David Deeths

Flâneur. Product. Strategy, planning, and operations. M&A.

[Richard Hanania @RichardHanania]

WSJ: "Bongino has told colleagues that his association with the administration’s decision to keep the files private has eroded his credibility among the base of support that fueled his rise as a successful podcaster and media personality."

That's what you want your deputy director of the FBI to be focused on. Maintaining his credibility as a podcaster.

[Ray Dalio @RayDalio]

Now that the budget bill has passed Congress, we can see what the projections look like for deficits, government debt, and debt service expenses. In brief, the bill is expected to lead to spending of about $7 trillion a year with inflows of about $5 trillion a year, so the debt, which is now about 6x of the money taken in, 100 percent of GDP, and about $230,000 per American family, will rise over ten years to about 7.5x the money taken in, 130 percent of GDP, and $425,000 per family. That will increase interest and principal payments on the debt from about $10 trillion ($1 trillion in interest, $9 trillion in principal) to about $18 trillion (of which $2 trillion is interest payments), which will lead to either a big squeezing out (and cutting off) of spending and/or unimaginable tax increases, or a lot of printing and devaluing of money and pushing interest rates to unattractively low levels. This printing and devaluing is not good for those holding bonds as a storehold of wealth, and what’s bad for bonds and US credit markets is bad for everyone because the US Treasury market is the backbone of all capital markets, which are the backbones of our economic and social conditions. Unless this path is soon rectified to bring the budget deficit from roughly 7% of GDP to about 3% by making adjustments to spending, taxes, and interest rates, big, painful disruptions will likely occur.

[Nichole “Vapor” Ayers @Astro_Vapor]

Just. Wow. As we went over Mexico and the U.S. this morning, I caught this sprite.

Sprites are TLEs or Transient Luminous Events, that happen above the clouds and are triggered by intense electrical activity in the thunderstorms below. We have a great view above the clouds, so scientists can use these types of pictures to better understand the formation, characteristics, and relationship of TLEs to thunderstorms.

[Brian Allen @allenanalysis]

The National Archives at College Park is about to go dark; effective July 7, it’s becoming a restricted-access federal facility, meaning everyday Americans will no longer have public access to the very records that hold our government accountable.

This is where the receipts live; declassified files, presidential documents, historical memos, and now they’re walling it off behind a vague “legitimate business need” standard.

[Robert Skvarla @RobertSkvarla]

Can't stress how pissed off I am right now. I make trips here every two to three months for research. It doesn't make sense to close something like this off to the public.

[Keith Townsend @CTOAdvisor]

There is no amount of keyword filtering or account blocking to fix “For You”.

[David Deeths @DavidDeeths]

It’s not just that the quality of the discourse on X has gone down, but the ads have started to be for things where it feels like no reputable advertising platform would even agree to publish them.

[Trung Phan @TrungTPhan]

find someone that looks at you the same way the NYT looks at Elizabeth Holmes

[Elizabeth Warren @SenWarren]

The Trump family stablecoin surged to 7th largest in the world because of a shady crypto deal with the United Arab Emirates—a foreign government that will give them a crazy amount of money.

The Senate shouldn’t pass a crypto bill this week to facilitate this kind of corruption.

[Ian Sams @IanSams]

Two stories, same day, I’m sure totally unrelated…

(left) NYT: UAE pours $2 billion into Trump crypto coins

(right) Bloomberg: Trump White House may ease restrictions on selling AI chips to UAE

[Spencer Hakimian @SpencerHakimian]

It’s pretty insane that DOGE is already voluntarily lowering its guidance by -97% and it’s not even Easter yet.

One of the biggest failures in political history.

And it was *so* obvious both ex ante and ex post.

[Jordan Schneider @jordanschneider]

Gary Cohn, the Prince That Was Promised

[Erica York @ericadyork]

not enough people have seen this chart

[Patrick De Haan @GasBuddyGuy]

Control and management of the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve has been turned over by the DOE to a company with virtually no history: Strategic Storage Partners, LLC, with the U.S. Government paying $1.4 billion or $280 million every year to have it managed. 😳🤔

[Drew Pavlou 🇦🇺🇺🇸🇺🇦🇹🇼 @DrewPavlou]

Peter Hegseth now confirmed to have a Russian email address. The password matches his other email addresses which were all compromised in a mass data breach.

This is the Secretary of Defense, what a disaster.

[Jared Ryan Sears @JaredRyanSears]

The issues with the Signal chat group are:

-Pentagon regulations state that messaging apps are NOT authorized to access, transmit, process non-public DoD information

-Law requires that electronic messages that take place on a non-official account are preserved, in some fashion, on an official electronic record-keeping system

-The US government has specific communication systems for discussing this type of information to keep it secure

-Russia has worked hard to compromise Signal

-One of the people in the group chat was in Moscow during the chat

-Overall, this chat violates multiple US laws

-Allies will be less likely to share intelligence with America due to the risk of it leaking

This isn't just an "oops, my bad" moment. It's a serious national security risk that shows how incompetent the entire administration is.

[Fred Wellman @FPWellman]

Some breaking news in my latest post. Others pointed out that Witkoff appeared to be in Moscow when he joined the Houthi PC Group chat. Sky News has a detailed story on his timeline in Moscow. I ran that against the timeline from the Atlantic article. Witkoff was waiting for Putin when he was added. (1/2)

[Mehdi Hasan @mehdirhasan]

This aged well

[Blue Georgia @BlueGeorgia]

Tim Miller: "There was a covert CIA operative named in the thread, right?"

Jeffrey Goldberg: "Yes, and I withheld her name... I didn't put it in the story because she's under cover. But, I mean, the CIA Director put it into the chat."