Here is what has been reported thus far:

Black off duty officer leaves precinct after getting off from work. Said officer arrives at his car located on Second Ave between E. 124th and E. 125th Streets, finding the drivers side window busted out and a man rummaging through his vehicle. Presumably, a confrontation ensues, the suspect takes flight, the Black officer draws weapon and gives chase. Undercover police officers in unmarked car sees Black male chasing another man with gun, makes quick u-turn, with one of the undercover officers exiting said unmarked car and firing six rounds hitting Black man/officer once in the arm and once in the chest. Black man/ officer is pronounced dead an hour later at Harlem Hospital.

Thus far, the obvious questions to be answered are:

Some of these questions will be easy to answer and the others will be where things get murky. Unfortunately, the murkiness will create the dreaded circus environment for all the usual media clowns and their surrogates to take center stage.

All New Yorkers should watch very carefully how this story plays out along with how our third term seeking mayor Bloomberg and his competent Police Commissioner deals with the investigation. We should all keep in mind that this is the type of incendiary circumstance that can tear a city apart if not handled openly, fairly and expeditiously.

To date we have had a Mayor and Police Commissioner that has held this town together with a degree of ethics and integrity that was sorely lacking by its previous administration. As horrid, a situation as this White cop on Black cop shooting appears to be, with all the possible conclusion jumping and speculating it cries out for, one must remember the biggest challenge we face is letting history push our emotions ahead of the facts. We will follow this story until its conclusion and hope said conclusion is one all in the city can live with. Click here for the podcast.

We can only wonder why someone who found away to beat the odds of a disadvantaged upbringing and subsequent rise like a phoenix from the ashes of the South Bronx, would want to cripple those following her with the broken crutch of Affirmative Action. The title of this posting Rages To Ricci refers to her decision to allow the city of New Haven Connecticut throw out the test results of a fighter fighter’s promotional exam because no black fighter fighters scored high enough for a promotion. In doing so, Judge Sotomayor denied white fire fighter Frank Ricci his promotion along with 17 other non-black fighters. Hence, we are right back where we started again with the Affirmative Action argument.

In our opinion, this was a no-brainer, as all the participants took the same test, given the same amount of time study for and complete the exam under the same conditions. Baring any shenanigans during the scoring of the examination, the results should stand and Mr. Ricci should have been rewarded for his efforts. End of Story. Alternatively, it should have been. Why would Judge Sotomayor and the president for that matter give the Republicans something like this to rally their base around? If ever there was a story that would piss the White male vote off is a battle over Affirmative Action issues during a time when good jobs are hard to find.

It is stories like this that the White on the far right has been able to profit from politically for decades. It is also decisions like this that feeds the flames of racism, feeds the silent narrative that Blacks are not as capable as Whites are and without a leg up, they cannot compete intellectually. It is stories like this that feeds the notion that Judge Sotomayor will be an activist Justice, leveling the ethnic playing field from the bench. If Blacks are as savvy as we know them to be, they will no longer let the negative connotations of Affirmative Action taint their accomplishments with an asterisk.

Since most Americans don’t have clue of what Affirmative Action really means and how it is truly applied in the business world, they rely on the politics and the sob stories of the more qualified person being overlooked for a good job or a student with a higher GPA being passed over for placement in a good school in order to make room for some illiterate street urchin. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth. In business, Affirmative Action is used to expand the search for qualified women and minorities beyond their usual accepted means of locating the talent for their workplace. They make an effort to create a balanced pool of potential candidates to fill a particular position without sacrificing qualifications or credentials. If the goal is to bring in more women and minorities, it is done with quality and not quotas.

The day of quotas and set asides have long ago fell by the wayside, yet these misperceptions continue to persist for purely political and divisive motives. These are the types of cases that get peoples blood boiling on both sides of the issue. This is also the type of issues the Republicans will ride for as long as they can, while raising tons of dough for the 2010 midterms and beyond.

Is there a better way to achieve parity on test scores in schools, universities and employment performance examinations? Absolutely! However, it does not come at the expense of those who are currently prepared for success; it comes from addressing the systemic social, economic and educational disparity that has historically plagued women and minorities in this country. Until America decides to fairly distribute funding for education nationwide, then there will always be lopsided results when evaluating achievement and the probability thereof.

Lets face it, if some kids are showing up at schools with classes being taught in the bathrooms because of overcrowding, hungry due to finances, little support from home, one computer per 50 students, with dated books and teachers that are poorly trained themselves, only the absolute focused and determined will do well enough to escape their fate. That’s just the naked truth. If we find away to fix these problems on the front-end, we won’t have these Supreme Court battles on the back-end. Click here for the podcast.

America, operating from a weakened foreign policy state, had the Obama administration issuing the usual condemnation of North Korea’s testing and applauding the “international community” for doing the same, but when all is said and done, nothing can be said or done to stop them. Since the North Korean’s can always say, the United States have Nukes and have used them, they can forever hide behind the adage “what’s good for the goose is good for the gander”. The North Koreans and the Iranians can also get traction in world opinion, that they are doing whatever they have to do to prevent American preemptive actions and or meddling in their internal affairs. Even we have to admit they have got some strong visceral arguments to make that the common man will accept.

Another major indicator of America‘s decline in economic status and moral high ground was Nancy Pelosi’s well timed jaunt trip to China. During better times, Ms Pelosi was in Tiananmen Square protesting against the Chinese government’s ignoring basic human rights of the Chinese people. Today, she was a quiet as our other church mouse’s visit to Beijing; Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Apparently the word has come down from the biggest holders of our IOUs , keep your traps shut on human rights issues if you want our cooperation of energy and climate concerns. Again, America has no argument against the Chinese government when we are currently engaged in a very public debate over to torture or not to torture, even when we know it is against domestic and international law.

Lets face it, we have a former vice president stating openly for all the world to hear, that we did waterboard people, we did keep people in prolonged stress positions, we did expose people to extreme hot and cold temperatures, we did keep people confined in very small containers, we are providing cover to those who developed the policies while holding hundreds for years without charges or even trials. But it gets worse, we when we acknowledge we would do it again if we felt we had to. That should be as bad as it gets, but unfortunately our sitting president is considering the idea of prolonged preventative detention for those we find too difficult to successfully prosecute. Once again, the Chinese can confidently argue, who the hell do we think we are lecturing them on human rights when we are defending some of the same things we’ve been wagging our disapproving finger at for decades.

This is the slow demise of American influence that many have seen coming for years and there maybe nothing that can stop the momentum. We have too few true friends left in the world, save for a self obsessed Israel and a just as weakened United Kingdom. There will be little help from the Russians as they are surly quietly smirking at our predicament in Afghanistan/Pakistan and the Chinese is quickly coming to the realization that there is little value in pouring more good yauns after bad into artificially propping up the U.S. economy.

When Barack Obama intimated last week that one of America’s greatest weapons against terrorist threats was our principals, values and an uncompromising adherence to the rule of law, he was right on point. But as long as he has to compete with mixed messages being sent from the far right on torture and has to fight his own party on closing Gitmo, our foes can go back to doing whatever the hell they want while we get back to our time tested distractions of abortion, the second amendment and gay marriage. Click here for the podcast