The video I selected has nothing to do with the Sunday shows, just one that I thought was cool. In truth, it's the same people having the same conversations with the bobbleheads this morning. Quite literally. With the media panic over the H1N1 or "swine" flu in overdrive, we are being treated to appearances by Homeland Security head Janet Napolitano, New HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Acting CDC Director Richard Besser on not one or two but FIVE of the morning shows. Will they be asked why we should be so scared of H1N1 when regular flu kills 20,000 a year without closing borders or mandating flu shots? Or the almost 15,000 people who died of AIDS? No? Well, then how about how Canadian pigs actually contracted swine flu from a farm worker? Not to be outdone, newly minted Democratic Senator Arlen Specter shows up on two shows and is a planned subject of at least one other. Considering the kind of Republican he was, I don't think we should anticipate such great shakes from him switching parties.

ABC's "This Week" — Sens. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Orrin Hatch, R-Utah; Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius; Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano; acting CDC Director Richard Besser.

CBS' "Face the Nation" — Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa.; Besser; Sebelius; Napolitano.

NBC's "Meet the Press" — Sebelius; Napolitano; Besser; Specter.

NBC's "The Chris Matthews Show" - Panel: Joe Klein, Kelly O'Donnell, Kathleen Parker, Howard Fineman. Topics: Will Arlen Specter provide Obama a reliable 60th vote in the Senate? Will the Republican Party adjust to regain national prominence? Meter Questions: Will Republicans genuinely reevaluate? YES: 4 NO: 8; With Specter joining the Dems, will health care pass? YES: 7 No: 5.

CNN's "State of the Union" — Leahy; House Minority Whip Eric Cantor, R-Va.; former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney; Napolitano; Sebelius; Besser.

CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS" - This week on GPS, Fareed sits down for an exclusive interview with Defense Secretary Robert Gates at the Pentagon. Gates is the guest for the hour and the discussion covers the world: the current crisis in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, global nuclear proliferation, and U.S. imperialism.

"Fox News Sunday" — Napolitano; Sebelius; Besser; Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and John Ensign, R-Nev.

What's catching your eye this morning?

I've been watching Arlen Specter for most of my life, and all I can say is, if you think he can be trusted, you're just not paying attention. He needs to prove he can't be controlled, and it's always when you least expect it. Harry Reid must have cut some kind of deal with him on the SCOTUS nominee, and while I hope I'm wrong, I predict he will be more trouble than he's worth:

WASHINGTON (Dow Jones)--President Barack Obama's first nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court could be an early test for Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter as a newly minted Democrat.

Specter's announcement this week that he was switching parties after 43 years in the GOP rocked Washington and put the Democrats close to a 60-vote supermajority in the Senate.

Specter could prove a key vote in any fight over Obama's Supreme Court pick if the Republicans attempt to amount a filibuster of the president's choice to replace Justice David Souter, who is retiring.

"I would expect him to support Obama's nominee unless it's a real radical," said Roger Pilon of the Cato Institute.

Sheldon Goldman, a political-science professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, said Specter's vote could be "absolutely crucial" and predicted that the senator would be a strong backer of Obama's pick.

"Obama is in a terrific position," he said.

When it comes to Senate consideration of Supreme Court nominees, the Pennsylvania senator has perhaps the most colorful history of any current lawmaker, having angered colleagues in both parties.

"I supported very conservative nominees like Justice [Antonin] Scalia and very liberal nominees like Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg," Specter said in Philadelphia Friday. "I think that's the way it ought to be."

Trace Gallagher, the co-host of FNC's The Live Desk on Fox News got a little excited at the prospect that Arlen Specter's defection might give President Obama that 60th vote -- which could mean that he can pass his key policies! Like he won the election or something!

Gallagher completely lost his objectivity as a news host and told us how he really felt:

Gallagher: Brit, over the past 24 hours I have read countless articles about the doom of the GOP, but might it be the reverse? I mean if you think about this, if you have 60 votes, right? You can't really blame the other guy, if you don't have 60 votes you can always say it's their fault, but if you have 60 it's kind of your game.

