Margaret Thatcher: Formidable, determined, kittenish, kind  Thirty years ago today, Margaret Thatcher was elected Prime Minister. Here, former colleagues, friends and political foes offer personal recollections of the Iron Lady.  
Ken Livingstone said he respected Thatcher for her firm beliefs and determination with which she pursued them Geoffrey Howe Lord Howe of Aberavon was the former Deputy Prime Minister whose resignation precipitated Thatcher’s downfall   “Even after my resignation in 1990, we have remained civilised with each other. Until then, we had both managed to put our differences on the European question into the larger perspective. You must remember we worked together for 15 years, longer than many modern marriages, so instead of concentrating on the drama of our 'divorce’, it is better to emphasise the achievements of the 'marriage’. “I was always more discursive, while she was more determined to come quickly to a decision. But our differing approaches bore the fruit of creative tension, and we worked well together. “I remember when Baroness Thatcher travelled to Tokyo for her first summit meeting, she was very much the new kid on the block. Yet almost everyone was in awe of her. No doubt it had a lot to do with her femininity. But they knew almost immediately that she was a real star.” Jonathan Aitken Former minister who remained on the backbenches during Thatcher’s years in office, a fact widely attributed to his having once dated (and broken up with) her daughter Carol “Margaret Thatcher’s greatness lay in the strength of her political willpower. She was unusually right, occasionally unreasonable, always formidable. I am fonder of her now she is vulnerable than I was when she was powerful. After Churchill, she was the most effective and influential prime minister of the 20th century. “One exchange…

  Petraeus is right to question Obama’s exit strategy Thank goodness we have General David Petraeus running the Nato mission in Afghanistan,  Read Article  

  "Overall, 44% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the President's performance. The President’s overall approval has stayed between 44% and 46% every day for thirteen days. Prior to that, it had stayed between 46% and 50% every day for more than two months. Fifty-six percent (56%) now disapprove of the President’s performance."   Read Article  

 The Obama Infatuation
By Robert J. Samuelson / Washington Post
Monday, June 1, 2009
    The Obama infatuation is a great unreported story of our time. Has any recent president basked in so much favorable media coverage? Well, maybe John Kennedy for a moment, but no president since. On the whole, this is not healthy for America. Our political system works best when a president faces checks on his power. But the main checks on Obama are modest. They come from congressional Democrats, who largely share his goals if not always his means. The leaderless and confused Republicans don't provide effective opposition. And the press -- on domestic, if not foreign, policy -- has so far largely abdicated its role as skeptical observer. Obama has inspired a collective fawning. What started in the campaign (the chief victim was Hillary Clinton, not John McCain) has continued, as a study by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism shows. It concludes: "President Barack Obama has enjoyed substantially more positive media coverage than either Bill Clinton or George W. Bush during their first months in the White House." The study examined 1,261 stories by The Post, the New York Times, ABC, CBS and NBC, Newsweek magazine and the "NewsHour" on PBS. Favorable articles (42 percent) were double the unfavorable (20 percent), while the rest were "neutral" or "mixed." Obama's treatment contrasts sharply with coverage in the first two months of the Bush (22 percent of stories favorable) and Clinton (27 percent) presidencies. Unlike George Bush and Bill Clinton, Obama received favorable coverage in both news columns and opinion pages. The nature of stories also changed. "Roughly twice as much of the coverage of Obama (44…

 4 Reasons Lehman FailedLooking at what went wrong leading up to the bank's failure, which pushed the financial system into chaos and the U.S. further into recessionRead Article