We all make choices — and sacrifices — in this economy. But, as Sadie previously wrote, some things are sacrosanct — and things you put into your body tend to be. With the exception of Jess, every one of your editors was refusing to cut back on some luxurious edible, from coffee (Anna) to fancy yogurt (Sadie) to booze (Dodai and I).

The thing about booze is that you really can't go back to those halcyon days when vodka came in plastic jugs and wine from Boone's after you've grown a taste (or a nose) for the good stuff. Scott says:

...nothing is not really an option. And neither, frankly, is a blended jug with a bagpipe player on the cover. I want a single malt with a name I can’t pronounce and a creamy, austere label that tells a complicated story about ancient sherry casks and peat and heather and weird little islands full of taciturn Presbyterians. I want what is perhaps the only luxury product manufactured in a place notorious for thrift.

But, as he notes, it's about the taste and the nuances that are lacking in the cheaper substitutes. What goes for Scotch goes for wine (and even vodka, the plastic-bottle variety of which smells more like rubbing alcohol to me with each passing year). It's not a luxury item if the less expensive variety is so dissimilar from the good stuff.

So, to justify my continued consumption of (relatively) expensive red wine, I'll try to keep up with Scott's lyrical defense of his Scotch habit. Red wine is not meant to taste like grape juice, nor is the alcohol in it intended to overwhelm your palate or nose at the first sip, as a cheap one will. You shouldn't pucker with the sharpness or taste it more on the middle of your tongue than anywhere else. The alcohol should creep up on your palate, not your nose; it should slide smoothly across your tongue and toward the back of your throat leaving little bursts of scent and flavor in its wake that contribute to — not distract from — the whole. The warmth of it should creep up on you like a lover carrying a soft blanket to place around your shoulders on a cold night, rather than burn in your stomach or your throat. Intoxication should creep across your consciousness the way that fog does to the hillsides where good wine is grown — quietly and gently, lulling you into the sense that you can still see clearly.

Alcoholic grape juice isn't red wine anymore than blended malts can be considered "Scotch," and its effects on the psyche and the body cannot be replicated with a cheap pretender to the name. Boone's might be a cheap alcoholic beverage of a similar alcohol content and color, but it's not a substitute for that which will see me through this economic crisis. Now if only I could convince my parents of that when it comes time for Christmas dinner.

Cutbacks? Yes. Cheap Scotch? No Thanks. [New York Times]

Earlier: What's Your "Necessary Luxury?"
Red Wine Mouth: When Your Lips Get As Ugly As Your Issues With Alcohol

MOE: Hey we can sort of start now if you want, though I'm still mostly reading through stuff. I just bought some beer because I think I'm the soberest person in Philadelphia right now. (The Eagles won a REALLY CLOSE game with the Rams today.) But here's something fun:

Mr. Rove said Mr. Schmidt’s increased authority — which came about after what amounted to a coup by Mr. Schmidt and other McCain aides with ties to the 2004 campaign, that gave him equal status with the campaign manager, Rick Davis — has been the best thing to have happened to Mr. McCain.

Oh God, Karl Rove. How do you do it, Karl Rove? You secure the election of a president so incompetent and widely loathed he decimates your party, then you leave the business for the media. Once in the media you commence bashing the media. You bash the media for asking questions about — not reporting, just asking around about — a rumor.

MEGAN: I am well on my way to non-Eagles-related drunkenness and I still cannot believe Steve Schmidt. Or Karl Rove. Like, seriously, did we watch the same speech? Only I thought it totally bombed and I talked to a shit load of Republicans at the wake today and people thought it fucking killed.

MOE: The sordid details of which are clearly, creepily reminiscent of the (much more easily refutable) rumor you disseminated to nastily defeat your boss's rival in the 2000 Republican primaries. And eight years later, said rival's distance from your old boss being the single-most compelling trait for Republicans to safely rally around, your old cronies take over his campaign, choosing a running mate whose most salient characteristic besides her nice bod is that she was the only member of the shortlist with a dearth of accomplishments deeper than that of your old boss in 2000, and then exploit the scurrilousness of said (much less obviously mendacious) rumor about said running mate's "personal" life to smear the "media"… (And who is paying for this? The media. "I'm not in the media, I'm around the media" is I believe how Rove put it…)

MEGAN: I wonder, honestly, if Rove even takes himself seriously at this point. I mean, the Palin Blake Slate is one of the reasons she was chosen.

MOE: Nah, he can't possibly. I actually find him more amusing than offensive at this point. Although maybe that's just because I read Safire today.

MEGAN: I did not read Safire today. I honestly feel like reading columnists is like a job that I don't get paid enough to do.

MOE: Don't let it hurt your teeth too much.

MEGAN: Honestly, at the point at which he says that Broder was the only fair pundit in attendance that night, it's hard to gag while I'm laughing so fucking hard.

