With three weeks left until Election Day, and with Obama maintaining a steady seven-point lead (according to RealClearPolitics), do you think John McCain is preparing to concede defeat? Hell no. In a comeback-themed speech later today in Virginia he'll proclaim, maverick-ly, "We’ve got them just where we want them.” Oookay. That kind of confident optimism might be a necessary posture for McCain to take at this point, but political pundits are debating whether Barack Obama already has a landslide locked up, and if there's anything McCain could possibly do to stop it.

As a general rule, sports fans do not like it when politics intersects with their games. If I am a scientist and you believe dinosaurs and humans used to hang out together, but we are both fans of the Jets, our differences will not matter. Which is why it’s always a shaky proposition for any politician to make an appearance at a sporting event. When Sarah Palin showed up to drop the first puck Saturday before the Rangers-Flyers game in Philadelphia, her very presence probably reminded fans of the economic crisis, or attack ads, or any number of things that they went to this hockey game to escape from. So she was booed. Partisans may make something out of this, but the audience just wanted to watch their game in peace. Plus, as we pointed out before, they’re from Philadelphia — they boo everything.

When we first heard that Sarah Palin might go on Saturday Night Live, we weren't sure if it would really happen because it seems like the gang that's been spoofing her so pricelessly this season (Tina Fey most of all) really actually loathes her. Well, as many of our commenters pointed out, even if they do hate her, Palin would be ratings gold. So Palin will go on this weekend and we will all find our own ways to laugh about it.

But today we learned two things — one, several political experts think that Fey's biting impressions of the Alaska governor probably took a very real political toll on the Republican ticket. And two, we learned that Tina Fey, as we suspected, totally does loathe Palin. "That lady is a media star. She is a fascinating person, she’s very likable. She’s fun to play," Fey told TV Guide. As for whether she'll keep playing the role, she might until November. "If she wins, I’m done. I can’t do that for four years," she said. "And by ‘I’m done,’ I mean I’m leaving Earth."

Wait, is there a spaceship leaving Earth in November? And will Tina Fey be the onboard entertainment?? Where do we get tickets?!

Lately, the economic downturn is never far from our minds, and at last night's premiere of The Wrestler — a story about a pro wrestler looking for his last shot — we found ourselves wondering if super-successful people, like director Darren Aronofsky, had ever been laid off or otherwise down on their luck. "I've been fired many, many times, and I've been told no many, many times, but I don't think layoffs were happening when I was first working," he told us as wife Rachel Weisz and Naomi Watts chatted behind him. What was his first job? "I was working in the eighties for $3 or $4 [an hour]," he said. "My big job — I drove a gypsy cab in Brooklyn for a long time and that's how I used to make a lot of money as a kid," he said, smiling at the memory. Then he trailed off, prompting us to ask what happened. "I got fired," he said. Wait, isn't the whole thing about gypsy cabs that they're unregulated? Why would they have fired him? "I can't talk about that," he said. "You know, I felt oppressed a little bit." Oh, artists.

Christie Brinkley thought she got Peter Cook not to take their two kids on a single-engine plane, but he faked her out and did so anyway, which is mean. Also, so not necessary for us to know about. Cindy Adams wonders if Bloomberg will run for that third term as an independent. Cindy also reminds us that today commemorates the moment when "Chris and his guys came over on the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria." Thanks, Cindy! Courtney Love wants to move into an East Village walk-up, but friends like Gwyneth and ScarJo tell her she should get a doorman building, probably because her life is messy. Robert De Niro wants Jean-Georges Vongerichten to succeed Mirco del Vecchio as top chef at his restaurant Ago. Gisele and Tom ate an insane amount of food at the Kobe Club. Diddy and oil heir Brandon Davis got in a shoving match last month at Butter.

This morning, the Washington Post tells us that Obama is up ten points nationally over John McCain. The Republican nominee's likability numbers are also dropping. But like so many of these polls, it was taken a week ago. And a lot has happened since then. Unfortunately for McCain, most of it is also good news for Obama. Below, we've rounded up the news bits you need to know about since you tuned out on Friday.

• Sarah Palin was found to have unlawfully abused her power in an effort to get her former brother-in-law fired as a state trooper. Palin then alleged that she had actually been cleared by the probe. [AP]

• Conservative Times columnist William Kristol caught up with many other Republican pundits on Sunday and realized that McCain is in disaster territory. "Fire the campaign!" he urged. [NYT]

It's not yet noon, but you know who's already well into the Cristal on this fine Columbus Day morning? Morgan Stanley CEO John Mack, that's who. Faced with snowballing rumors about the firm's capitalization and collapsing stock, Mack managed to get Mitsubishi to close on its $9 billion equity investment in the firm on National Health Day — a day earlier than expected, and on exceedingly good terms. He couldn't resist writing some self-congratulation into the press release:

The MUFG investment further bolsters Morgan Stanley's already strong capital position. Morgan Stanley's Tier 1 Capital Ratio is now estimated to be more than 15.5 percent on a pro-forma basis as of August 31, 2008. This is far in excess of the 6 percent required by the Federal Reserve to be treated as well-capitalized and is one of the highest Tier 1 Capital Ratios among bank holding companies peers.

