Expertinent: Huckabee Agrees That Wives Should 'Submit Graciously' to Their Husbands. What Does He Mean?
Andrew Romano

Poor Mike Huckabee. He can't catch a break these days--at least with press. (The polls: different story.)

First it's ethics complaints. Then AIDS. Then the parole of a once (and future) rapist/murderer. Then alleged payoffs from Big Tobacco. All while sustaining attacks from his Republican rivals on immigration, taxes and crime. It's almost enough to get a guy eating corndogs again.


The latest fuel on the fire: his views on marriage. In June 1998, the Southern Baptist convention amended its official statement of beliefs for the first time in 35 years to declare that "a wife is to submit graciously to the servant leadership of her husband." And Huckabee, a former Baptist minister then serving as governor of Arkansas, signed a full-page ad in USA Today in support of the statement (along with 129 other evangelical leaders). Now, as the New York Post so poetically puts it, "HOLY HUCKABEE FACES SNIT OVER 'GALS, SUBMIT.'" DailyKos and Andrew Sullivan agree.


It's clear, then, that non-Baptist ears are hearing "do whatever your husband says"--a "Father Knows Best" (if not "Flintstones") philosophy. But to a Baptist like Huckabee, what does "submit graciously to the servant leadership of her husband" actually mean? Seeking context, I called up Roger S. Oldham, the Southern Baptists' vice president for convention relations. Here's what he had to say on the subject:

Mike Huckabee and his wife in signing this ad in 1998 were reflecting their commitment to their core religious values as revealed in the Bible.


With the exception of the word graciously, this is language coming right out of the Biblical text Ephesians V. It is an imperative addressed to the wife. It's not an imperative addressed to the husband. In other words, the man doesn't walk around and say, "Well, you're supposed to be submissive to me." It's not a club. Subordination is not subjugation, nor is it a statement of inferiority. And "servant," by the way, is not directed toward the woman. It's directed toward the man. She is submitting to the "servant leadership" of him. He is the one who is in the role of servant.


Now, there's no doubt that there has been abuse in interpreting the Ephesians V text. There have been those over the years who have read it that the husband is to keep his wife in constant remembrance that she's to be submissive.

But ideally the Ephesians V family is a family in which there is mutual submission to one another in the fear of the Lord. Therefore, when there are matters of discussion, both husband and wife converse with each other, seeking to find consensus. In those rare instances where consensus is not reached, the wife says, "Okay, you have the responsibility and accountability to stand before God one day and give an account of the decision you're going to make. But I--voluntarily--submit to your leadership is this instance." Now, when that happens, what that does is frees the husband up. He's no longer arguing with his wife. He now has to stand before God.

Sure, that's softer than "submit." But, in the end, the man still gets the upper hand--meaning there's still considerable room for controversy.


How will Huckabee's views on marriage play politically? We know it won't disturb the evangelicals boosting his primary bid. In fact, as an affirmation of faith-based family values, it's probably a plus (especially if Huckabee again calls criticism on this issue an attack on his faith, as he did in 1998).

But much of America might see such strict adherence to Biblical doctrine as sort of extreme, which (along with Huckabee's other "issues") could cause him trouble in the general election. It's one thing to be a man of faith. Most people appreciate that. It's another to say that a wife should agree to give her husband the last word.

I know a lot of "gals" who would disagree.

Fertilizer used to speed natural gas production
Process could tap new energy supply from older oil fields

Scientists say microbes could convert hard-to-extract oil into natural gas.

By Seth Borenstein

updated 2 hours, 38 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - A vast new energy supply in hard-to-tap older oil fields may be generated simply by feeding fertilizer to some deep-dwelling, gas-making microbes, new research suggests.

Canadian and English researchers were able to convert oil into usable methane in small glass tubes during two years of lab research, instead of a process that takes tens of thousands of years underground. The next step is to do it in real oil fields.

The new method takes advantage of the natural process that occurs when microbes slowly degrade oil into methane, the chief ingredient in natural gas.

The researchers report their experiment in a study published online Wednesday in the journal Nature.

"You're talking a very substantial amount of energy," said study co-author Steve Larter, a University of Calgary petroleum geologist. "It's potentially a game changer if it can be demonstrated."

Proving that it could work on a large scale, economically and in real world conditions is the big unknown, the researchers concede.

