As a candidate for president, Sen. Barack Obama rejected "the politics of fear." Well, he won. So now he's playing the fear card to the hilt.

Monday, President Obama went to Strongsville, Ohio, to warn that unless his ObamaCare passes, middle Americans should be very afraid of the day when they (Fear No. 1) lose their job or income, then (Fear No. 2) fall seriously ill and then (Fear No. 3) receive the health care they need, but lose valued assets.

Obama's intended prop was Natoma Canfield, a 50-year-old cleaning woman and cancer survivor who dropped her private health care policy after Anthem Blue Cross raised her premiums some 40 percent to $708 per month. In December, Canfield wrote to Obama telling him that she was going to drop her insurance rather than lose the home her parents built in 1958. Alas, Canfield could not attend, as she since was diagnosed with leukemia and was in the hospital Monday.

The ObamaCare fear is not of being poor and not having health care.

For the first time that I can remember, there were no politically charged comments at the Academy Awards ceremony last Sunday. And I was ready. We had left-wing bomb throwers like George Clooney, Sean Penn, Barbra Streisand and co-host Alec Baldwin all lined up in the "let it fly" zone. But the show turned out to be the silence of the lambs.

What's going on?

The answer to that question is money, pure and simple.

The rise of the machines has dislocated entertainment all over the country. Now you can program your life on your computer and endlessly amuse yourself with iPods, DS games and BlackBerry phones. No longer do you have to drive to a movie theater to see something interesting.

Theref ore, the pool of movies, recordings, books and other forms of entertainment is becoming shallow. For the most part, companies are not throwing around big dollars to actors and singers anymore.

By now, you most likely know that Texas has become ground zero for the latest battles in the textbook wars. While conservatives and progressives take their stands on the issue, I wonder: What would America's Founders think about this feud?

For those who somehow have dodged the news, the 15-member Texas State Board of Education, which is composed of 10 Republicans and five Democrats, has been hearing and debating variances of opinion regarding what to include and exclude in its social studies curriculum and subsequent textbooks.

Last Friday, the SBOE members began to wrap up the process by endorsing a draft proposal of the state's social studies curriculum, with an 11-4 vote.

Not surprising is the full range of progressive issues that liberals want the SBOE to include, from emphasizing equity and tolerance for all minorities to erasing key conservative figures and events from history and whitewashing the Judeo-Christian convictions of our Founders.

It has been over a year since President Obama announced his plans for comprehensive health reform.

Since the announcement, as Americans learned more and more about the Democrats’ health care bill, opposition to the left’s plans for big government health care have grown and grown.

It started with the explosion of outrage at town hall meetings over the bill’s cuts to Medicare to pay for new bureaucracies and programs.

It gained steam when Americans realized the frightening potential for “death panels” when you give government the power to deny care based on budgetary concerns.

And it reached critical mass when the corrupt manner in which the bill was being shoved through Congress was exposed to the American people.

However, despite all the polls showing that Americans want Congress to scrap the current bill and start over, it is now clear that Democratic leaders are bound and determined to ignore the will of the people.

I am no pinnacle of humility, and I've learned my fair share of hard lessons from the camps of conceit. But I'm not sure the former Chicago politician occupying the White House ever has been schooled with a primer on the perils of pride.

It's one thing (though still distasteful) to be boastful in a sports or fighting ring; it's quite another in the Oval Office. We were promised change, but it seems to me this White House's smug swagger and strut rival the great taunts and bluster of Muhammad Ali in his heyday. In fact, if I were handing out awards, President Barack Obama would win hands down the Oscar for overconfidence and arrogance.

Here are a few examples of his Oscar-worthy political performances: