United States presidents come in all shapes and sizes. It is ironic that our two greatest presidents, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, could not be more different from one another. Washington was one of the richest men in the American colonies; Lincoln was born and raised in a log cabin in the wilderness. Washington was
READ MOREWith President’s Day approaching, I have heard from many of you waiting for my column and thoughts about President Trump’s first month in the White House. The most interesting thing is as I engage people in conversation, I either know or they inform me what political party they are registered with. I think the mainstream
READ MOREThe United States has been going through tremendous changes since the presidential election of Donald Trump. It seems everyone has their own particular area they are focusing on, mine is over the continually growing collapse of the mainstream media. For decades, we have been straight jacketed from considering whether information was acceptable and true. The
READ MOREThis week, Webb’s “Weird Words” takes a break from its series involving X, Y and Z; indeed, rather than looking at the end of our alphabet, we will honor the beginning of something else: namely, Donald J. Trump’s forthcoming inauguration — which marks only the second time a U.S. president has served two nonconsecutive terms.
READ MOREI’m going to begin my first column of the year with my thoughts and prayers not only for those victimized by terror in New Orleans but for all dealing with the senseless violence seen across our Nation. This is a problem that will need all of us to come together to prevent future tragedies. We
READ MOREI generally attend the weekly Lycoming County Commissioners Meeting and sit in the back with my other local press colleagues. I truly appreciate how objectively honest these journalists are. Their columns are straight up and accurate. It seems like a lifetime ago when newspapers simply told what happened, and the editorial page would be the
READ MOREI was in Moscow in August 1991 with my wife and three children, and after a two-hour wait, we finally were able to get into McDonalds, which had just opened four months before, the first one in Russia. While we were enjoying our Big Macs, my oldest son, David, looked out the window and remarked
READ MOREJames Buchanan Jr. was the 15th president of the United States, serving from 1857 to 1861. Historians and scholars generally rank Buchanan as the worst president in American history. Unfortunately, he was also the only president to come from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. But I believe his rank will change as historians assess the full
READ MOREAs I watched Channel 16 to begin my Friday morning after the election, there was a rock concert going on with Joe Snedeker in the backyard. This made possible by the fact they didn’t have to fill half the airtime with political commercials. Thank goodness this is finally over. I have Penn State blue and
READ MOREI have been following politics since my teen years in the 1960s, and I thought it was crazy then. Nothing has been more crazy, weird, bizarre, and just plain stupid than this past presidential election. The Second Coming of Trump is certainly getting the attention, but there are casualties that are worth looking at. We
READ MOREWhen Donald Trump won back the Presidency in this past election, most people probably thought that this was the first time that this historic feat had been accomplished, but they would be wrong. This remarkable feat was accomplished one other time, 130 years ago, by Grover Cleveland, who became the 22nd and 24th President after
READ MOREAfter teaching leadership for education, business, and political officials in Europe and Asia for a number of years, I compiled my program into a book in 2006 entitled, Ideal Leadership: Time for a Change. Ironically, Barack Obama was running for president and used “Change” as his campaign focus. Many thought I was piggybacking on Obama,
READ MOREThis wasn’t how my column was to begin this week, but as I drove into work this past Friday, my Father and Chris Downs were on my mind. It was on October 25th — my dad left us 12 years ago, which is hard to believe in so many ways. A day doesn’t go by
READ MOREMercifully, the long, contentious Presidential election contest is winding down, but it might be interesting to look back and see how Lycoming County has voted in previous Presidential elections. Webb Weekly has researched how Lycoming County has voted in Presidential races since 1860. We have found that the Republican Presidential candidate carried this county in
READ MOREWhen a potential presidential candidate chooses a vice president as their running mate, they have to select one that they know has a good record, is articulate, especially on difficult issues, and has leadership characteristics that would be needed just in case something tragic happens and the vice president has to take over. Arguably, this
READ MOREWith just a few more weeks to go, the every-four-year, mind-numbing marathon known as the United States presidential campaign will (hopefully) reach its conclusion. American presidential election campaigns are much longer than in other countries. Many nations have laws on the books that strictly curtail how long campaigns can be conducted. But in the good
READ MOREAs I noted in this column two weeks ago, polls are about as reliable as palm readers. One thing that appears to be true, however, is that the Keystone State will be the key to whether Kamala Harris or Donald Trump becomes president of the United States. The popular vote is interesting, but it has
READ MOREThe history of polling in national elections has a troubled history. Presidential polling started back in 1936 with the Literary Digest, a national magazine of the time, which sent out to their 10 million patrons a “straw” ballot asking them who they planned on voting for in the 1936 presidential election. Some two and half
READ MOREGiven that the Kennedy assassination has been deeply debated and discussed for 61 years now, we should not expect that after just seven weeks, we would know how and why on July 13th, at an open-air campaign rally near Butler, Pennsylvania, a 20-year young man named Thomas Matthew Crooks attempted to assassinate Republican candidate for
READ MOREThe exciting “Vibe Campaign” of Vice President Kamala Harris was best outed by the popular author and columnist Mark Steyn when he identified it as the “Vibe as Veil Campaign” because it did not seem to have anything behind it. All of her speeches centered around the dangerous, no-good, very bad former President Donald Trump.