MOE: And in shades of Friday's "Wow, I can't believe I'm going to calm myself down by talking about Bill O'Reilly," I entreat you to calm yourself down, after taking a gander over there, with the soothing relative sanity being preached by Chuck Krauthammer.

MEGAN: Oh, wait, he said something true:

The McCain acceptance speech reads better than it was read.

Oh, wait, here he's back to teabagging McCain:

That called for McCain to set aside his longtime reluctance to recount publicly his wartime suffering.

Ummmm, you know, except for his FUCKING MEMOIRS.

MOE: Oh shit, I am starting to find Palin so relatable though! Back in Wasilla they used to call her base of support the Liquor Cabinet.

MEGAN: Man, I would totally vote for the Liquor Cabinet.

MOE: Oh dear, and here her ex-brother in law admits he used a Taser on his 10-year-old son.

MEGAN: Ugh, that is super lame. Also, did you notice that after her announcement, she took her bouffant-y twist out? One of my reporter friends was like, she wears it like that to seem taller, she's gonna have to take it out for the campaign, McCain isn't tall enough.

MOE: Oh God Janice Min Janice Minnnn I'm boycotting you now:

“She out Obama’ed Obama with her speech,” said Janice Min, the editor of Us Weekly, who said the criticism of its coverage would pass soon enough. “She came on like a supermom who is not going to take a lot of guff from anyone. The way media works now, it is impossible to separate the personal from the political, and I think her role as a celebrity — how she does on that level — could have a significant effect on the election.”

Yeah I noticed it; I believe they decreed it to be Hepburn-esque in the New York Post. Here, exhibit five.

MEGAN: I didn't tell you! David Carr interviewed me for that piece at the Vanity Fair-Google party... and didn't use my quote. But it might be because I was drinking enough that Ana Marie Cox was like... um, what are you drinking? Because I was sort of lapping her on her alcohol acquisition. That's not the best sign, probably. Ok, I've found my first reason to be actively and yet completely unreasonably against Sarah Palin, other than the whole anti-choice thing: the use of multiple exclamation points:

"New administration finally allows new input, fresh ideas and ENERGY to work with the public to shape this city!!!"

MOE: Ok and I've found my first reason to reconsider my general assertion that the media hasn't been overstepping:

And yet, you get the feeling that at the end of the day, she could shake out that lustrous mane (longer than any other major female U.S. political figure's) and get it on with her man. She wears skirts that are quite form-fitting and often goes without stockings. As ZZ Top might say, she's got legs, and she knows how to use 'em. When Sen. John McCain introduced her at an Aug. 29 campaign rally in Dayton, Ohio, she was wearing open-toed red patent leather shoes.

That is the resident fashion critic at the LA Times.

MEGAN: Um, fucking gross. Also, I have peep toed pumps, that obviously means I'm a fucking whore.

MOE: Well you're obviously a fucking whore. But so am I and I have three pairs of shoes, everyone knows that.

But, oh my God and she is totally the Britney Spears of MILFs.

Palin held her baby in her arms as the warden drove a short distance around the facility, said corrections director Joe Schmidt, who sat next to Palin. A few days later, the governor got a warning from her public safety commissioner that someone had complained that she did not strap Trig into a car seat for the ride.

Palin dismissed the complaint as petty, and the commissioner, whom she appointed, took no formal action. But the incident shows the degree to which family and politics are bound together in Palin's career.

MEGAN: Yes, I mean, shoes do not equal whore, like, wtf is the LA Times fashion critic talking about?

MOE: Um, is that really what "the incident shows" Washington Post?? Or does the incident show that SARAH PALIN IS A TERRIBLE MOTHER WHO NOT FOR NO REASON AT ALL LEAKED AMNIOTIC FLUID ALL OVER THAT PLANE (or whatever.)

MEGAN: Ok, well, that doesn't say back seat or front seat, plus it doesn't mention whether she was breast feeding or not. I dunno, I got kicked out of a bar for being there with a pregnant friend who was like I JUST WANTED ONE GLASS OF WINE. Also, my vagina leaks a lot, particularly when I'm ovulating. I'm like sloppy, annoyingly wet.

MOE: Ugh that is so annoying. Didn't they read the story about how you can actually binge drink during pregnancy so long as you only do it a few times a month or so?

MEGAN: I don't know, they were complete assholic assholes about it.

MOE: OOOOOOH maybe you are just female ejaculating all the time like those women in those other stories who have orgasms all the time and have to strap miniature vibrators to their underwear just to get through the day????

MEGAN: Nah, when I was a teenager, I went to my doctor and she said it was normal. Like, it's my body being like IMPREGNATE ME!! But, fuck that bitch, I have an IUD.
Anyway, so if she got 600 votes in her first election and 900 in her second, then despite what Mitt Romney said, she didn't get as many votes in two elections as Joe Biden got in Iowa.

