"Responding to an Israeli reporter’s question Wednesday on his commitment to protect the Jewish state, Barack Obama pointed to a bill 'we passed' in the U.S. Senate Banking Committee that tightens sanctions and authorizes divestment from Iran. “My committee,” he called it.

Except that he isn’t a member of the Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs."

"Less than 24 hours before a scheduled meeting between John McCain and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, the state Republican party released polling revealing Jindal to be immensely popular in the state -- a less-than-subtle attempt to play into chatter surrounding the governor's vice presidential prospects.

The poll, which was conducted July 14-15 by Wes Anderson and his firm OnMessage Inc., showed that 69 percent of respondents had a favorable opinion of Jindal as compared to just 18 percent who were unfavorably disposed toward the governor.

In his memo on the data, Anderson, who is also Jindal's pollster, writes: "Governor Jindal has obviously come out of his recent dustups with the legislature in a commanding position where he retains overwhelming support from the voters of Louisiana."

"I'm not going to be the vice presidential nominee or vice president," Jindal said. "I'm going to help Senator McCain get elected, as governor of Louisiana."

"Let me be clear: I have said in every private and public conversation, I've got the job that I want," Jindal also said.

• What Budzik says: “With these assumptions, technically recoverable undiscovered resources in the lower 48 OCS increase to 59 billion barrels of oil and 288 trillion cubic feet of natural gas."

• What MMS says: “The mean estimate for undiscovered technically recoverable resources (along our nation’s Outer Continental Shelf) totals 85.9 billion barrels of oil and 419.9 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.” (http://www.mms.gov/PDFs/2005EPAct/InventoryRTC.pdf)                            
  

• A one-percent increase in world oil supply represents 870,000 barrels of oil a day.

• Area 10-02 of the coastal plain of Alaska, constituted as an energy reserve by Jimmy Carter three decades ago, holds the capacity to yield more than 1,000,000 barrels of American oil a day.

• Shale reserves in America’s Mountain West region may hold as many as 2 trillion barrels of American oil.
  
  

"As he traveled east on K Street, crossing 18th, Bono said a 'black Corvette convertible with top closed plowed into the guy. The guy is sort of splayed onto the windshield'."

"Those who have worked with him before say the McCain campaign should steel itself. 'The nostrils would flare, he would get very red-faced and angry, and you would just want to quit,' Kevin Madden, a Bush war-room colleague, says. He also says he always learned something from Mr. Schmidt: “It was the learning part that would always make you forget the part where you basically wanted to crash a chair over his head.”

Mr. Schmidt’s intense approach matches the man. Two colleagues say that when Mr. Schmidt gets really angry, his nose bleeds, though Mr. Schmidt denies it. Sometimes he stares at a questioner for several moments while forming a response. Then words stream out of his mouth at a steady clip, in a distinct New Jersey accent."

For Tax Year 2006