NEW YORK—Sarah Palin walked into the lion’s den this evening and appeared on Saturday Night Live.

Tina Fey playing Palin opened up the show depicting Palin’s first press conference. After several questions from her “press corps” Fey then told the journalists gathered that she “would like to entertain everybody with some fancy pageant walking.”

The show then switches to backstage where SNL Executive Producer, Lorne Michaels is watching Fey’s performance alongside the actual Sarah Palin. She asks Michaels why he wouldn’t let her impersonate Fey on her show, “30 Rock.” Michaels joked that no one watched it anyway.

Alec Baldwin, Fey’s co-star on “30 Rock,” walked up to the two and confused Palin for Fey and told Michaels that Fey can’t go out on stage with Palin because, “she goes against everything we stand for.”

After Michaels introduces Baldwin to Palin, he tells her that she is “much hotter in person” and Palin responds by saying that that Alec’s younger brother, “Stephen is my favorite Baldwin brother.” Stephen Baldwin is a born again Christian and a conservative Republican.

The two walk off arm in arm together before Palin comes to the podium to shout, “Live form New York it’s Saturday Night!”

Palin also popped in on “Weekend Update” and told Seth Meyers that she decided against the sketch they practiced. Amy Poehler took the reigns and performed a hilarious, but edgy rap combining all of Palin’s greatest hits and stereotypes: the Bridge to Nowhere, seeing Russia from her house, her running mate’s smile which is described as “creepy,” and obviously moose hunting.

Poehler was joined by cast members playing a dancing Todd Palin and eskimos while the Alaska governor sat at the desk smiling and dancing along including a back and forth with the dancing cast where Poehler raps, “When I say Obama you say Ayers. Obama! Ayers! Obama! Ayers!” referring to Palin linking the Democratic nominee to 1960’s radical William Ayers.

Many were anticipating Palin to take Fey on and imitate the comedian in her American Express commercials, but the two look alikes did not have any interaction except to walk past each other once. It did show a lighter side of John McCain’s running mate and yesterday she told reporters that she looked forward to the “the opportunity to show that sense of humor” which she did, but whether there will be any movement in the polls from the two short skits does not seem likely.

The GOP Vice-Presidential nominee went to the show accompanied by her 18 year old daughter Bristol, Senior Advisor Tucker Eskew, Press Secretary Tracey Schmitt, and John McCain’s closest advisor Mark Salter.

Manchester, NH–

Tonight when reporters boarded Straight Talk Air they rushed to the middle section of the plane in between the press seats and where Senator John McCain sits with his staff. We were trying to hunt down this evening’s hot rumor: that McCain may pick his Vice-Presidential choice in the coming days.

Journalists on campaign planes are sat in a pecking order with embeds regulated to the rows in the back, right before the television crews, so it was Elisabeth Bumiller with the New York Times and Jonathan Alter with Newsweek who were at the front of the pack. Bumiller knocked on the partition separating the press from the candidate and to her surprise the presumptive Republican nominee pulled back the curtain and quipped, “What do you want you little jerks?”

As the rest of the press tried to push their way to the front of the pack, Bumiller asked McCain if he was going to announce his number two tomorrow. He brushed off the question, not answering and instead giving a mischievous grin.

Traveling Press Secretary, Brooke Buchanan then came over and pulled the curtain closed saying, “We will have no announcements today” and Senior Advisor Mark Salter said he had, “No comment and he is “not authorized to say anything” regarding the choice.

When McCain Air took flight Salter came back to the press section and faced a flurry of questions about the Veepstakes. He pressed that there will be “no announcement today” and “no comment,” even adding that he is “not denying, confirming or commenting” on the rumor of a possible running mate pick.

Salter said McCain gave everyone a stern talking-to regarding speaking to the press about the Vice-Presidential choice and had made it very clear to him and the whole staff that “none of us are to comment until he surprises us with his choice.”

Carl Cameron spoke to high-level sources within the McCain campaign and his reporting on the topic earlier today leaves the possibility open of a pick this week, “One source, with direct knowledge of the senator’s thinking and of the campaign’s machinations says there will be no announcement today or tomorrow morning. Another top insider says we should NOT throw cold water on the idea that McCain could announce his running mate this week. Still a third said unless McCain wakes up in the next 2 days with a decision, chances are ‘remote.’ ”

Announcing his running mate this week would draw media attention away from Barack Obama’s trip overseas as would hype surrounding a possible selection—which is what this may very well be. But, McCain’s schedule keeps the speculation going with an event tomorrow in New Hampshire where Mitt Romney has a vacation home and a stop later in the week in New Orleans where the governor, Bobby Jindal, has long been rumored to be a possible choice.

STOCKTON, CA — So who is making age an issue now? While his campaign took great offense to Senator Obama’s subtle jab at the GOPers age a couple weeks ago, Sen. McCain decided to instead make Obama’s youth a campaign issue Thursday.

“I admire and respect Senator Obama. For a young man with very little experience, he’s done very well. So I appreciate-with his very, very great lack of experience and knowledge of the issues, he’s been very successful,” McCain said to laughter from the more than 500 supporters gathered at an airport hangar rally Thursday afternoon. “So, don’t get me wrong-I admire and respect Senator Obama, but he does not have the knowledge, background or judgment to lead this nation in these difficult and challenging times and I do. And I can keep this nation prosperous and secure.”

The dig at Obama, 46, echoes a similar line President Reagan used during a 1984 presidential debate when he defered a question about his age by reversing the issue on his younger opponent, Walter Mondale.

“I want you to know that also I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent’s youth and inexperience,” Reagan joked. “If it was not for the elders correcting the mistakes of the young, there would be no state.”

McCain, who turns 72 in August, will be the oldest president ever elected to a first term in office. When Obama said during a CNN interview earlier this month that McCain was “losing his bearings,” the Republican’s senior adviser Mark Salter issued a strong statement condemning the Democrat.

“He used the words ‘losing his bearings’ intentionally, a not particularly clever way of raising John McCain’s age as an issue. This is typical of the Obama style of campaigning,” Salter wrote in a memo. “We have all become familiar with Senator Obama’s new brand of politics. First, you demand civility from your opponent, then you attack him, distort his record and send out surrogates to question his integrity. It is called hypocrisy, and it is the oldest kind of politics there is.”