“Bring them home now” stamp
Here’s an imaginitive use for customized postage- a stamp to raise money for veteran’s groups working to bring the troops home from Bush’s war in Iraq. Click the stamp to learn more.
Absurd inconsistencies?
An editorial in the San Antonio Express-News takes on the Jason Lyon case and finds “absurd inconsistencies” between the attitudes of the military on the one hand, and the postal service on the other. Lyon is the National Guardsman from Buffalo who was injured in Iraq. He subsequently applied for work with the postal service, and was turned down for a letter carrier position because of his injury. The military, meanwhile, certified him as fit for combat duty.
There’s nothing absurd or inconsistent here- its just a case of two agencies with two different sets of interests. The postal service needs carriers, but the fact is that there are plenty of people eager to get a job at the PO, so the service can be choosy about whom it hires. (Don’t forget- the USPS didn’t say it wouldn’t hire Lyon- it just wouldn’t hire him as a carrier.)
The military, on the other hand, doesn’t have the luxury of picking and choosing amongst potential ‘employees’- the war in Iraq has made it so difficult to get recruits that the Defense Department has had to scramble to lower its standards and increase its incentives to get people to enlist. Which of course, is also how National Guardsmen like Lyon ended up in Iraq in the first place. Of course the military is ready to send Lyon back to Iraq!