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The idea for a Christian-based handyman crew came to Ed Pranger during a fishing trip with some friends.

A few of those friends joined Pranger two and a half years ago in founding the group, called God’s Guys, but it was easy getting started.

“It’s pretty hard to find guys that want to work for nothing,” said the 79-year-old Grand Haven man.

God’s Guys started out meeting in a room at Spring Lake Wesleyan Church. The crew has since hooked up with Love INC, which screens clients and covers the group’s insurance needs.

“This is open to all congregations,” Pranger said of the non-denominational program. “Very much so. We have guys who are Methodist, First Reformed, three or four congregations.”

While the group is currently all-Christian, Pranger said even that’s not a requirement.

“The only requirement is, if you want to help your fellow person,” he said. “If you’re poor and needy and you need some help, if we can do it, we’ll do it.”

But the group won’t take work that requires a licensed tradesman to do.

“We turn down jobs, too,” Pranger said. “We don’t accept everything. There’s certain jobs we do and some stuff we can’t do.”

God’s Guys will put up shelves, install washers and dryers, do small roof patches, replace old toilets, wash windows and screens, relocate wheelchair ramps — basically any light handyman-type work. Pranger said the group has done more than 100 jobs in the past two years.

An unidentified soldier speaks to Kira Wolf, 19, from Arlington, Va., as she visits the grave of her boyfriend, Lance Cpl. Colin J. Wolfe, at Arlington National Cemetery, Friday, Nov. 3, 2006, in Arlington, Va. Wolf says she visits Wolfe’s grave every other day. Wolfe, 19, of Manassas, Va., died Aug. 30 while conducting combat operations in Iraq’s Al Anbar province.
(AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

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Waar staan de politieke partijen eigenlijk als het om ons digitale leven gaat? Zeven verkiesbare kamerleden bekennen namens hun partij kleur. Onmisbaar in aanloop naar de 22e.

In de verkiezingsprogramma’s van de meeste partijen staat weinig over ICT. Maar we wilden nu wel eens echt weten wat de grote partijen vinden van onderwerpen als internetprivacy, kopieerheffing op mp3-spelers, UMTS-masten of stemcomputers. Tonie legde 15 stellingen voor aan de volgende verkiesbare kamerleden: Zsolt Szabo (VVD), Martijn van Dam (PvdA), Bas van der Vlies (SGP), Arda Gerkens (SP), Arie Slob (ChristenUnie), Kees Vendrik (GroenLinks) en Maarten Haverkamp (CDA).

Eindelijk een stemwijzer waar ik iets aan heb.

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The 2006 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), launched today by Transparency International (TI), points to a strong correlation between corruption and poverty, with a concentration of impoverished states at the bottom of the ranking.

“Corruption traps millions in poverty,�? said Transparency International Chair Huguette Labelle. “Despite a decade of progress in establishing anti-corruption laws and regulations, today’s results indicate that much remains to be done before we see meaningful improvements in the lives of the world’s poorest citizens.�?

The 2006 Corruption Perceptions Index is a composite index that draws on multiple expert opinion surveys that poll perceptions of public sector corruption in 163 countries around the world, the greatest scope of any CPI to date. It scores countries on a scale from zero to ten, with zero indicating high levels of perceived corruption and ten indicating low levels of perceived corruption.

A strong correlation between corruption and poverty is evident in the results of the CPI 2006. Almost three-quarters of the countries in the CPI score below five (including all low-income countries and all but two African states) indicating that most countries in the world face serious perceived levels of domestic corruption. Seventy-one countries – nearly half – score below three, indicating that corruption is perceived as rampant.

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The British army is planning to extend its training for young recruits because so many potential soldiers are obese, an official report discloses today. The military has had to relax its criteria over the physique and weight of recruits as a result of the problem.

“Increasing levels of obesity and resultant health problems reduces the number of young people able to join the services”, warns the National Audit Office, parliament’s independent watchdog. It points to research by the army last year which showed that only a third of all 16 year-olds would pass the body mass index set for all recruits to the forces.

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Top Republicans Sunday warned President Bill Clinton that refusing to honor independent counsel Ken Starr’s grand jury subpoena in the Monica Lewinsky case could have serious political consequences — including the possibility of impeachment.

“I think it would be disastrous. It is basically saying he is above the law, he doesn’t have to comply with the law,” said Senate Majority Whip Don Nickles of Oklahoma on NBC’s “Meet The Press.” “Everybody else in America has to comply with subpoenas (while) he’s saying he wouldn’t. … I don’t think that would be sustainable.”

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Dick Cheney told George Stephanopoulos that he would “probably not” appear before Congress if subpoenaed.

Video – WMV  Video – QT

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The game was simple: Name the stupidest thing you have ever done. One answer was peculiar: “Shot a guy in the head.”

That alleged confession at a summer party led police to arrest Jerry Rose, who was charged Friday in the killing 60-year-old Edgar Hawkes last March at Hawkes’ home in Parma Township.