In other words, all y'all haters can suck it, because the Mack is back.

Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Closes $9 Billion Equity Investment in Morgan Stanley as Part of Global Strategic Alliance [Deal Journal/WSJ]
Earlier: Morgan Stanley CEO John Mack's Very Bad Day
John Mack's Big Night

Way back two weeks ago, when lawmakers were facing a decision on whether to pass the $700 bailout bill, “some said we should just stick capital in the banks, take preferred stock in the banks," Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson told the Senate Banking Committee. But the U.S. wasn't going to that. Why? Because nationalizing banks is for losers. "That’s what you do when you have failure," Paulson explained patiently. "This is about success." Or, um, not.

After a long, hard week, this past weekend the Bush administration decided that "sticking capital in banks" wasn't such a bad idea after all. After meeting with finance ministers from G7 countries (otherwise known as the Coalition of the Ailing), they basically chucked over Paulson's original plan of buying troubled assets from banks in favor of taking equity stakes in banks, as the U.K. and Germany did this morning. Awkward.

Barney Frank is appreciating the irony. "We took a proposal from the secretary, and frankly, it was the Congress that explicitly added the right to buy the equity," he told ABC's This Week. "Frankly, the Treasury was not too crazy about that."

The Wall Street Journal also reminds us that "more broadly, Mr. Paulson didn't see a need for any type of government rescue plan until last month. As recently as May, Mr. Paulson was predicting that the 'worst is likely to be behind us.'" Ahem.

While markets are closed here for Columbus Day, Dow futures are up and banking stocks worldwide jumped on promise of the new capital. But is Paulson's stock plummeting?

Dow Futures Climb Almost 350 After Horrible Week [NYT]
White House Overhauling Rescue Plan [NYT]

Christine Quinn made a move to shore up her own political future yesterday when she urged New Yorkers to support a change in New York's term-limit rules. The announcement was made after Mayor Bloomberg's proclamation that he'd seek a third term. It's pretty much the opposite of what she's said before — and Quinn conceded that she's had a "change in [her] position." Though it was a flip-flop, the move was anticipated on her part because Quinn has her own mayoral ambitions. Unlike her fellow Democratic aspirants, like Comptroller Bill Thompson, she is likely to benefit from another four years in the wings. A change in term limits will mean she's able to run for City Council speaker again, and therefore put even more time between herself and the slush-fund scandal that scarred her reputation earlier this year. Now it's up to Quinn to bring the necessary Council votes to change the limits rule. If not, as Elizabeth Benjamin pointed out, her position could be weakened to the extent that a mayoral run next year might be out of the question for herself. Looks like the players on Wall Street aren't the only high-stakes gamblers downtown this week.

Quinn Is Gambling for Her Political Life [NYDN]

John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath characterized the bitter, restless mood of poor sharecroppers during the Great Depression. Now, a voice for the Greatest Depression has emerged: Betsy Perry, Bloomberg's Commissioner for Women's Issues and Main Street's former "Spy on the Upper East Side," has a column on the Huffington Post today in which she sums up the mood of restless excitement among non-poor Manhattanites as the country goes to to hell and drags the rest of the world down with it. Quoth Perry:

Michael's was beyond frenetic with table hopping I'd not witnessed before and I felt as if I was dining on the Titanic before the ship went down. Only thing missing was playing of "Nearer my God to Thee"; Joy Behar was being applauded for her view against Elizabeth Hasselbeck and Star Jones was seated at the front table — like who cares about her anymore? There was too much celebration and even with Cobb Salads going for $35 a half portion, it had the feeling of the Last Supper if in fact that supper was fun.

Want the most destructive assessment you can get of a John McCain policy proposal? Just ask McCain’s own senior policy adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a formerly serious economist who has turned himself into a genuine political disaster. For months, the McCain campaign implied its health-care plan would be budget-neutral. But last weekend, Douglas Holtz-Eakin admitted to The Wall Street Journal that to fill the gap between the tax deductions McCain wants to end and the tax credits he wants to offer, a new Republican administration will have to cut something like $1.3 trillion from Medicare and Medicaid over the next ten years. Missed that bombshell? Democrats working Florida didn't.