SSCC #98 –Atlanta PD

A physically disabled Atlanta woman, who said she was thrown to the ground and arrested for refusing to get out of her chair, is seeking compensation.

Dan Grossman, an attorney for Shequita Walker, 40, said she was sitting April 21 on a metal chair in the vacant lot next to her home, where she often sits on hot afternoons, when police officer Kenneth Thomas approached and asked her to move, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported Friday.

Grossman said Walker, who suffers from severe joint pain and has a limited range of motion, told the officer she was within her rights to sit outside and Thomas then twisted her arm, causing her to fall to the concrete.

This is what happens when cops get bored.  It’s quite similar to this incident in which the judge joined in on the party.  The wife just forwarded me a nice article with a picture taken during the arrest.

Seriously on what planet is behavior like this deemed acceptable?

State Sponsored Criminal Count: 98 – Kenneth Thomas

Because when you’re bored and someone’s sitting on a public bench.  Ask them to leave for no reason or justification.  One way or another you’ll get to use force.

Via Daddy Bear in GBC

SSCC #93-97–Wisconsin State Police

Skip to 2:07 for the part you actually care about.

Seriously I’m at a loss for words at the behavior of those officers.  What that man was doing was protected by state law and they arrested and assaulted him.  Even after being notified of their being in the wrong.

A note, I would suggest after notifying them of the law just keep your mouth shut.  They have created a monopoly on force by disarming everyone attempting to view a public meeting in a public building.  Some civil attorney is going to have a field day with this.

State Sponsored Criminal Count**: 97

Because cops can do whatever the hell they want despite the law. We create civilian disarmament zones and qualified immunity so cops can act without fear of reprisal.

*This is a perfect example of the enemy of my enemy is my friend.  Public unions are bullshit, but the behavior of the police and the flag preventing an act protected by state law is total crap.  Every officer involved should be thrown in jail immediately at a minimum.

**It has been pointed out that the video is lacking in what happened prior to the arrest.  There is a possibility these individuals were creating a ruckus in the gallery.  I am going to let this stand due to the statement banning video from the Gallery which blatantly violates WI law.  I wish there was video showing him just sitting there doing nothing but recording but who knows.  It appears to be correct and I’ll let it stand unless someone has video showing otherwise.  

Hosting Issues

So I have had this hosting provider since 2005 and they have been bought out a couple times.  Some of the pluses though include the fact my email is hosted in Exchange, unlimited disk space, and supposed unlimited bandwidth (found that today).  I have never had any issues at all requiring extensive customer support until this past week.

Starting last week Windows Live Writer stopped posting correctly to my blog.  It had happened intermittently previously and I figured it was another glitch.  After the issue didn’t clear in 24 hours to the support console I went.

Date Type
09/15/2011 12:10 AM EDT Ticket Created
09/15/2011 12:10 AM EDT TMM contacted PowWeb
Subject:

Problems with libXML2

Customer Quote:

Earlier this year I started using XMLRPC to post content to my blog. Start in July I had incidents where posts would have the tags brackets(<>) stripped off. I ignored it figuring it was a glitch when it started working a couple days later. 

Starting about the middle of last week though this issue has become permanent. While I was normally easily able to work around it, the work around fails when I am posting images. 

Have there been any changes to the server configuration recently? 

I know it was not caused by a site configuration change because 3 other sites all exhibit the same behavior that are not used as frequently. 

Currently this is still just in the annoyance category, but as I start needing to put more pictures in content its’ going to increase on my ladder. 

All assistance I could find online pointed to server configuration with PHP version and libXML version issues. 

Thank you, 

TMM

09/15/2011 4:00 AM EDT Updated Ticket: Work in Progress
09/15/2011 7:53 AM EDT Updated Ticket: Work in Progress
09/15/2011 8:51 AM EDT Updated Ticket: Work in Progress
09/15/2011 9:50 AM EDT PowWeb contacted TMM
Subject:

[P08757884000000000] Problems with libXML2

Comment:

Hello, 

Thank you for contacting Support. 

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you. In order to further investigate on your issue, please get back to us with the following information: 

1) Exact steps to duplicate your issue. 

2) URL of the page. 

3) WordPress username and password. 

Thank you! 

Sincerely, 

Kaila Pearson 

Customer Support

09/15/2011 9:19 PM EDT TMM contacted PowWeb
Customer Quote:

Drupal User Info: 

Username: TestUser 

Password:

URL: http://www.the-minuteman.org Full URL varies based on post title, it happens when content is published or sent as a draft to the server. Reproduction steps below show how to make it appear on the front page. 