Rose, 29, was formally charged in District Court with one count of open murder, one count of armed robbery and one count of using a firearm in the commission of a crime.

Take a guess: what is the second dumbest thing this guy has ever done?

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It should have been an open and shut case. But a black man has revealed how blunders by court officials meant he was convicted of a driving offence…despite police having video footage of a white offender.

Edmond Taylor, 25, fought a bizarre year-long battle to clear his name. But only when an astonished judge was finally shown the CCTV footage last week was Mr Taylor cleared on appeal.

He had been convicted of dangerous driving, the only evidence being police reports. He was banned from driving for a year and fined £430.

Mr Taylor, who works as a cash handler for Securitas, said: “I attended four hearings. If they had looked at the video once they would have realised I was not the person they wanted.

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Members of the New Life Church were stunned and brought to tears by the Rev. Ted Haggard’s confessions of “sexual immorality,” then accepted his plea for forgiveness with open arms.

Haggard apologized Sunday in a letter read from the pulpit of the 14,000-member church he founded.

Some in the standing-room-only crowd wiped away tears and embraced each other as they heard Haggard’s words read by a member of the board that fired him a day earlier.

“The fact is I am guilty of sexual immorality. And I take responsibility for the entire problem,” Haggard wrote. “I am a deceiver and a liar. There’s a part of my life that is so repulsive and dark that I have been warring against it for all of my adult life.”

After services, Patty Erwin kneeled near the back of the 8,000-seat auditorium and said a prayer for Haggard.

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Professor Guido Galletti cast the original from the inspiration of Italian swimmer/diver Duilo Merchant who wanted a symbol to inspire all who explored and loved the sea in 1954. In 1961, the second casting from the original Galletti mold was placed in St. George’s Harbor in Grenada to commemorate those saved from the Italian ship Bianca C. which caught fire and sank in the harbor. The third casting was commissioned by Italian dive equipment manufacturer, Egidio Cressi, and donated to The Underwater Society of America.

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The reactable, is a state-of-the-art multi-user electro-acoustic music instrument with a tabletop tangible user interface. Several simultaneous performers share complete control over the instrument by moving physical artefacts on the table surface and constructing different audio topologies in a kind of tangible modular synthesizer or graspable flow-controlled programming language.

The instrument was developed by a team of digital luthiers under the direction of Dr. Sergi Jordà. The “Interactive Sonic Systems” team is working in the Music Technology Group within the Audiovisual Institute at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona Spain. Its main activities concentrate on the design of new musical interfaces, such as tangible music instruments and musical applications for mobile devices.

demo 2, demo 3

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On Monday morning, when Chapel Hill lawyer Bob Epting approached the early voting center at Morehead Planetarium, he had every intention of casting his ballot and heading to the office.

But in a town famous for its Halloween revelry, a little trickery was apparently at work a day early.

By Epting’s account: He walked to the side entrance and was approached by a female college student who asked whether he was a registered Democrat.

“Yes I am,” he said.

She replied, “Good, here’s a list of our judicial candidates.”

Epting thanked her, folded the piece of paper without looking at it and put it in his pocket. As a lawyer who is fairly active in politics (his law partner is longtime Rep. Joe Hackney), he didn’t need a list to tell him who to vote for, especially among the judges.

But after exiting the poll, he remembered the piece of paper and removed it from his pocket. Standing at the top of a dozen or so marble steps, he scanned the list in disbelief. It was a list of Republican candidates.

This, and the post below this one, is amazing to those of us who live in functioning democracies. It’s amazing that it happens at all, and it’s even more amazing that it’s open, shameless and acknowledged. Any party pulling this kind of crap over here would get so much negative media exposure they would cease to exist in parliament.

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Press one if you think they’re dirty tricks. Press two if you think prerecorded telephone messages are devastatingly effective, especially during the final days of a close campaign.

In at least 53 competitive House races, the National Republican Campaign Committee has launched hundreds of thousands of automated telephone calls, known as “robo calls.”

Such calls have sparked a handful of complaints to the FCC and underscore the usefulness of the inexpensive — and sometimes overwhelming — political tool.

“As much as people complain about getting automated calls and saying they don’t work, every politician is doing them,” said Jerry Dorchuck, whose Pennsylvania-based Political Marketing International will make about 200,000 such phone calls each hour for mostly Democratic candidates. “Targeted calls play a key in very close races.”

They can single out single women, absentee voters, independents and party faithful with tailored messages, but they also can frustrate voters. Sometimes, the latter is their goal.

Bruce Jacobson, a software engineer from Ardmore, Pa., received three prerecorded messages in four hours. Each began, “Hello, I’m calling with information about Lois Murphy,” the Democrat running against two-term incumbent Rep. Jim Gerlach in the Philadelphia-area district.

