Ted Rheingold signs Skeezix the cat as the latest Catster blogger!

Bette Davis stamps! Just in time to send out your gay marriage invitations.

Voting machines in some states are not up to par.

Watching CNN I see that Obama is up in the polls in swing states. 42 days to go!

Over at The Rasmussem Report, a fair opinion piece by Joe Conason about why Bristol Palin’s pregnancy matters to our current national politics. He urges readers “let us stop pretending this is good news.” An excerpt below:

It seems fair to assume, however, that Sarah Palin’s enthusiasm for “abstinence-only” sex education, which is shared by Sen. McCain, helped to cause her daughter’s misfortune. As a politician who insists on lecturing adolescents to abstain without teaching them about contraception, she may never have informed Bristol how to protect herself from an unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease. Her views on reproductive rights — including opposition to abortion even in cases of rape and incest — are too extreme even for her running mate.

The Alaska governor probably assumed that her daughter — no doubt a regular churchgoer like the rest of the family — was saving herself for marriage according to religious doctrine. Meanwhile, daughter Bristol probably understood that Mom, loving but ambitious and deeply dogmatic, was the last person she dared to ask for advice on birth control.

In a delicious turn of schadenfreude, last night I watched as Republicans cried sexism over the treatment of Sarah Palin. After watching these same people slice and dice Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama, I was howling with laughter when The Daily Show presented clips of Palin’s supporters saying a man wouldn’t be treated to such questioning juxtaposed with clips of those same people accusing Hillary Clinton of “playing the gender card.”

It’s a tricky spot to be the perpetrator and the victim of sexism.

During her time as governor of Alaska, Palin used line-item veto to slash funding to group homes for pregnant teens. It’s nice that her daughter is allowed to stay in her home; many other girls aren’t so fortunate and Palin turned them out on the street. But as she often reminds us, she’s a caring mother — at least to her own kids. Nevermind that she’s against the Fair Pay Act.

Then there was Palin’s sarcasm about Obama’s community service. A well-educated person eschewing a high-paying job to work in an underpriveleged community is my idea of serving one’s country well. Her idea of community service seems to be joining the PTA and trying to ban books.

She’s said in the past that she hasn’t paid much attention to the Iraq war. I’m sure McCain will fill her in but I’m concerned. After eight years of the Bush administration’s insistence on incompetence, it’s clear that people who lack interest can’t truly lead. Heck of a job, Brownie.

I’ll leave you with a snip from the editorial page of this morning’s L.A. Times: “This isn’t the first time a boss has picked an unqualified woman just because she agrees with him and opposes everything most other women want and need. Feminism has never been about getting a job for one woman. It’s about making life more fair for women everywhere.”

It’s an iced green tea afternoon in San Francisco, where summer has made its usual fashionably late appearance. My grandmother, who lived in Key West in the early 1950s, talked about how it would get so hot all she and her friends could do could do was drink iced green tea.

These days I’m making loose teas in my French press pot and they’re delightful. I use about 1/4 cup of jasmine green tea. Green tea can scorch and get a bitter taste, so cool the water a bit after boiling and strain out the tea leaves after no more than 30 seconds. Pour over ice and then more ice. Put the leftovers in the fridge because as any tea drinker will tell you, a cup of tea molds quickly.

I’m not a sweet tea or sweetened tea drinker. I’ve heard agave and honey are both good for sweetening iced tea without the swirling crystal effect of undisolved sugar. If you want to go and wreck it like that, go on ahead.