Reproduction steps: 

1) Configure Windows Live Writer for an “Other services” blog and point to http://www.the-minuteman.org 

2) During configuration tell it to identify the blog theme. 

3) At this point configuration will hang because the post displayed on the front page website (http://www.the-minuteman.org) is incorrect. For example I get the following: 

pThis is a temporary post that was not deleted. Please delete this manually. (1eb91935-d1da-4e9a-85fd-82ce1220f24d – 3bfe001a-32de-4114-a6b4-4005b770f6d7)/p 

This should actually be: 

<p>This is a temporary post that was not deleted. Please delete this manually. (1eb91935-d1da-4e9a-85fd-82ce1220f24d – 3bfe001a-32de-4114-a6b4-4005b770f6d7)</p> 

But the tags were stripped, and the inner text passed through as part of the blog post text. 

Alternatively, you can skip the theme detection and attempt to post to the blog through Live Writer. The content within the post will exhibit the same loss of tags. 

Draft posts can be open and viewed from this listing: 

http://www.the-minuteman.org/admin/content/node 

For some reason the tags are being stripped off and every piece of information I have found points to server configuration, not blog software.

09/15/2011 9:30 PM EDT Updated Ticket: Work in Progress
09/15/2011 10:54 PM EDT PowWeb contacted TMM
Subject:

[P08757884000000000] Problems with libXML2

Comment:

Hello, 

Thank you for contacting Support. 

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you. Could you please get back us with the exact URL where you are trying to login to Drupal admin page, so that we can assist you further. 

Please reply to this email with the requested information, so that we can assist you further. 

Sincerely, 

Riley Malson 

Customer Support

09/16/2011 12:26 AM EDT TMM contacted PowWeb
Customer Quote:

This is not tied to my Drupal web browser interface but the XML-RPC interface that different external programs use to post content. 

The symptoms of the failure are visible on my blog. Here is an example post that failed. 

http://www.the-minuteman.org/content/2011/September/15/failed-test-post-TMM 

09/16/2011 12:27 AM EDT Updated Ticket: Work in Progress
09/16/2011 12:41 AM EDT Updated Ticket: Work in Progress
09/16/2011 12:41 AM EDT Updated Ticket: Work in Progress
09/16/2011 2:31 AM EDT PowWeb contacted TMM (Resolved)
Comment:

Hello, 

In order to further investigate, could you please get back to us with the Drupal admin login details. 

If you have any further questions, please update the Support Console. 

Sincerely, 

Mae Silva 

Technical Specialist

09/16/2011 8:24 PM EDT TMM contacted PowWeb
Customer Quote:

Here is the primary user account information: 

Username: TMM 

Password:

09/16/2011 8:44 PM EDT Updated Ticket: Work in Progress
09/16/2011 9:49 PM EDT PowWeb contacted TMM (Resolved)
Comment:

Hello, 

Thank you for your reply. 

I have checked there is no error logs to investigate further on this issue. Since Drupal is the third party application I suggest you to contact the vendor of the application. 

If you have any further questions, please don’t hesitate to reply through Support Console. We are available 24×7. 

Sincerely, 

Neville Kodner 

Technical Specialist

09/17/2011 1:26 AM EDT TMM contacted PowWeb
Customer Quote:

I have investigated the drupal forums regarding this issue and I have gone one step further and mirrored my site on to a local development server I use for updates. 

The mirrored version of my site, a fresh copy of files and snapshot of the database, placed within my test environment works as it should. I fail to see how this is my blog software or site configuration when I can turn the problem on and off by placing it on my test server here or uploading it to Powweb. 

Not to mention the fact that it was running reliably at the beginning of August and I have not done any changes to configuration other than unrelated module updates. The issue also has seemed to come and go, finally becoming permanent over the past week. I initially ignored it thinking it was a glitch because it would come back later. 

All information I have been able to find regarding this type of issue online points again to the web services host, not the drupal software. 

My test server is running PHP 5.3.2 

Apache 2.2.14 

SQL Version 5.1.46 

Here is the exact error in the Drupal forums: 

http://drupal.org/node/415566 

Here is a similar issue in the Drupal forums: 

http://drupal.org/node/347298#comment-1209085 

http://drupal.org/node/347298#comment-1295684 

I’m confused though since you guys are running 5.2.17 and the issues reported were with 5.2.8. However this has turned on and off entirely on it’s own on your servers with my altering absolutely nothing in the configuration or settings within my blog. Meaning something changed in the hosting configuration. 

There are no error logs because it is a function erroneously stripping out data that it should not. Drupal gets a result from a function call that it thinks is correct but is in fact wrong.

