Worth Knowing, Probably Not Quite Threadworthy 2/11

[SVPete]

FCC to Newsom: Hey, Where'd the $450 Million Go?

https://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/2026/02/11/fcc-to-newsom-say-whered-the-450-million-go-n4949367

FCC chair Brendan Carr has a pointed question for California Gov. Gavin Newsom, politely paraphrased as, "Where in the actual hell did the $450 million go, and where's that new 911 system it was supposed to buy?"

The same week he was first sworn in as governor, Newsom said, "The idea that it's 2019, and we are using analog systems designed decades ago is astounding, and we need to make investments to make sure the technology aligns with the devices people are using in their daily lives." He added that "California's antiquated, analog microwave network must be upgraded to a digital network to maintain safety operations."

That was seven years ago. Since then, Newsom spent $450 million to build a new system, "but when it came time to turn it on, it did not work," Carr wrote on Tuesday. This makes it even more astounding that California still relies on analog systems designed decades ago.
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Progress is uneven, and not quite 20 states have fully implemented the NG911standard or been rated as "high-deployment." Some, like Indiana, have had NG911 in place since before COVID; others just have pilot programs in place.

But none except California has spent so much money only to report zero progress. California can't point to partial implementation, has no pilot programs in place — literally nothing to show for 450 million tax dollars. Newsom might as well have spent it on hair product, and for all I know, he probably did. Worse, California's antiquated system is literally failing, according to both the FCC and Sacramento.

New FCC rules are meant to speed along compliance among the laggards, which is why Carr on Tuesday reminded Newsom that "when first responders tried to activate your system, emergency 911calls were lost and misrouted, and a 12-hour outage followed when residents were unable to call 911. You are now scrapping the plan and going back to the drawing board."

[SVPete]

FBI has 'substantiated' irregularities in Georgia 2020 vote counts, probing if they were intentional

https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/elections/fbi-has-substantiated-irregularities-georgia-2020-vote-counts-probing-if

The FBI has "substantiated" some major irregularities in how votes were counted in Georgia's largest urban area in the aftermath of the 2020 election and is probing whether those failures were intentional efforts to violate federal election law, according to a bombshell affidavit unsealed by a federal court on Tuesday.

FBI Special Agent Hugh Raymond Evans first filed the affidavit last month to establish probable cause for a raid that seized about 700 boxes of Georgia 2020 elections ballots from a storage warehouse in the Atlanta area, after getting a referral from Trump White House election integrity czar Kurt Olsen.

The affidavit included information gleaned from FBI interviews with about a dozen unnamed witnesses recounting various allegations that dated back to the disputed 2020 election in Georgia in which Joe Biden was narrowly declared the winner over Donald Trump.

"Some of those allegations have been disproven while some of those allegations have been substantiated, including through admissions by Fulton County," Evans wrote. "This warrant application is part of an FBI criminal investigation into whether any of the improprieties were intentional acts that violated federal criminal laws."

Here is the probable cause affidavit, https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.gand.355087/gov.uscourts.gand.355087.22.1_2.pdf

[SVPete]

EPA's Lee Zeldin signals end to controversial start-stop feature in cars will be announced this week

https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/environment/epas-lee-zeldin-signals-end-controversial-start-stop-feature-cars-will

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin teased Tuesday that the agency will announce a significant change to the start-stop feature in automobiles sometime this week after receiving feedback from Americans.

"Countless Americans passionately despise the start/stop feature in cars," Zeldin posted to X. "So many have spoken out against this absurd start-stop-start-stop-start-stop concept. The Trump Admin has heard your calls and the announcement you have been waiting for is coming THIS WEEK. Stay tuned!"
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The feature is designed to be climate-friendly by automatically turning off a car when it has stopped in order to save fuel and reduce emissions, and then starting it back up again when the driver releases the brake or hits the accelerator.

The vehicle Mrs. SVPete drives has this wretched worthless "feature". She hates it and turns it off every time she drives the vehicle.

[SVPete]

Democrats Suddenly Oppose Law Enforcement Body Cameras They Demanded

https://legalinsurrection.com/2026/02/democrats-suddenly-oppose-law-enforcement-body-cameras-they-demanded/

Democrats are backtracking on their own demand that ICE agents wear body cameras. They’re suddenly concerned that those cameras will be used to track and surveil anti-ICE protesters, which seems like an admission that they know those people are their base voters.

This isn’t the first time this issue has backfired on Democrats. Following their anti-police push in 2020, Democrats wanted all law enforcement officers to wear body cameras, but that didn’t work out the way they planned. Instead of showing LEOs in a bad light, it showed them to be professionals who often deal with violence directed at them.
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Congressional Democratic leaders have made universal use of body cameras one of their prime demands for imposing accountability on Immigration and Customs Enforcement, especially after federal agents fatally shot two American citizens in Minneapolis. But after an outcry from privacy advocates that surveillance tools will allow ICE agents to identify and track protesters, Democrats are also calling for restrictions on how the body cameras can be used…

Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), who proposed a ban on ICE agents using facial recognition, also supported surveillance limits on body cameras.

“Obviously we want them to be wearing body cameras, but we would want restrictions placed on what that information could be used for,” Markey said. “We want to make sure that we have the accountability for how these officers conduct themselves on the streets of our country, but we don’t want it in turn to be used as a way of coming back and suppressing free speech.”

Evidently, Dems haven't made the awareness leap that body cams can also prove their and hate-activists' anti-ICE claims false.

[enslaved1]

Gallup will no longer measure presidential approval after 88 years

Gallup will no longer track presidential approval ratings after more than eight decades doing so, the public opinion polling agency confirmed to The Hill on Wednesday.

The company said starting this year it would stop publishing approval and favorability ratings of individual political figures, saying in a statement it “reflects an evolution in how Gallup focuses its public research and thought leadership.”

