Two items this past week emphasized American partisan polarity even as the Sotomayor confirmation offered a lonely counter-example: the GOP has used US Chamber of Commerce tactics and fuzzy facts to smear President Barack Obama, and the NY Times did a partisan sniper job on Ben Stein for doing a commercial that is tangential to the content of his former column there.

GOP donors don't want health care reform imposed by government unless the government imposes the draft penned by top GOP donors. That's not big news. What seems like news to everyone is what those donors spread through the communication mill without their signature on it. They issue talking points (propaganda) that requires enough detailed factual checking and correction to create an irresolute fog around the subject and kill reform efforts. They've a right to do it, however, they'd be more effective in getting their points across if they spent their huge war chests on finding and stating the middle ground facts (where facts usually fall).

Just as the US Chamber and like lobbyists routinely deceive small business to get their donations without telling them the Chamber stands for their massive competitors on nearly every issue in which small businesses conflict with large, they also tell the public how disastrous and socialist the Obama Administration is despite that the Chamber screamed for socialist bailout of the financial sector to begin with. In this, the Chamber camp (GOP) engages in hypocrisy without shame.

It is good to check and balance the Obama Administration to be sure they do not give into their own solicitous, euphemistic snake oil talking-point donors (Planned Parenthood, NARAL and others) to slowly cook their eugenic notions into this country's legal system as they have been striving to do in the young social and cultural life of the country. Even so, my perception of President Barack Obama has not been of someone taking a knee jerk Leftward approach to a host of issues even as I continue to deeply dissent from his abortion advocacy and all of its false ideological, pseudo-scientific premises.

On Ben Stein, it is so clear what happened to him as to be transparent. He has angered those who would impose a scientific theory as speech (including intellectual freedom) law. For those so disposed, the floor cannot remain open in publicly funded educational institutions for professors, teachers, researchers, students and others to investigate or attempt to find a modified method to investigate any and every alternative view, theory, or possible theory to evolution-as-is that borders or relates to multiple disciplines, say physics, biology and religious studies. The point is, there are limits to scientific method, but not all knowledge is scientific. While hybrid attempts or inquiries should not unseat or threaten purely-tailored scientific experimentation, neither should purely tailored scientific experimentation foreclose hybrid epistemological efforts even if it may from time to time comment on aspects of them.

Stein is disfavored because he's a traditional monotheist versus someone like Deepak Chopra whose speculations on the confluence of religion, spirituality and science do not offend because he doesn't belong to the monotheist groups which remain demographically Republican and anger Leftward politicians and grassroots simply by violating their speech restrictions.

Stein has never been for the abolition of the strictly tailored scientific method so long as it was not intellectually limiting of other approaches. Stein is for free inquiry. It is not surprising that Stein's activity or access should be cut by the NY Times on the pretext of conflict of interest when the NY Times itself is built on conflicts of interest. There is no doubt that the NY Times is a left-leaning ideological periodical. To pretend that there is no ideological conflict of interest in its reporting while claiming Stein has one is hypocrisy without shame. The NY Times definitely tailors its content to sell newspapers and boost advertisement: is that not a bias for money and business?

President Barack Obama and Ben Stein are casualties in this country's increasingly irresponsible partisan polarization rooted in special interest bank accounts. You can see the AP's bias here:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090808/ap_en_ot/us_people_ben_stein

by its emaciated (almost anti-bio) they give Stein versus his actual resume, here:

http://www.benstein.com/bio.html

where we learn that he has been an economist, lawyer, poverty lawyer, civil rights advocate, journalist on business ethics, speech writer and more. As he is under siege by the left, it seems he is fighting to keep his work alive because of politically oriented dirty tricks. The NY Times should show which article he's written which puts his column into the conflict of interest category any more than the Times itself is in conflict.

The national grassroots, party affiliation aside, needs to take time to check the facts on health care options in general, Obama's specific proposals (read them), and those among his opposition on the Hill. They also need to measure the NY Times by the same scale it uses to squelch diverse voices in its pages.