MOE: Hahaha oh Mitt Romney, please watch him now in this clip I made of that speech — well actually I had Nick McGlynn make it, thank you Nick — but I sat through the speech for the purpose of conveying in 42 seconds how insane it was. And I was pretty sure that crap about Biden getting fewer votes was, in Noonan parlance, "bullshit" but thanks for that.

MEGAN: I heard that and I was like... yeah, there's no way that's true. I used up 90 percent of my internet connection Wednesday night proving it.

MOE: Yeah, the thing that sucks about these Republicans is that they don't care if you fact-check them. I really wish Plouffe or whoever could just get up and say something equally outrageous and blasphemous like…hold on…like how about, "Sarah Palin ran a town that is smaller than many high schools!" Oh wait, that's true, hm, or like, what about "Sarah Palin's fiscally conservative policies managed to sink that tiny little town into enough debt to buy a brand-new Prius for every household in it TOO BAD HER HUSBAND IS THE TOOL OF ALL THOSE STUPID OIL COMPANIES." Ughhhhhh but that would also be true I think!

MEGAN: Oh, shit, another convention story I meant to mention: I met David Gregory in a Starbucks. He's replacing Matthews and Olbermann as anchors. Only, back at Wonkette (now erased in this server migration), I posted this video of him dancing to Mary J. and my friend Eric Brewer tracked him to a video of Obama dancing on Ellen and he had a poll about who was better and Gregory won. So, I was like, hey, so, like, I did this video of you and Obama dancing and he was like, oh, I totally saw that. And then I blushed and got totally awkies.

MOE: Well in lieu of lending credence to the scurrilous rumor I heard about Palin's heroic son in the Army I am going to ask you if you read today's Filkins piece in the Times Magazine about how Pakistan has turned into the Minneapolis of the Terrorist Convention and part of that is flaky Benazir Bhutto's fault for thinking it was a good idea to arm the mujahadeen back when we also thought that was a good idea, oh and did we mention history and that repeating itself thing, as comforting as it is to know that people make the same stupid mistakes and repeat all the same fuckups even in places where the average citizen doesn't consume a metric tonne of alcohol every month, it is not very comforting at all actually. Here it is. Obama was good on this issue the other night with O'Reilly, incidentally, not that O'Reilly had any idea.

MEGAN: I keep meaning to watch the O'Reilly shit, but my parents don't have cable. Anyways, anyone who elects Zadari deserves what they get, sort of like how I feel the overwhelming majority of people who either voted in GWB for a second term or — more likely — didn't fucking bother to vote better not now be bitching about their adjustable rate mortgage, I tell you what. Even people in Pakistan know he's a Thaksin-level corrupt asshat — and they probably have some idea who the fuck Thaksin is, too. Also, I object to the assertion that I consume a metric tonne of alcohol a month. That's why I mostly drink wine and hard liquor, to keep the tonnage down.

MOE: Oh god yeah Thailand, we could discuss that too, and Freddie and Fannie, THE NIGHT COULD LAST FOREVER. But what's hot right now? I thought the Times magazine story by Frum on Republicans and income inequality was interesting, if namely for its incongruity following a week during which the proverbial Bullshit, as Janice Min so eloquently pointed out, triumphed so decisively over Shit That Actually Matters.

MEGAN: Wait, income inequality? Get yourself some fucking bootstraps, yo. Does anyone even fucking know what bootstraps are?

MOE: Whoa, the origins of all the Palin kid names! Turns out that taken together they all come together to mean "CANNY ATTEMPTS TO DEFLECT OBVIOUS CORPORATE BEHOLDENNESS BY INGRATIATING SELVES TO NATURE FETISHIZING IDIOCRACY" or just "FLAGRANT POLITICKING RIGHT FROM THE START." Fuck I somehow didn't realize Sarah Palin married Todd because she was knocked up. That is so rouge cou.

MEGAN: I mean, it's like a month, tops that they knew. Chances are, like other super-Catholic friends of mine, they boned a little early and found out a couple weeks after the wedding regardless.

MOE: Nah nah Track was born eight months after they eloped "to save money." I dunno, it's funny. God, who gets pregnant the first time they have sex? Well, I have a friend whose parents did, but how crazy. Oh man it's getting late though I guess. And there's still so much! Damn the weekend for being over.

MEGAN: Well, luckily, I opened a magnum of wine! I got plenty of time!

MOE: Ok i'm getting another beer. Dogfish 90 minute IPA, not that they're sponsoring me. Not that i would LET THEM.

MEGAN: I've got a Yellowtail Cabernet. I am not going to pretend if a winery wanted to sponsor my blogging I would deny them the opportunity, but I would rather it be something non-corporate like Guglielmo or Hecker Pass, two of my favorite family wineries.