“Our commitment is to long-term, methodologically sound research on issues and conditions that shape people’s lives,” a spokesperson for the agency said. “That work will continue through the Gallup Poll Social Series, the Gallup Quarterly Business Review, the World Poll, and our portfolio of U.S. and global research.”

The Gallup Presidential Approval Rating has for decades been the among the top barometers cited by media outlets measuring public opinion of the president’s performance.

[ADsOutburst]

Gallup will no longer measure presidential approval after 88 years

I feel like Presidential approval is kind of a broken metric, in part because our political system is broken. No matter who's in office, a big chunk of the country hates them.

[SVPete]

Hamas Floating 'Jewish Space Laser' Theory

https://hotair.com/david-strom/2026/02/11/hamas-floating-jewish-space-laser-theory-n3811796

Actually, they didn't specifically say "Jewish Space Lasers," but the reference to an idiotic theory that floated around was too tempting to pass by.

What Hamas is alleging is that Israel deployed weapons that vaporized corpses, leaving nothing behind, which is why there are fewer of them than Hamas claimed in its propaganda during the war.
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Al Jazeera, that most reliable of sources on all things Hamas and Israel, attributes the disappearing bodies to Israel's use of thermobaric weapons, although the stories of disappearing corpses are incompatible with that claim. A thermobaric explosion would not leave one person a bit wounded, and somebody next to them being vaporized.

At dawn on August 10, 2024, Yasmin Mahani walked through the smoking ruins of al-Tabin school in Gaza City, searching for her son, Saad. She found her husband screaming, but of Saad, there was no trace.

“I went into the mosque and found myself stepping on flesh and blood,” Mahani told Al Jazeera Arabic for an investigation that aired on Monday. She searched hospitals and morgues for days. “We found nothing of Saad. Not even a body to bury. That was the hardest part.”

Some MSM person or Prog pol dared to ask about Hamas's phony numbers?

[SVPete]

Vandals Send a Message to Washington Democrat

https://hotair.com/john-s-2/2026/02/11/vandals-send-a-message-to-washington-democrat-n3811797

Rep. Marie Glusenkamp Perez is a Washington Democrat who is a bit of an odd duck. For one thing, she was one of only 7 Democrats who, last month, voted in favor of a DHS funding bill that includes money for ICE.
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Glusenkamp Perez, like everyone else, has condemned the shootings in Minneapolis and called for Kristi Noem to step down. But despite that she thinks the "defund ICE" movement within her party is a dumb idea.
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She was attacked online as a hypocrite but hasn't changed her mind. Last week, vandals targeted an auto body shop owned by her husband.
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Here's a bit of what the anarchists had to say.

Last night we gave Dean’s Car Care in NE Portland a redecorating under cover of darkness. Dean’s is owned and operated by fascist sympathizing power-couple Dean Gluesenkamp and Washington State representative Marie Perez Gluesenkamp, a Democrat who voted in January for additional funding for ICE, enabling them to continue kidnapping and murdering our neighbors and occupying our cities. We sprayed “DEAN’S WIFE FUNDS ICE” across the side of the shop and drenched the storefront in bright orange with paintbombs made from hollowed out eggs. It was quick and easy fun, and a little exhilarating due to an unexpected burglary alarm activating from the impact of the paintbombs against the windows. We slipped back into the dark unseen, satisfied with our work and filled with the jouissance and freedom of criminality.

She needs to learn that going off the Dem Rancheria has consequences.

[SVPete]

Trump EPA To Gut Legal Foundation for Electric Car Mandates

https://freebeacon.com/energy/trump-epa-to-gut-legal-foundation-for-electric-car-mandates/

The Trump Environmental Protection Agency will soon repeal Obama-era rules that formed the legal basis for high-profile climate regulations like those targeting gas-powered vehicle emissions and coal plants, agency head Lee Zeldin announced.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Zeldin said the action "amounts to the largest act of deregulation in the history of the United States." The EPA is set to formally rescind the rule, known as the endangerment finding, as soon as Thursday, the Washington Free Beacon has learned.

The original finding, which the Obama administration issued in 2009, determined that carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouse gases endanger public health and must be regulated under the Clean Air Act passed decades earlier. Most notably, it led to a Biden-era regulation that would have forced Americans to buy more electric vehicles.

It also formed the basis for EPA rules clamping down on emissions from coal-fired power plants, methane emissions from oil, and gas field operations. And it led to strict fuel economy standards for new vehicles and government-wide green energy spending.

The EPA estimates that vehicle regulations stemming from the finding alone have cost Americans more than $1 trillion.

Enviro-thugs hardest hit.

[SVPete]

US Seizes 134 Acres in Texas Used by Mexican Cartel: ‘They Thought They Were Untouchable’

https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/us-seizes-134-acres-in-texas-used-by-mexican-cartel-they-thought-they-were-untouchable-5983891?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=BonginoReport&src_src=partner&src_cmp=BonginoReport

More than 134 acres in Texas that was being used by a drug cartel for smuggling activities has been taken over by U.S. authorities, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) said in a Feb. 10 post on X.

“We took the land and everything on it,” the post said. A video shared with the post showed law enforcement officers arresting several people. “They thought they were untouchable. They were wrong. Over 134 acres of land and property, taken from the westside Gulf Cartel, a terrorist organization operating near Rio Grande City, Texas,” according to the video.

The Gulf Cartel is a drug trafficking organization from Mexico that moves arms and migrants into the United States, and has engaged in the kidnapping and murder of American citizens. Drug cartels have been known to use U.S. lands to grow marijuana, with such activities exploiting sanctuary state policies and the sovereignty of native tribal lands.

This is part of a series of similar seizures of cartel assets.