Larter said it was hard to come up with just how much energy they could produce, but speculated it could be near the equivalent of the world's conventional oil reserves.

The key is the microbes, which have existed underground for hundreds of millions of years. They ferment the oil and expel natural gas without requiring oxygen.

Others have tried the approach used by Larter and his colleagues before, seeking to speed up the process by injecting more bacteria. But Larter says the key is giving the microbes their own version of vitamins.

"You'd basically feed them Miracle-Gro or fertilizer to accelerate their growth rate," he said.

Trade deficit rises to highest level in 3 months
Higher oil bill, flood of Chinese imports offset higher U.S. exports

updated 8:54 a.m. ET, Wed., Dec. 12, 2007
WASHINGTON - The U.S. trade deficit rose to the highest level in three months, with record oil prices and a flood of toys and other imports from China swamping a solid gain in American exports.

The Commerce Department reported Wednesday that the deficit for October increased to $57.8 billion, the highest level since July and 1.2 percent above the September imbalance.

The widening deficit was slightly worse than expected and occurred even though U.S. exports of goods and services rose for an eighth consecutive month, climbing 0.9 percent to an all-time high of $141.7 billion. This gain was offset by a 1 percent rise in imports to $199.5 billion, also a record, as a surge in global oil prices sent America’s oil bill soaring.

The deficit with China jumped 9.1 percent to $25.9 billion, a record for a single month.

The rise reflected record imports from China, led by large gains in shipments of toys and games and televisions as retailers stocked their shelves for Christmas. The demand for Chinese imports is still surging despite a string of high-profile recalls of Chinese products from toys with lead paint to defective tires and tainted toothpaste.

So far this year, the trade imbalance with China is running at an annual rate of $256 billion, putting it on track to surpass last year’s $233 billion deficit, which had been the highest deficit ever recorded with a single country.

Those record deficits have triggered a backlash in Congress, with dozens of bills introduced seeking to penalize China for what critics see as unfair trade practices contributing to the loss of 3 million U.S. manufacturing jobs since 2000.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and other members of President Bush’s Cabinet were meeting with their counterparts in China this week for the third round of talks aimed at defusing trade tensions. While minor agreements were expected, there was likely to be no breakthrough on the biggest point of contention, China’s undervalued currency. The currency disparity makes Chinese products cheaper in America and U.S. goods more expensive in China.

Some of the legislation in Congress seeks to impose penalty tariffs on Chinese products unless China allows its currency to rise in value against the dollar at a faster rate. But Vice Premier Wu Yi, the leader of the Chinese delegation, delivered a blunt threat of Chinese retaliation should the United States impose economic penalties on China.

“I need to be quite candid about this: If these bills are adopted, they will severely undermine U.S. business ties with China,” Wu said at the opening of the talks with Paulson on Wednesday.

The gain in exports was led by increased shipments of civilian aircraft, industrial equipment and telecommunications products. U.S. manufacturers have been benefiting from a fall in the value of the dollar against many other currencies including the European euro. The weaker dollar makes U.S. goods cheaper on overseas markets while making foreign products more expensive for U.S. consumers.

So far this year, the U.S. trade deficit is running at an annual rate of $704 billion, down by 7.1 percent from last year’s $758.5 billion, putting the country on track to see the first narrowing of the deficit after five consecutive years of record imbalances.

The import gain was led by an 8.3 percent jump in the foreign oil bill with petroleum imports setting an all-time high of $29.6 billion in October. The average price of a barrel of imported crude also set a record at $72.49 per barrel. The oil bill is expected to rise even more in coming months, reflecting the fact that prices jumped to near $100 per barrel at their peak this fall.

Archaeological discoveries that prove the Bible is base on history not that history is based on the bible.

Archaeologist also proved the Greek mythological tale of the Trojan War but that doesn't mean that the mythological tale is acturate to what actually happened in history. Greek won the war and wrote "tall tale" stories to promote their version of events.

Like wise Christianity won a great deal of people in terms of religious fallowing. But like the Greeks it's their version of "tall tales" and not the actual events that they preach.

Any intelligent archeaologist knows this when interperating the any bias text. They only find some grains of truth in Biblical stories when it relates to archeaoloigical finds but sometimes those same findings go in conflict with elements in Biblical stories.

