CA Costco Labels Bible “Fiction”

Costco is in hot water this week after it says “human error” left “Fiction” labels on every copy of the Bible for sale in at least one California store.

Todd Starnes writes he was contacted by a pastor who was outraged on seeing copies of the Bible labeled “Fiction.” Starnes writes,

“He thought there must be some sort of mistake so he scoured the shelf for other Bibles. Every copy was plastered with a sticker that read, ‘$14.99 Fiction.'”

Starnes contacted Costco for an explanation, and was promptly told the labels were the result of “human error.”

The problem is, as Starnes also points out, Costco hasn’t fixed the error. There’s still a pile of Bibles for sale at Costco under the “Fiction” category. Human error or not, that’s a big deal. As KERO-Bakersfield notes, “[T]he Bibles already labeled as fiction on store shelves have not been relabeled. The company did not apologize.”

Labeling the Bible as “Fiction” marginalizes our Christian faith, and refusing to correct that mistake once it’s noticed marginalizes it further. At the very least, it’s insulting; at worst, it shows that maybe Costco doesn’t really think slapping a “Fiction” label on the Bible was such a mistake after all.

Either way, it’s disconcerting.

U.S. Military Unique in All the World

The U.S. Military is, without a doubt, unique. It is the first military in the history of the world capable of deploying to almost any country on any inhabited continent in a matter of days or hours.

In the wake of World War II and the beginning of the Cold War, that became a U.S. priority: Put military personnel anywhere at a moment’s notice and in record time. That’s why we keep ships at sea 24 hours a day, and that’s why we have so many military bases scattered all over the world. The idea was we should be able to aid our allies and stop our enemies before the fighting reaches our shores.

This week, however, Associated Press has highlighted how that rapid deployment capability is being used for something else: Humanitarian aid in the Philippines.

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CO Obamacare Ads: Sleazy, Bizarre, and Just Plain Dumb

As the trouble-plagued Obamacare rollout continues, Colorado’s health exchange is getting some bad press for a bizarre ad campaign it has been running encouraging young people to sign up for health insurance.

The ads run the gambit from sleazy to bizarre to just plain dumb.

Sleazy. Several of the ads promote “free” birth control by featuring young women with sleazy-looking guys or cardboard cutouts of actor Ryan Gosling. With captions like “let’s get physical,” the ads are so ridiculous a number of people initially thought they were parodies sponsored by Tea Party conservatives. They aren’t. They are actual ads someone in Colorado actually thought would get young adults to buy health insurance through the state exchange.

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