A random sample of good-news bad-news stories from the CBC today

Here's a good news/bad news story out of Edmonton.

The bad news is that Edmonton still employs the widely discredited carding strategy to harass Natives and black folks living in poverty in the capital city of Canada's most prosperous province. At least it was the most prosperous till very recently.

Thankfully, the Edmonton chapter of Black Lives Matter is shining some light on this travesty.

Stop those "street checks" on Indians and black folks, you racist Edmonton cops!

The good news is that when they stop, we'll be better able to ignore the systemic racism that leaves Natives and black folks living in the streets in the first place.

Here's another one. Looks like the Trump Care initiative to repeal Obamacare is going nowhere fast. Trump Care is bad news. Obamacare was bad news. The good news is that studies have shown for decades that a vast majority of Americans want a single-payer health care system just like most civilized nations in the world enjoy today.

If, per Leonard Cohen, democracy ever comes to the USA, they'll have single-payer in no time.

And here's a good one; Ontario taxpayers just made a commitment to clean up the mercury poisoning in the English-Wabigoon river system that's been in the news since I was a teenager. The story talks about $85 millions, but that will only scratch the surface. We'll spend ten times that and there'll still be mercury poisoning in that river system.

But at least we're finally making an effort. The bad news is that the heirs of the greed-bags who poisoned those waters in the first place live unscathed in their posh mansions and get accolades for their various philanthropic endeavours.

As a taxpayer, I gotta say that sucks.

Finally, here's a good news/bad news story out of the Holy Land. Seems a few mainstream Canadian Jews have their kippas in a twist over the fact that the arch-racist Netanyahu regime has reneged on a promise to allow men and women to pray together at the Wailing Wall.

They didn't notice the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.

They didn't notice the egregious colonizing of stolen land.

They didn't notice Netanyahu turning Israel into a pariah state.

They didn't notice the creeping apartheid.

But by God, they're paying attention now that the prayer-wall has been re-segregated!

And that's good! Maybe now they'll be more amenable to noticing all that other stuff.

It's not racism; it's the law

It's gotta be bad to be Janett Poorman.

Her daughter became a tragic statistic last December, another one of those meaningless aboriginal women on the fringes of society, stabbed to death in Vancouver.

We seem to have an awful lot of those here in Canada... must be something wrong with... not any level of government, not a systemically racist culture... but them.

No less an authority than RCMP Comish Bob Paulson opined last week that 70% of murdered native women are murdered by native men. See, it's their fault.

If those natives would just get their shit together, everything would be hunky-dory.

Given the utter ineptitude the RCMP has consistently demonstrated in solving the murders of indigenous women, one is left to wonder where he gets his stats. Besides, the RCMP is far too busy framing up various dumbshits for imaginary terror conspiracies to have much left over to investigate the all-too-real murder epidemic of aboriginal women.

So Janett Poorman applies to the Manitoba Justice Department for compensation to cover the cost of her daughter's funeral. She was a victim of crime, obviously.

No way! We can't pay you, Ms. Poorman; your daughter had a criminal record.

It's not that we're racist or anything; it's just the law.

Welcome to Winnipeg, racism capital of racist Canada

Maclean's magazine, that Toronto bastion of smug middle-class superiority, has had a team of investigative journos do their homework, and by golly, if they didn't figure out that Winnipeg is the most racist city in all of Canada!

Well, that sure is a kick in the nuts for the Metis mayor and the Black police chief, ain't it?

I don't want to diss Maclean's. After all, that's one of the few print platforms in Canada that still pays actual writers with cheques that don't bounce. Most everything else you read in Canada's print media is written by unpaid interns who are grateful for the McDonalds gift certificates they take home.

But I think what's driving this hate-Winnipeg campaign is museum envy.

That's right; museum envy. Nobody has been more sceptical than the think-tank here at Fallling Downs about the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. We were from the very beginning taken aback by the droll ironies that inevitably resonate when you park such an edifice in a city with huge issues around racism and poverty.

In the first place, there's something odious about putting human rights in a museum.

But this is not the place for that, so I'll just point out that the Asper's were, in spite of everything else, proud 'Peggers, and they wanted their baby in Winnipeg, not in Toronto or Ottawa.

And that's what has given rise to the museum envy emanating from the eastern elites. It galls those people no end to see such a monument in what they consider a prairie hick-town!

As for the nuts and bolts of the article, nah, I don't buy it for a minute. Is there a race problem in Winnipeg? Absolutely! Is Winnipeg's race problem worse than Regina's or Saskatoon's or Edmonton's or Calgary's or a thousand towns and cities across this great land that we stole from those people?

Absolutely not!

Why is plagiarism such a big deal when a black dude does it?

Here you have it, a cringeworthy display of contrition and regret when a black guy gets caught plagiarizing.

Chris Spence, Director of Education at the Toronto District School Board, lost his job and his reputation.

But have a look at what happens when these white women get caught plagiarizing.

Nothing!