09/17/2011 1:28 AM EDT Updated Ticket: Work in Progress
09/17/2011 1:37 AM EDT PowWeb contacted TMM (Resolved)
Comment:

Hello, 

Thank you for your reply. 

We support PHP version 5.2.17, Apache version 1.3.33 and MySQ version 5.0.45. 

If you have any further questions, please update the Support Console. 

Sincerely, 

Ariel Danson 

Technical Specialist

09/17/2011 1:42 AM EDT TMM contacted PowWeb
Customer Quote:

Has your supported versions changed since June? Something has changed and it doesn’t appear to be by my hand. I created a virgin test site and it is having the same problems. 

I have been using Windows Live Writer since January without issue until about the middle of last month.

09/17/2011 1:42 AM EDT Updated Ticket: Work in Progress
09/17/2011 1:46 AM EDT PowWeb contacted TMM (Resolved)
Comment:

Hello, 

Thank you for getting back to us. 

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you. We have not changed the supported version recently. Please reinstall the application or contact the application provider to fix the issue. 

Thank you! 

Sincerely, 

Aden Nelson 

Technical Specialist

So maybe I’ve been spoiled by the company I work for by the fact that we think customer service is a big deal.  Ownership of a problem is a big deal.  Making sure the customers problem is solved is a big deal.  Getting to root cause is a big deal.  Notice how it was marked resolved long before anything was actually solved.  Very quickly they blamed it on third party software without any actual proof.

This company has totally shifted the blame for the problem from them to me. Ignoring the fact that this has happened on two independent Drupal installs who’s configurations haven’t changed.  No single individual took lead to deal with this problem and just bounced it around.  I’m stuck copying and pasting the source code from WLW into the submission form in Drupal.  Any pictures I want to submit become an arm twisting game of getting the URL correct to point to the image if I’m uploading it.

I just checked, I have prepaid 2 years of hosting starting in Nov 2010.  That gives me a year to come up with a new hosting solution and a solid game plane for site and email migration.  I will actually probably move earlier because I pay per month for my Exchange hosting and if I can find it cheaper, that’s money back in my pocket that I haven’t spent yet.

In the past I was more than happy to recommend Powweb to friends but given the first time I really had a serious issue and support utterly face planted.

If anyone has any input on what the problem might be, here’s an example of what happens when I submit through WLW currently.  I have disabled the TestUser account, and regenerated a new site password for myself since they think this issue is resolved they no longer require access.  Keypass makes stuff like this much easier to handle.  I am NOT going to close this ticket until I find a resolution to this problem.  WLW worked without issue from January to the beginning of August.  At which point I had a few flaky issues, but they always came back.  Then last week it died permanently.

I am going to continue posting new content, I won’t be putting many of my own pictures up except through my photo gallery.

So I am all ears on good hosting providers that support PHP, MySQL, and Exchange services.  I’ve got time and if I move early I’ve got some side sites that can live out there that can die around November 2012.  I know I could host myself, my bandwidth out in BFE though isn’t that great and I hate general IT maintenance with a passion.  So fellow bloggers, what would you recommend.

Opt out of screening, here’s the result

What happened next was unnecessary and out of line; instead of just running his fingers along the waistband, he pulled out, at which point my button ripped out of the shorts, and the zipper came all the way down, exposing my underwear down to the crotch. Horror. I quickly zipped my shorts up. What the hell? I can understand there might have be a possibility that the thread or fabric near the button had been weakened over time, but even then, my zipper should not have unzipped down to the bottom if he was only feeling the waistband. Obviously my frustration showed, but did the TSA agent offer a solution for my broken button? or say anything besides “oops. I’m Sorry”? No. He just continued over to the machine to wipe his gloves down looking for residue, and then put wipe into machine.

I’m reasonably sure the only reason they escorted him to the back room is to ensure there would be no witnesses to the attack.  Yes this was an attack because it resulted in damage to property.  Not only that but the agents actions were nothing more than an attempt at sexual humiliation.

I don’t wish ill or harm on anyone, but frankly my opinion is starting to change regarding TSA agents.  Even if agent A isn’t responsible, he still covers for agent B.  They’re nothing but predators who cover for each other.

The TSA has so many issues it shall remain in this post by itself

SSCC #92- Huston PD

Houston police announced Thursday that they have indefinitely suspended an officer who was legally drunk when he crashed into a school bus earlier this year.

When I read that I figured well maybe he was off duty and was on his way home so this is more of a “honorable mention” category.  Then in my research I found this line which makes me think this isn’t his first rodeo.

A veteran Houston police officer with a blood-alcohol content of .205 — more than twice the legal limit — was driving to work when he collided with a private school bus this month, authorities said.