Hume: Well, that's true Chase, but in the near term it certainly doesn't help the Republicans as they try to resist the enactment of much of the Obama agenda, which they consider something of a radical agenda, and Specter's presence as a Democrat now will change all that. Remember this, Trace, Specter has been welcomed into the Democratic Party by its leaders in Washington. It is not entirely clear, however, that the Democratic voters of Pennsylvania, who remember Specter as a Republican who did many things that they did not like, will be so welcoming.

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So, look for Specter to very much be, most of the time, the 60th vote. And while the results in the end of the policies enacted will tell the tale of which party benefits from all this, in the near term at least it certainly does help the Democrats.

Gallagher: So what you're saying in essence -- the president has wide popularity now and the American people are willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, so if Specter really does as you say serve as the 60th vote, are we about to see the Obama agenda, for lack of a better phrase, crammed down out throat?

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I think this is hysterical. I mean, progressive Pennsylvania Democrats were pretty pissed off when the Beltway pols made the deal that put the anti-choice, radical centrist Bob Casey in the Senate, and over Ed Rendell promising Specter he wouldn't face a Democratic primary challenge. These backroom deals are how a state with a large liberal voting bloc keeps ending up with conservative representation:

Senior Senate Democrats are objecting to the deal Majority Leader Harry Reid made with Sen. Arlen Specter, saying they will vote against letting the former Republican shoot to the top of powerful committees after he switches parties.

Several Democrats are furious with Sen. Reid (D-Nev.) for agreeing to let Specter (Pa.) keep his seniority, accrued over more than 28 years as a GOP senator. That agreement would allow Specter to leap past senior Democrats on powerful panels — including the Appropriations and Judiciary committees.

“I won’t be happy if I don’t get to chair something because of Arlen Specter,” said Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), who sits on the Appropriations Committee with Specter and is fifth in seniority among Democrats, behind Chairman Daniel Inouye (Hawaii) and Sens. Robert Byrd (W.Va.), Patrick Leahy (Vt.) and Tom Harkin (Iowa). “I’m happy with the Democratic order, but I don’t want to be displaced because of Arlen Specter,” she said.

Specter’s first full day in Washington after turning the Capitol upside down with his decision to switch parties suggested a lonely future awaits in the upper chamber.

While he received a formal welcome Wednesday to the Democratic Party at the White House from President Obama and Vice President Biden, senior Senate Democrats exchanged phone calls to voice their objections to Reid’s gambit and one lawmaker said Specter should be happy with a committee seat at the “end of the dais.” Meanwhile, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and two other members of the Senate Republican leadership asked Specter to refund campaign donations.

One senior Democratic lawmaker told The Hill that the Democratic Conference will vote against giving the longtime Pennsylvania Republican seniority over lawmakers like Harkin, Mikulski and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) when they hold their organizational meeting after the 2010 election.

Under his deal with Reid, Specter would jump ahead of all but a few Democrats when it comes time to dole out committee chairmanships and assignments.

“That’s his deal and not the caucus’s,” the senior lawmaker said of Reid’s agreement with Specter.

David Sirota at OpenLeft:

In light of Arlen Specter's party switch, Rachel Maddow had former Rhode Island GOP Sen. Lincoln Chafee on her show last night to discuss political moderation and contested primaries. During the interview, Chafee (perhaps inadvertently) articulated a very crass sense of entitlement that courses through our political Establishment:

"...the tremendously successful fundraising juggernaut that pours the money into these primary races against moderate Republicans in particular. I saw it happen to me in 2006, largely responsible for my loss in the general election...this is America, anybody can run for office. It's the money that pours in that really makes these primaries destructive...Primaries run-up your negatives and they cost you money."

While I'm not defending the ideology of the right-wing Club for Growth that helps raise money for conservative primary challengers, I am saying that Chafee's comments are gross. He's pretty clearly saying that incumbent lawmakers and other cornoated frontrunners shouldn't have to face primaries - and if they do have to face them, those primary challengers are doing something wrong for having the nerve to be well-financed.

