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Opinion: In today’s pages: Swine flu, switcheroo and propositions, too

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The Opinion Manufacturing Division fires both barrels today at the swine flu outbreak. On the Op-Ed side, author Wendy Orent tells readers to take a chill pill -- this isn’t a classic pandemic because most people’s immune systems seem well prepared to throttle the virus. Nevertheless, the Times editorial board welcomes the Obama adminstration’s search for a vaccine, warning that ‘it’s better to attack with vigor than to understate the risk.’

Back on the Op-Ed page, Gideon Rose, managing editor of Foreign Affairs, looks at Barack Obama and sees the best elements of his two predecessors. And columnist Doyle McManus predicts that Sen. Arlen Specter’s admittedly unprincipled switch from the GOP to the Democratic Party will be a mixed blessing for the majority party:

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With 60 seats, the Democrats will have no excuses, no one else to blame, any time they can’t hold their big caucus together. Their most independent, unpredictable members will enjoy massive power -- not just Specter but also Lieberman and Ben Nelson of Nebraska, another centrist. And Specter has always been hard to please. He’ll still be the 60th vote on every issue, just as he was on the stimulus bill -- the one who always has a special request before he can say yes. Reid will sometimes wonder whether this was such a good deal.

Back on the editorial page, the board grits its teeth (yet again!) and endorses Props. 1D and 1E as necessary elements of a budget compromise that was next to impossible to obtain. There’s little to like about the measures, which reclaim money from voter-mandated programs for children and the mentally ill. But as the editorial notes, ‘about the only thing worse than passing them would be not passing them.’

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