Emphasis mine.  It bugs me that the two papers are indicating a different BAC, though the newer article may be the result of a more accurate blood test.  Either way he was well beyond smashed and he was going to continue to be smashed well beyond after his shift started.

Then to add insult to injury the police tried to fault the bus driver and even cited the bus driver.  So Trejo wasn’t charged with DUI until two weeks later.  Thankfully the citation against the bus driver was dropped.  In a shining glimmer of hope.  Trejo was basically fired by the department meaning the pension board can decide not to give him benefits.  That little bit right there would shift this from SSCC to also being Accountabiliabuddiable (A possible thought for the name of the other series). 

I wonder if this guy is going to move up to Indianapolis now and join the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department.  Tam say’s it’s so common up their it’s loosing it’s news worthiness and they probably scout for talent

State Sponsored Criminal Count: 92 – Ruben Trejo

Because blowing a .205 means you’ve got just enough buzz to ride you through the whole shift!

Via Ry.

SSCC 87-91: TSA, Florida SP, Westchester County

Authorities said that the TSA officers — two in Florida and one in New York — were paid to help drug couriers move pills and the stacks of cash they generated through airport screening systems. One of the police officers — a Florida state trooper — took drug money to travel to Connecticut, where he provided "protection" to a courier selling thousands of pills to a dozen or more lower-level dealers, authorities said.

This isn’t the first time that government officials have aided in drug smuggling.  The mistake in this case though was not getting your parents permission first.  You might notice the above only lists 4 people, what about #5?

The dealer said he made payments totaling $20,000 to a Westchester County police officer assigned to the airport there in order to be permitted to carry — without being questioned — large quantities of cash back to Florida, according to a DEA affidavit.

Ahh, there he is.  Pay the top for to ignore the pills, bribe the last guy to ignore the cash.  Whenever you see drugs and money, odds are starting to look pretty good you might see someone there also getting paid by the taxpayer.

Just remember that TSA agent who’s violating your wife is probably also getting a kickback from some criminal to ignore the stuff he should be looking for.  The TSA has nothing to do with security or enforcing the law.  It has everything to do with obedience and doing what you’re told if you’re a law abiding sheep.

State Sponsored Criminal Count: 91

  • Christopher Allen, TSA
  • John Best, TSA
  • Brigitte Jones, TSA
  • Justin Kolves, FSHP
  • *John Doe, WCPD

Because you’re not allowed to run drugs unless you either bribe or are a state employee.

Via WizardPC

Report Your Neighbor, Get a Piece of Candy

So via Uncle this morning we found out about Obama’s new campaign to to silence dissent amongst the American people.

Friends using Oldspeak? Well, go tell Uncle Barack how double plus ungood they are!

This is much the same as his “Fight the Smears” campaign or [email protected].  We also can not forget about the thickest icing on the cake, how Obama was creating a position amongst his czars specifically to enforce reasoned discourse at the point of a gun.  Here I thought American Presidents had members of a cabinet, while fearless leader preferred to have Czars.

The bottom line is Obama wants to quell criticism because that’s the only way he can attempt to hid the truth.  In the words of John Adams, “Facts are stubborn things.”  His effort to stifle the voice of the American people is down right insulting and is blatantly the sign of a tyrant.  He can respond all he likes by posting rebuttals, but efforts such as this scream nothing more than 1-800-Dial-a-Nazi.  Seriously you may be campaigning for reelection but you still in your position of power.  Things like this are too easily abused.

This all coming from the same White House that appointed Eric Holder to AG, and disavows any knowledge of “Gun Walker” .  Kind of convenient considering his comment earlier this year stating that “gun control was happening under the radar”.  The individual in charge of the ATF was just a temporary appointment to avoid congressional review.  He has since been forced to step down, but instead of being fired, he got a transfer.  Where could a person with such high moral caliber work, I know the Justice Department!  Then on the “Attack Watch” website they claim that Obama is pro-gun because of the National Parks Concealed Carry rider that was tacked onto a credit card bill.  A bill that was deemed important by his party so it was almost sure to pass.

I think Weer’d nailed it with this video:

So given my bash fest here, my previous posts about him and other government policies; if you want to report this site, feel free.  I will state again what I stated last time involving the creation of that stupid ass czar.

Note: I will not remove any information that is critical of the President or any other elected official.  While the President is deserving of the respect granted him by the office, that does not render him able to do anything without criticism.  Any federal or state employee works for me and I can be critical of how they conduct their business, treat my rights, and behave while spending my money.  The office does not make them a pure soul, they are like you and me, a human being.  If the elected representative dislikes the criticism maybe they should alter their behavior to decrease criticism by myself and others like me.