Remember, Chafee is not only a guy who had his senate seat handed to him by his father,* he is actually complaining about his supposedly Big Money primary challenge in 2006, despite his having outspent that primary challenger by more than 2-to-1. So what he's really saying is that he believes what makes primaries "really destructive" is money "pouring in" specifically to challenger candidates, but supposedly, it's not "really destructive" or bad if an incumbent like him "pours in" enough D.C. cash to grossly outspend and crush all primary challengers.

That is the definition of entitlement.

Sirota has it absolutely right. The politicos talk a big game about the "evils" of entitlements and how they inexorably push a closer and closer to a *gasp* "Socialist Nation" ('cuz, you know, the Danes are just miserable about their Socialist Democracy)--Damn those Welfare Queens and Freeloading Seniors! They're dragging the country down....aren't they?

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Olympia Snowe wrote an op-ed in the NY Times today that's called: We Didn’t Have to Lose Arlen Specter.

How well have we done as a party with these groups? Unfortunately, the answer is obvious from the results of the last two elections. We should be reaching out to these segments of our population — not de facto ceding them to the opposing party. There is no plausible scenario under which Republicans can grow into a majority while shrinking our ideological confines and continuing to retract into a regional party. Ideological purity is not the ticket back to the promised land of governing majorities — indeed, it was when we began to emphasize social issues to the detriment of some of our basic tenets as a party that we encountered an electoral backlash.

The Senator joined Andrea Mitchell this morning and explained in greater detail how the far right "Club For Growth" type elements have destroyed the republican party.

I do think it's rather silly for the Democratic Party to pledge money and support for (D) Arlen Specter to run in 2010, especially when it involves the Employee Free Choice Act and his career was hanging by a thread. I thoroughly enjoyed yesterday's coverage of the Republicans spinning in circles trying to come up some kind of coherent response to Specter's defection. If you watched FOX News at all they acted like spoiled little children who didn't get their candy as they lined up Bush thug after Bush thug to refute him starting with Karl Rove, Ari Fleischer and so on. They literally were dumbstruck by the fact that he left the GOP behind. A bigger problem I have is that Specter will be given a huge megaphone by the Villagers to voice his "independence" and denounce any policy he so chooses whenever he wants without a second thought about it. He said over and over again that John Kennedy believed the party can ask too much of you. He'll have more power as a new Democratic politician than he ever did as a Republican. As Digby says:

I confess that I'm more than a little bit irked that the Democratic Party has already pledged to support Specter against a primary challenger. It's fundamentally undemocratic, not to mention dumb. Specter now has carte blanche to remain an incoherent obstructionist for the next two years when they could have at least let us pull him to the left with a primary challenge.

My pal Adam Green has a good idea.

On the very day Arlen Specter became a Democrat, he lamented that not enough right-wing Bush judges got confirmed, he opposed workers' right to organize, and he compared himself to Joe Lieberman. The DSCC and Pennsylvania Democratic Party will be supporting Specter in the primary. If there is a potential progressive challenger to Arlen Specter in Pennsylvania, they are probably scratching their head right now asking, "Would I have any chance at all if I ran, or is the fix in?" What can progressives to do create an environment where this person feels they can run?

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Monitoring Fox News can take a terrible toll on one's mind. One of the coping mechanisms I've developed is just to think of these as reconnaissance missions to Planet Wingnuttia, which is an entirely different planet in an entirely different dimension than ours.

Fox is just relaying transmissions from this planet, and people who watch it believing they're seeing news from here on dear ole Planet Earth get terribly confused, even deluded. So it's important to monitor these transmissions and help keep the confusion down.

Take last night Sean Hannity program, for example. If you managed to watch the whole hour last night without suffering catatonia-inducing brain damage, then here's what you would have learned is happening on Planet Wingnuttia, where all the raging (and we do mean raging) talk is about Arlen Specter's defection (that lowlife scum, seems to be the reigning opinion):

-- Hannity informs us that Specter is wrong about the GOP moving farther to the right -- "if anything, the Republican Party has moved to the left in recent years."

-- Hannity and Newt Gingrich think the only thing Republicans need to get back in the electoral game is another "Contract On America." Now there's some fresh, original thinking.

-- Obama is "so radically left," Hannity avers, that he has created an "opportunity" for Republicans.

