jkettnich@stepstoneglobal.com

Happy Independence Day weekend! Is the deficit no big deal? Maybe not as big a deal as we might think, argues Michael Kinsley. The key to greentech IPOs is money from Uncle Sam. Which of these men knows what they are talking about: John Paulson or Paul Krugman? Pandora founder Tim Westergren tells Charlie Rose that the iPhone almost doubled his streaming music company's growth overnight. Serial entrepreneurs tend to bring the band back together, even when that's not their intention, observes Fred Wilson.

Google's getting into the travel search game by snapping up Boston-based ITA, a software company specializing in organizing airline data. Price tag? $700 million, cash. ITA had raised $100 million in Series A funding four years ago, including from Battery Ventures, General Catalyst Partners, and Sequoia Capital. A lawsuit on behalf of the "hundreds of thousands" of iPhone 4 users gets filed in a Northern California court. Cha-ching! The U.S. Treasury collects north of $10 billion in cash, dividends, and securities from its bailouts of Citigroup, for a profit of $700 million. WiFi at Starbucks is free, beginning today. If you thought it was hard to nab a table before... Is the $20 billion fund actually a victory for BP?

How about this for a fireable offense? In the midst of a bender, a very drunk oil futures broker initiates a string of unauthorized trades that cost his firm $10 million and pushes up the global price of oil. Google Me, a social network Google has been rumored to be working on, is real and coming this fall, says a source very close to the matter. In other Google news, the search giant's battle with China continues, with China now blocking some of its “Google Suggest” search results from mainland China users. iPhone on Verizon? Dream on. Joseph Cassano, the former AIG executive whose financial-products division helped trigger a $180bn government bail-out, says he could have saved American taxpayers billions of dollars if he’d stayed at the company a little longer. Amazon picks up the online daily deal startup Woot! Alan Patricof, the founder of Apax Ventures and the venture firm Greycroft Partners, was a target of that Russian spy ring.

Former PayPal’ers on why so many successful entrepreneurs and startups have been launched by former PayPal’ers. Awesomeness. Hulu introduces Hulu Plus, a complementary service that will give its subscribers full runs of old shows like X Files; it will also enable anyone with a Samsung Internet-connect TV to stream Hulu without using pesky computer cords. Mississippi, meet the oil spill. Color them stunned: An employee of the venture-backed online real estate company Redfin turns out to be a Russian spy sent to the U.S. to gather intelligence on the CIA and our nuclear weapons programs. Tesla Motors shares rise 40 percent on their first day of trading. The SEC agrees to pay $755,000 to settle a wrongful termination suit brought by former staff attorney Gary Aguirre. He’d accused his superiors of misconduct during an investigation into possible insider trading by Pequot Capital Management in 2005 and was abruptly canned for doing so.

The FTC heavy-handedly bars Twitter for 20 years "from misleading consumers about the extent to which it maintains and protects their security, privacy, and confidentiality." Hey, at least the government thinks Twitter has staying power. Enron’s former chief executive Jeffrey Skilling, serving a 24-year prison sentence, might have gotten the break of a lifetime earlier today in a new Supreme Court ruling. The secret to selling Ferrari’s? Targeting 8 to 12 year olds, says the company, with an evil snicker. Is it possible to build a Silicon Valley in Russia? Esther Dyson weighs in on Russian president Dmitry Medvedev’s plans to create an “Innovation City” outside Moscow. Hasbro says it’s not in any stinking acquisition talks.

The iPad may not address an immediate need, but it’s still on track to be the fastest-selling mobile device in history. A KKR exec pulls a Rodney Dangerfield and goes back to school. So-called ethical shareholders say they steered clear of BP a long time ago, suckas. Can startup Posterous convince people to abandon their other blogging platforms? It's certainly trying its best. You've heard about General Stanley McChrystal's offer to resign today. If you missed the Rolling Stone story that abruptly set it in motion, here it is.

Keeping reporters from interviewing clean-up crews in the Gulf isn't doing much to restore BP's reputation, such as it was. Google, Amazon, Skype and other tech titans write a love open letter to FCC chair Julius Genachowski. Okay, then, so much for that whole co-president idea. Just months after Owen Van Natta is fired from My Space, Jason Hirschhorn is pushed out, too. Do you work for the government? Better stop raging on about that knucklehead you work for, at least over SMS. The Supreme Court just ruled you have no privacy rights when it comes to the electronic communications devices provided to you by Uncle Sam.

Glassdoor, an increasingly popular employment site driven by user submissions, has added a very simple new feature that makes the site all the more compelling: pictures. Want to see the warehouse where Netflix processes all those returned DVDs? (I did. You can check it out here.) Interested to know if AT&T’s offices are as soulless as you might imagine? (Oh, man, they are.) How about learning where you'd be seated while waiting to interview at the real estate site Zillow? (Unfortunately, the rest of the office isn't quite as scenic.) There's even a photo posted from the men's room at CNet. I'm not linking to that one because you don't need to see the men's room at CNet and because the contributor's name is atop the photo. Given that Glassdoor promises visitors access to its rich data in return for their anonymous contributions, I'd guess this is an oversight. Oops.

"I don't think he did anything wrong," says New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg of Quadrangle partner-turned-White House-car czar-turned-current-outcast Steve Rattner. "I happen to think the charge against him is ridiculous." Twitter, why haven’t you been working? "Deeper issues?" #Notgood, #areyoureallyblamingtheworldcup From the good news, bad news files: AT&T exposed those customers trying to pre-order iPhone 4s to numerous security breaches before the process was essentially stopped cold. Amazingly, the phones still sold out. As more PE teams arrive on the scene, China considers easing its rules. Walmart buys a 1 percent stake in the pre-IPO, prepaid card company Greendot.

In 1997, Margit Wennmachers co-founded OutCast Communications, quickly transforming it into one of tech’s top public relations firms. Its many social functions have been attended by nearly every tech entrepreneur, investor, reporter and startup executive in Silicon Valley. Its long client list includes Facebook and Bloom Energy, along with such public company heavyweights as Amazon, Yahoo, and Salesforce.com. Now, after helping Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz launch their year-old venture capital firm, Wennmachers is leaving Outcast to become a partner alongside them. I caught up with her earlier today to ask more about her role, and the usual -- but not unprecedented -- transition she is making from public relations to venture capital.