“Basically, they go on to slam Lois,” said Jacobson, who has filed a complaint with the FCC because the source of the call isn’t immediately known.

FCC rules say all prerecorded messages must “at the beginning of the message, state clearly the identity of the business, individual, or other entity that is responsible for initiating the call.” During or after the message, they must give the telephone number of the caller.

“The way they’re sent is deceptive. The number of calls is harassing. The way her stances are presented in these stories is deliberately misleading and deceptive,” said Karlyn Messinger, another Murphy supporter from Penn Valley, Pa., who filed a complaint with the FCC.

[..]

“Because they are getting so many, they are only listening to the first part of the message,” said Amy Bonitatibus, a Murphy spokeswoman. “They’re hoping to turn off our base. … These are pretty much dirty tricks by the Republican Party.”

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But Republican National Committee member Tom Rath said the legal issues here are far from straightforward, involving federal-versus-state law and issues of free speech.

“It’s a complicated legal question that’s not going to get adjudicated this weekend,” he said.

One of the calls features a woman who opens by saying “Hello. I’m calling with information about Paul Hodes,” the Democrat challenging Republican U.S. Rep. Charles Bass. She goes on to criticize his position on rolling back some of the recent federal tax cuts and ends by saying the call was paid for by the National Republican Congressional Committee, according to a tape recording of the call released by the state Democratic Party.

Initially, Child said she was annoyed because she didn’t realize until the end of the message that the call was from Republicans. When she also realized she shouldn’t be getting any such calls because of the do-not-call list, “Then I really got mad.”

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In late April 1999, the United States Central Command (CENTCOM), led by Marine General Anthony Zinni (ret.), conducted a series of war games known as Desert Crossing in order to assess potential outcomes of an invasion of Iraq aimed at unseating Saddam Hussein. The documents posted here today covered the initial pre-war game planning phase from April-May 1999 through the detailed after-action reporting of June and July 1999.

The Desert Crossing war games, which amounted to a feasibility study for part of the main war plan for Iraq — OPLAN 1003-98 — tested “worst case” and “most likely” scenarios of a post-war, post-Saddam, Iraq. The After Action Report presented its recommendations for further planning regarding regime change in Iraq and was an interagency production assisted by the departments of defense and state, as well as the National Security Council, and the Central Intelligence Agency, among others.

The results of Desert Crossing, however, drew pessimistic conclusions regarding the immediate possible outcomes of such action. Some of these conclusions are interestingly similar to the events which actually occurred after Saddam was overthrown. (Note 1) The report forewarned that regime change may cause regional instability by opening the doors to “rival forces bidding for power” which, in turn, could cause societal “fragmentation along religious and/or ethnic lines” and antagonize “aggressive neighbors.” Further, the report illuminated worries that secure borders and a restoration of civil order may not be enough to stabilize Iraq if the replacement government were perceived as weak, subservient to outside powers, or out of touch with other regional governments. An exit strategy, the report said, would also be complicated by differing visions for a post-Saddam Iraq among those involved in the conflict.

[..]

Zinni noted the parallels to what eventually happened after the invasion as well as to the lack of interest elsewhere in the U.S. government for tackling the problems of reconstruction:

The first meeting surfaced all the problems that have exactly happened now. This was 1999. And when I took it back and looked at it, I said, we need a plan. Not all of this is a military responsibility. I went back to State Department, to the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance, Department of Commerce and others and said, all right, how about you guys taking part of the plan. We need a plan in addition to the war plan for the reconstruction. Not interested. Would not look at it. (Note 5)

So the General decided to take action himself — “because I was convinced nobody in Washington was going to plan for it, and we, the military, would get stuck with it.”

Zinni claimed that his report had been forgotten only a few years later, stating: “When it looked like we were going in [to Iraq], I called back down to CENTCOM and said, ‘You need to dust off Desert Crossing.’ They said, ‘What’s that? Never heard of it.’ So in a matter of just a few years it was gone. The corporate memory. And in addition I was told, ‘We’ve been told not to do any of the planning. It would all be done in the Pentagon.’” (Note 6)

The planning done at the Defense Department changed Zinni’s original conception in some fundamental ways. For example, Zinni proposed a civilian occupation authority with offices in all eighteen Iraqi provinces, whereas the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) was actually established only in Baghdad.

Even more significantly, the former CENTCOM commander noted that his plan had called for a force of 400,000 for the invasion — 240,000 more than what Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld approved. “We were concerned about the ability to get in there right away, to flood the towns and villages,” USA Today quoted Zinni as saying in July 2003. “We knew the initial problem would be security.” (Note 7)

Army General Thomas “Tommy” Franks adjusted the concept when he assumed command of CENTCOM upon Zinni’s retirement. Yet even his initial version of OPLAN 1003-98 envisioned a need for 385,000 troops, according to the book, COBRA II, (Note 8) — before Rumsfeld insisted that the number be sharply reduced.