READ MOREWell, the only thing hotter than the month of July was the madness we witnessed in the world. I left off last week talking about common sense; I’m going to pick back up right there. Please remember, if you missed my column or just enjoy reading online, every issue of our publication can be found
READ MOREIn our time, there have been several transformational elections: John F. Kennedy over Richard Nixon in 1960, Ronald Reagan’s victory over President Jimmy Carter in 1980, Barack Obama’s triumph in 2008, and Donald Trump’s shocking victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016. These were the ones in our era that significantly changed the direction of the
READ MOREAfter the events I witnessed last week, I felt compelled to focus on a couple of things that were discussed everywhere. Topics that I feel strongly about and try to provide each week within our pages. First up, we are all on God’s time. The expression that we are all day-to-day is one I commonly
READ MOREThe picture of Donald Trump’s fist in the air and the blood on his face moments after the assassination attempt on him has already become an iconic symbol that will be seen for generations to come. Some have even gone so far as to believe that it may go down in history, like the raising
READ MOREPresident Biden may have tipped his hand with some of his comments last week. The President, under increasing pressure from his own party and those who support the democratic effort, has been blatantly defiant that he will remain in the race. Before I get to my thoughts on where that’s heading, I’d like to give
READ MOREBefore I get to another issue involving age, I have a joyous occasion to begin this week: Happy 80th birthday to my stepmother, Carol. This from Billy, Jodi, Brian, Morgan, and our entire families. Wow, that is hard to believe. As is so often said, it seems like only yesterday. We all wish you great
READ MOREIn my entire life of following political matters, I do not believe I have ever seen a period of time where federal, state, and local government entities each encountered historical events at the same time. At the federal level, it has been in two areas: the presidential race and Supreme Court decisions. In state government,
READ MOREDecades from now, researchers will be trying to figure out how the United States went so far off the rails in the mid-2020s. Without any doubt, we are living in historic times. Never in two and a half centuries of our democracy has one party denigrated an opposing person from the opposite party as the
READ MOREThere are two wonderful ladies I hear from on a regular basis. I believe both give me way too much credit for my writing, creativity, and ability to reach people in a special way. Both pray for me, encourage me, and let me know I’m loved. Both tell me I have a gift that I
READ MORESeven has been called a magic number. There are seven days a week, seven colors in the rainbow, seven musical notes in a scale, seven wonders of the ancient world, seven continents, seven major seas, and even psychologists tell us we can only take in seven ‘bits’ of information at one time. So, it is
READ MOREOn Thursday, November 10, 2016, just two days after Donald Trump had won the presidential election, Carol Sides, a senior citizen from Williamsport, received a call. “Mrs. Sides, this is the State Police. I am calling to inform you that all your personal information, including your home address, cell phone number, and email, has been
READ MOREI wanted to wait until after the South Carolina GOP primary to pen this column. The polls that I don’t often trust and many people I talked to told me it would be former President Donald Trump in a runaway. This was my gut feeling also; however, it was Nikki Haley’s home state, and I
READ MOREIn 1831, a young French diplomat named Alexis de Tocqueville was charged with researching this country’s penal system but found himself more enamored with our judicial system. After going about the country, he returned to France and put his observations into a book, Democracy in America, published in 1835. It would become one of the
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