Is human evolution speeding up?

Researchers say people are evolving more rapidly than in the distant past.

By Randolph E. Schmid

updated 5:05 p.m. ET, Mon., Dec. 10, 2007
WASHINGTON - Science-fiction writers have suggested a future Earth populated by a blend of all races into a common human form. In real life, the reverse seems to be happening.

People are evolving more rapidly than in the distant past, with residents of various continents becoming increasingly different from one another, researchers say.

“I was raised with the belief that modern humans showed up 40,000 to 50,000 years ago and haven’t changed,” explained Henry C. Harpending, an anthropologist at the University of Utah.“The opposite seems to be true.”

“Our species is not static,” Harpending added in a telephone interview.

That doesn’t mean we should expect major changes in a few generations, though. Evolution on that scale occurs over thousands, even millions of years.

Harpending and colleagues looked at the DNA of humans and that of chimpanzees, our closest relatives, they report in this week’s online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

If evolution had been proceeding steadily at the current rate since humans and chimps separated 6 million years ago, there should be 160 times more differences than the researchers found.

That indicates that human evolution had been slower in the distant past, Harpending explained.

“Rapid population growth has been coupled with vast changes in cultures and ecology, creating new opportunities for adaptation,” the study says. “The past 10,000 years have seen rapid skeletal and dental evolution in human populations, as well as the appearance of many new genetic responses to diet and disease.”

And they found that different changes are occurring in Africans, Asians and Europeans.

Signs of acceleration
Most anthropologists agree that humans first evolved in Africa and then spread to other areas, and the lighter skin color of Europeans and Asians is generally attributed to selection to allow more absorption of vitamin D in colder climate where there is less sun.

The increase in human population from millions to billions in the last 10,000 years accelerated the rate of evolution because “we were in new environments to which we needed to adapt,” Harpending adds. “And with a larger population, more mutations occurred.”

In another example, the researchers noted that in China and most of Africa, few people can digest fresh milk into adulthood. Yet in Sweden and Denmark, the gene that makes the milk-digesting enzyme lactase remains active, so almost everyone can drink fresh milk, explaining why dairy farming is more common in Europe than in the Mediterranean and Africa, Harpending says.

The researchers studied 3.9 million gene snippets from 270 people in four populations: Han Chinese, Japanese, Africa’s Yoruba tribe and Utah Mormons who traced their ancestry to northern Europe. The samples were collected through the International HapMap Consortium.

Richard Potts, director of the human origins program at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History, said he thinks the researchers reasoning regarding rapid adaptive change is plausible.


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The study mainly points to an overall expansion in the human population over the past 40,000 years to explain the genetic data.

“Yet the archaeological record also shows that humans increasingly divided themselves into distinct cultures and migrating groups — factors that seem to play only a small role in their analysis. Dividing the human population into finer units and their movement into new regions — the Arctic, Oceania, tropical forests, just to name some — may have also forced quicker adaptive evolution in our species,” Potts said.

Potts, who was not part of the research team, added that he liked the report “because it points to how genetic data can be used to test a variety of ideas about recent human adaptation.”

Intelligence and natural selection?
Two years ago Harpending and colleague Gregory M. Cochran published a study arguing that above-average intelligence in Ashkenazi Jews — those of northern European heritage — resulted from natural selection in medieval Europe, where they were pressured into jobs as financiers, traders, managers and tax collectors.

Those who were smarter succeeded, grew wealthy and had bigger families to pass on their genes, they suggested. That evolution also is linked to genetic diseases such as Tay-Sachs and Gaucher in Jews.

The new study was funded by the Department of Energy, the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Institute of Aging, the Unz Foundation, the University of Utah and the University of Wisconsin.

Since you're a creationist then resessive genes are created by God not by mutation as evolution theory says. Then God created the defects of every living thing.

First of off, you don't understand that while a parent and child can have children, that was never God's plan. Humans started out marrying their sisters/brothers. Drop the father/daughter crap, I have corrected you on that two times (this is the third) already.

Spider would anyone consider marrying their sister? Have you thought about the deformaties and health hazards of inbreeding.

I had a dog that was inbreed and we had to put it to sleep because of myriad of health problems cause by inbreeding.

