The oracles at the New York Times recently announced that, economically, our own middle class has fallen behind that of our neighbor to the north. I’m not sure what their intention was in sharing this bad news. Heaven knows they’d never think of laying the blame for this embarrassment at the feet of Barack Obama and his absurd economic policies, which have included destroying the world’s preeminent health care system; extending unemployment benefits to the end of time; encouraging the EPA to do its best to regulate the oil and coal industries out of existence; and seemingly doing everything in his power to destroy capitalism.

The two things that the Times neglected to mention by way of explanation was that, unlike the left-wing slacker in the White House, Canada is being led by a conservative prime minister, Stephen Harper, who has lowered taxes and passed a balanced budget, which just happen to be two things that Obama would never even consider, lest the mere concept sent him to bed with a severe case of shingles.

One of the many things wrong with Obama is that he is so terribly concerned with the plight of illegal aliens, who have no right, either morally or legally, to be in this country, but apparently doesn’t care a whit that our military veterans are being treated like shit by the federal bureaucrats at the V.A., who continue to cash their bonus checks while ignoring the physical and mental problems of those they’re supposed to serve.

In the meantime, students at the University of Hawaii were prevented from passing out free copies of the U.S. Constitution by school administrators, who obviously hadn’t taken advantage of the free offer to bone up on the 1st Amendment.

However, it’s my suspicion that if the students had torn out the pages and passed them out as wrappers for marijuana, the same administrators would have never dared to impinge on their right to do so, as long as the recipients swore to use them solely for that purpose, and nobody cheated by actually reading the immortal words of James Madison.

Speaking of the Constitution, it seems that big city liberals never quit trying to gut it. This time, they are attempting to get rid of the Electoral College by letting the popular vote determine the presidential election. Thus, they would give urban voters (read liberal) a leg up over rural and suburban voters, as if they don’t already have a decisive advantage in L.A., New York, Philadelphia, Detroit, Chicago, Houston, San Francisco and Newark, thanks to the high concentration of black voters.

There are well-meaning people whose kneejerk reaction is to say that it should be the popular vote that determines winners and losers, but the Founding Fathers had a realistic fear of large groups of people. They wanted to protect the nation by preventing the major population centers in a few states from running roughshod over the smaller states. In other words, they felt that just because one candidate won by several million votes in half a dozen states and the opposing candidate won more states, but by smaller margins, the tail shouldn’t be allowed to wag the dog.

The Founders believed in the sovereign rights of individual states, and this was one of the many, and perhaps the wisest, ways in which they expressed that belief.

In other predictable news, Iran has been given a seat on the U.N. Commission on the Rights of Women. How could it be otherwise? After all, who would know better about women’s rights than Iran, where recently a woman was sentenced to death for stabbing a man who was attempting to rape her? The irony of the sentence is that if the rapist had been successful, his victim would have either been executed for adultery by the state or been murdered by her father or her brothers for bringing dishonor to the family.

But there are some things which even the U.N. Commission won’t abide. Last month, they passed a resolution condemning Israel for its treatment of Palestinian women. I can only imagine they object to the Israelis’ stubborn refusal to make them wear burkas in public and the reluctance of Jewish surgeons to perform clitorectomies!

Because we are still so far from the 2016 presidential race, besides believing that the GOP would be best served by having a governor as our standard bearer, and personally favoring Scott Walker, Mike Pence and Rick Perry, the one thing I can promise is that any of them can win me over by simply vowing to cut us loose from the United Nations.

If we have to join something, and I don’t know why we would, let it be along the lines of a Confederation of Civilized, Capitalistic, Nations, with membership pretty much limited to Canada, England, Japan, Israel, Australia and us.

Short of that, how about the American Legion or a summer bowling league?