MOE: Ugh are we too far-gone — and too far down on the moral authority pay grade — to weigh in on Biden's belief that life begins at conception? Because personally I am inclined to say "well sure it does, so what" but you all know how paranoid I am about seeming "flip."

MEGAN: I mean, Biden's a Catholic, that's the party line, right? I just don't buy that. I don't believe it in the slightest. I'm not sure I believe in a soul. Potential life? Ok, maybe, but all evidence is that plenty of potential lives are ejected regularly from women's bodies. I just... I just don't buy that a zygote is A Life.

MOE: Right, well the "soul" is a different matter. As I think we might have discussed before, there's a genuine debate within the believers in souls as to how a soul could be formed at conception, then split into two separate souls two weeks later. Anyway "Life" …bacteria is life. Now human life is more important than animal life, but ughhhh if embryo life or fetus life was as precious as regular fully formed human life you would think there would be a huge public health campaign to finally put an end to the mysterious plague that silently kills as many as one in four humans before they even have the chance to get heartbeats! But there is not. And now I am tired.

MEGAN: My sister's fiancé was just asking when I was going to bed. I could stop drinking and try that out.

MOE: Yeah this is the longest Crappy Hour ever already I think. I've been drinking really slow and am still tired and I think that is a sign.

MEGAN: Ok, so, I'll check you at an abortion-esque ungodly hour on Tuesday.

MOE: Oh, but that David Gregory story was awesome.

MEGAN: There's nothing like embarrassing oneself in a Starbucks full of Republicans to make embarrassing oneself on the Internet seem totes minor.

Anyone remember Heather? Our guest blogger from July with the iPhone and Red Sox-obsessed boyfriend? Well, she's still alive and kicking... and drinking her sorrows away as her beau continues to tap away at his favorite gadget and follow the off-season administrations of his favorite team. Below, she checks in to tell us how her winter is shaping up. Or, rather, passing out.

The problem always sets in once the weather cools off. When flip-flop season ends, red-wine drinking begins, and I spend the ensuing fall and winter months guzzling grenache or anything else I can get my hands on. I wish I could say I drink lightly or sip with maturity, but if that were the case I'd not be writing for this website. Frankly, it's rare that I'll have less than three glasses in a given evening (which perhaps is an issue best explored in another column) and thus it's guaranteed that, within a short matter of time, the inside of my lips will adopt an unfortunate purplish hue, and my teeth will be left crying out for a late-night heart-to-heart with some White Strips.

In the most innocent and nascent stages, Red-Wine Mouth doesn't have to be a big deal: the slurry mulberry mouth is more or less unavoidable, unless you're one of those self-righteous assholes who laps at a glass of water with each sip of wine. But true angst lies in the advanced stages of Red-Wine Mouth, when the wine begins to stain the outside of your lips. Normally you'd wipe your mouth every once in awhile to avoid that filmy buildup that invariably appears either on or around your mouth, but you're enjoying yourself too much to remember to stay on top of such matters. What happens next is when things turn tragic: you go to the bathroom, look in the mirror, and rub your lips to get the shit off. Upon a second trip to the bathroom, however, you will note that, despite your efforts to wipe your mouth every few minutes so as to avoid another black-gunk incident, your red-wine mouth has now become a dark stain. In fact, by inadvertently rubbing the skin off your lips, you've left your kisser with nothing but raw skin standing between it and your drink, and now the wine has stained your skin. There's no rubbing you can do — but on the bright side, your raw, stained lips mean that you won't have much gunk to contend with for the rest of the night!

But oh, what you will wake up to. You may have managed to brush your teeth before bed, but that doesn't matter. Last night's purple lips are this morning's brown spots, and you look like you've got some sort of advanced retrovirus all over your mouth. Alas, by wiping off the red-wine-mouth film and more or less rubbing the skin off of your lips, you created a raw, chappy situation that allowed any later sips of red wine to actually seep into your skin. Your poor mouth then spent all of your sleeping hours trying to heal its chapped-ness, and new skin has started to grow in the spots where you so desperately wiped it away. But underneath that new skin still lies last night's red-wine, and the stain has essentially been tattooed into you. Like you're going to go to work with scabby skin on your mouth! So you put even MORE elbow grease into it and rub that deep tattoo stain off of your mouth again, removing with it whatever new layers of skin you'd started to grow and now you've re-chapped your lips. Then you have more wine that night, and so the vicious cycle begins.

Science has yet to address this issue, but my theories about the devastating aesthetic effects of Red-Wine Mouth have been tested no less than four nights a week for the past six years. So what are we supposed to do? Apply chapstick before every glass? (Doesn't work, I tried.) Go through the winter months with perpetually chapped lips? (Not pleasant, I tried.) Embrace our merlot mouths every time we go out? (Won't get you laid, I tried.) In a life where drinking is often the only solution, I'm still looking for some real answers.