You can't propose that humans came from a brother marrying a sister and reproducing.

Spider wrote:
Yeah, because God can create a man from scratch, but God couldn't have manipulated the X/Y chromosomes of the woman to be X/X?

By your past post and by this logic women are recessive.

Spider which came first in evolution sex or asexual reproduction?

Then man was the defective prototype and woman is the perfect design. lol

Your backwards thinking is hidden compliment to women.

You forget that women have two X chromosome. The common chromosome is the X chromosome.

If Adam was the first human he would have two Y chromosomes then Eve would have an X and a Y chromosome since she is suppose to be based on Adam.

The Adam and Eve story can't be factual because all fetuses are female until hormones changes the fetus from female to male.

Eve would have come first then Adam.

Which just prove that Judism and Christanity is male driven. Men dominated those religions and put the importance on men and regulate women to be subserverant.

Change the subject kind of what's the best computer generated monster?

I think the grendel of Beuwolf looked horrorific. The best looking monster in the movie was the one based on Angelina Jolie.

I also ran across an article about the health risk of early and later bloomers.

I seems that 14 to 16 yrs olds have high risk of STDs. And 22 yrs old and over have emotional, interpersonal, and sexual dysfunction risks.

What, that the the program works or that it doesn't give enough information. I say give kid the information so they make the right choices for themselves.

Have you thought of going look for poor farm boys in the country?

Review says abstinence-only ed fails teens
Federally funded programs don't curb sex activity in kids, report concludes

updated 11:39 a.m. ET, Wed., Nov. 7, 2007
WASHINGTON - Programs that focus exclusively on abstinence have not been shown to affect teenager sexual behavior, although they are eligible for tens of millions of dollars in federal grants, according to a study released by a nonpartisan group that seeks to reduce teen pregnancies.

"At present there does not exist any strong evidence that any abstinence program delays the initiation of sex, hastens the return to abstinence or reduces the number of sexual partners" among teenagers, the study concluded.

The report, which was based on a review of research into teenager sexual behavior, was being released Wednesday by the nonpartisan National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy.

The study found that while abstinence-only efforts appear to have little positive impact, more comprehensive sex education programs were having "positive outcomes" including teenagers "delaying the initiation of sex, reducing the frequency of sex, reducing the number of sexual partners and increasing condom or contraceptive use."

"Two-thirds of the 48 comprehensive programs that supported both abstinence and the use of condoms and contraceptives for sexually active teens had positive behavior effect," said the report.

A spending bill before Congress for the Department of Health and Human Services would provide $141 million in assistance for community-based, abstinence-only sex education programs, $4 million more than what President Bush had requested.

The study, conducted by Douglas Kirby, a senior research scientist at ETR Associates, also sought to debunk what the report called "myths propagated by abstinence-only advocates" including: that comprehensive sex education promotes promiscuity, hastens the initiative of sex or increases its frequency, and sends a confusing message to adolescents.

None of these was found to be accurate, Kirby wrote.

Instead, he wrote, such programs improved teens' knowledge about the risks and consequences of pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases and gave them greater "confidence in their ability to say 'no' to unwanted sex."

The sponsors of the study praised Kirby for his "thorough research" and for being "fair and evenhanded," but they also acknowledged that ETR Associates developed and markets several of the sex education curricula reviewed in the report. Several of the previous studies that were reviewed also were written by Kirby.

The report noted that there continues to be "too high levels of sexual risk-taking among teens" with 47 percent of all high schools students reporting having sex at least once and 63 percent saying they have engaged in sex by the spring semester of their senior year.

"Many teenagers do not use contraceptives carefully and consistently," said the report. About 40 of every 1,000 girls age 15 to 19 gave birth in 2005, the last year for which data was available, the report said.

Onegoofydame = future cougar of America.

Yeah Onegoofydame you like white men now but when you become middle age and become successful your tastes might change. lol















just kidding.

Older, white women join Kenya's sex tourism

1 in 5 wealthy female travelers in search of young men, locals estimate
Sexploration — By Brian Alexander
updated 12:54 p.m. ET, Mon., Nov. 26, 2007
MOMBASA, Kenya - Bethan, 56, lives in southern England on the same street as best friend Allie, 64.

They are on their first holiday to Kenya, a country they say is “just full of big young boys who like us older girls.”

