clinton did not get that treatment seems to me to be a distinct count against the "access" hypothesis.

If things are to improve in this country, then citizens are going to have to take it upon themselves to educate theirselves about the nature of democracy - how it works, how it is supposed to work, why it isn't working, etc.

The media is failing Americans in this regard, but as long as we have public libraries democracy is still alive.

One of the most fundamental issues facing us is the poverty of the press. If you're upset by what is besetting the country, then one should be motivated to make the effort to figure out what is wrong with journalism, and then start communicating that info to you friends, family, neighbors ... to your community.

When you see something wrong with your local news (tv, print, or radio) write a letter, go to a local meeting, etc. That's what it is going to take. Democracy is going to have to be re-built from the bottom up ...

That being said, I have two recommendations;

http://www.amazon.com/Elements-Journalism-Newspeople-Should-Public/dp/0609806912

That's a short book that explain journalism and its relation to democracy. Can be read in an afternoon but will increase your appreciation/understanding of what's wrong with today's news and give you a means of explaining this to other people.

http://www.benbagdikian.com/

That's the New Media Monopoly by Ben Bagdikian, former editor of the Washinton Post. He's been sounding the alarm about the decline of journalism since the early 1980s when he was dismissed as paranoid.

That website has a Q & A and excerpts and what not.

Saving democracy is going to require some personal investment. If you can find 30 minutes, an hour, two hours ... whatever - to devote to democracy a week that can make a difference.

A number of years ago, a good friend was a reporter at what was the largest paper in Anchorage, Alaska. The paper was purchased by a corporate media company and all the managers went off to school.

They came back with corporate crap like everyone can apply for anyone's job. This resulted in lowering of standards and they also rearranged desks so reporters could spy on each other.

Within 2 years the paper folded.

I see this as destruction of an institution which is essential for our democracy. This isn't just corporate greed, although the management practices described above are used to terrible results in many places. This is a planned destruction of the independent media in the USA.

Junior Bush's favorable singling out of Politico told me all I needed to know about it. But two other related occurrences during this past week were particularly disturbing:

1. David Gregory and Brian Williams frollicking on stage with Rove and Bush Jr. at this year's Colbert-less White House Stenographers Dinner. Really, how are these celebrity journalists supposed to party down with so-called republicans (who hate the republic), and then go back to reporting the truth about the GOP''s corruption, incompetence, and lies? Oh yeah, they can't (and don't, and never have).

2. Richard Wolffe, whom Glenn has previously criticized, appeared on 'Countdown' and regurgitated word for word the GOP party line. To wit: the Dems MUST get serious and "fund the troops" very quickly, or else be blamed for "losing the war." It apparently never occurred to Wolffie that Bush-Cheney ought to start listening to We the People and end their disastrous occupation of Iraq.

Seriously, the main lesson of the Internet Age is that talented outsiders do a much better job of seeing clearly and reporting truthfully than do the pals of Rove and Bush Jr.