-- Indeed, Obama will be the "biggest asset" for Republicans in coming elections.

-- We're celebrating "the first 100 days of America going down the drain."

The only feasible, rational explanation for this is that these are transmissions from an alternative universe. One that closely resembles Planet Bizarro:

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CNN's Rick Sanchez played a portion of Arlen Specter's press conference to South Carolina's Jim DeMint and asked him if Republicans are weeding out the moderates from the party -- and isn't that a bad thing?

Sanchez: Republicans are making it very difficult for other Republicans because, and he said this on several times, you tell me what you think of it. You're shrinking the electorate to an extreme, to a point that a regular republican can't win. What do you make of that argument?

DeMint: Oh, that's quite the opposite. We're seeing across the country right now, the biggest tent of all is freedom and what we need to do as Republicans is convince Americans that freedom can work in all areas of their life, for all Americans, whether it's education or health care or creating jobs...

Sanchez: What the hell does that mean? The biggest tent is freedom. FREEDOM, I mean, you gotta do better than that.

DeMint: No, what it means is what has worked in America, free people, free markets for years.

Conservatives always say that there problems aren't really problems at all. It's Freedom baby, Freedom is our Big Tent party! That freaked out Sanchez -- understandably, because DeMint's answer made no sense. See, Specter leaving the Republicans is a good thing because he's free to do what he wants. His defection is just an application of their Freedom principle. I'm surprised DeMint didn't paint his face blue and don a kilt for this performance.

And DeMint actually says that Club For Growth's Pat Toomey is a mainstream American. Yeah, a Grover Norquist mainliner, he means. CFG is very upset that they are being attacked. He also blames Democrats for the auto companies falling apart.

Piece. Of. Work.

Sen. Arlen Specter gave a press conference to talk about his decision to become a member of the Democratic Party. He says the Limbaugh National Committee moved too far to the right and the Club For Growth was destroying any form of moderation in his old party. He blames Pat Toomey's old group for the fact that thirty four judges were left on the table for Obama because of them and says they cost the GOP the majority in 2006. He still says he opposes EFCA and doesn't support President Obama's choice of Dawn Johnsen for the OLC.

Here's more:

"I now find my political philosophy more in line with Democrats than Republicans," said Specter, who was first elected.

Howie writes that we have another Ben Nelson on our hands.

Although this will be a blow to rightists-- when Franken is finally seated Democrats will now have at least a theoretical filibuster-proof majority-- it won't do much for progressives. Remember, as awful as Ben Nelson (NE), Mary Landrieu (LA) and Blanche Lincoln (AR) have been on core issues-- lately joined by reactionary freshmen Kay Hagen (NC), Mark Begich (AK) and Michael Bennet (CO)-- all of them, except Nelson, are significantly better than Specter. This year Nelson and Specter has each scored a 33.33 on the progressive scale when it comes to tough partisan votes that split the parties. And when it comes to selling out to vested interests...

Rush Limbaugh wants him to take John and Meghan McCain with him.

After briefly downplaying the concerns about swine flu, Rush kicked off today's program by noting that Sen. Arlen Specter will announce today his switch from (R-PA) to (D-PA). Rush counseled Specter to take Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and his daughter, Meghan, with him, and then pondered who else in the Senate should make the switch.

As usual Karl Rove lied and said Arlen suddenly veered left.

Newsweek gives us the GOP party line on Specter: He's a Sell Out

Michael Steele says Specter flipped the bird at Republicans and he's sure his momma didn't raise him this way.

Lindsey Graham and Olympia Snowe blame conservatives.

Two leading Republicans say Sen. Arlen Specter's decision to become a Democrat highlights the hostility moderates feel from an increasingly conservative GOP.

“You haven't certainly heard warm encouraging words about how [the GOP] views moderates,” said Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe, one of the few remaining moderate Republicans in the Senate.

Specter's insistence on being opposed to the Employee Free Choice Act, which he mentioned prominently -- indicating he would vote against cloture -- is going to be problem for anyone running in the Democratic primary in union-heavy Pennsylvania. Since his current position reflects a reversal already, it may take only a month or two of further polling for Specter to begin to see the light again.