Hard figures are difficult to come by, but local people on the coast estimate that as many as one in five single women visiting from rich countries are in search of sex.

Allie and Bethan — who both declined to give their full names — said they planned to spend a whole month touring Kenya’s palm-fringed beaches. They would do well to avoid the country’s tourism officials.

“It’s not evil,” said Jake Grieves-Cook, chairman of the Kenya Tourist Board, when asked about the practice of older rich women traveling for sex with young Kenyan men.

“But it’s certainly something we frown upon.”

Also, the health risks are stark in a country with an AIDS prevalence of 6.9 percent. Although condom use can only be guessed at, Julia Davidson, an academic at Nottingham University who writes on sex tourism, said that in the course of her research she had met women who shunned condoms — finding them too “businesslike” for their exotic fantasies.

The white beaches of the Indian Ocean coast stretched before the friends as they both walked arm-in-arm with young African men, Allie resting her white haired-head on the shoulder of her companion, a six-foot-four 23-year-old from the Maasai tribe.

He wore new sunglasses he said were a gift from her.

“We both get something we want — where’s the negative?” Allie asked in a bar later, nursing a strong, golden cocktail.

She was still wearing her bikini top, having just pulled on a pair of jeans and a necklace of traditional African beads.

Bethan sipped the same local drink: a powerful mix of honey, fresh limes and vodka known locally as “Dawa,” or ”medicine.”

She kept one eye on her date — a 20-year-old playing pool, a red bandana tying back dreadlocks and new-looking sports shoes on his feet.

He looked up and came to join her at the table, kissing her, then collecting more coins for the pool game.

'Just unwholesome'
Grieves-Cook and many hotel managers say they are doing all they can to discourage the practice of older women picking up local boys, arguing it is far from the type of tourism they want to encourage in the east African nation.

“The head of a local hoteliers’ association told me they have begun taking measures — like refusing guests who want to change from a single to a double room,” Grieves-Cook said.

“It’s about trying to make those guests feel as uncomfortable as possible ... But it’s a fine line. We are 100 percent against anything illegal, such as prostitution. But it’s different with something like this — it’s just unwholesome.”

These same beaches have long been notorious for attracting another type of sex tourists — those who abuse children.

As many as 15,000 girls in four coastal districts — about a third of all 12-18 year-olds girls there — are involved in casual sex for cash, a joint study by Kenya’s government and U.N. children’s charity UNICEF reported late last year.

Up to 3,000 more girls and boys are in full-time sex work, it said, some paid for the “most horrific and abnormal acts.”

'Preying on poverty?'
Emerging alongside this black market trade — and obvious in the bars and on the sand once the sun goes down — are thousands of elderly white women hoping for romantic, and legal, encounters with much younger Kenyan men.

They go dining at fine restaurants, then dancing, and back to expensive hotel rooms overlooking the coast.

“One type of sex tourist attracted the other,” said one manager at a shorefront bar on Mombasa’s Bamburi beach.


“Old white guys have always come for the younger girls and boys, preying on their poverty ... But these old women followed ... they never push the legal age limits, they seem happy just doing what is sneered at in their countries.”

Experts say some thrive on the social status and financial power that comes from taking much poorer, younger lovers.

“This is what is sold to tourists by tourism companies — a kind of return to a colonial past, where white women are served, serviced, and pampered by black minions,” said Nottinghan University’s Davidson.

'Live like the rich'
Many of the visitors are on the lookout for men like Joseph.

Flashing a dazzling smile and built like an Olympic basketball star, the 22-year-old said he has slept with more than 100 white women, most of them 30 years his senior.

“When I go into the clubs, those are the only women I look for now,” he told Reuters. “I get to live like the rich mzungus (white people) who come here from rich countries, staying in the best hotels and just having my fun.”

At one club, a group of about 25 dancing men — most of them Joseph look-alikes — edge closer and closer to a crowd of more than a dozen white women, all in their autumn years.

“It’s not love, obviously. I didn’t come here looking for a husband,” Bethan said over a pounding beat from the speakers.

“It’s a social arrangement. I buy him a nice shirt and we go out for dinner. For as long as he stays with me he doesn’t pay for anything, and I get what I want -- a good time. How is that different from a man buying a young girl dinner?”