HEY, BIG SPENDER: Paramount Skydance Says It Will Pay Warner Bros. Discovery an Extra $650 Million per Quarter if Its WBD Takeover Isn’t Completed by End of 2026.

David Ellison’s Paramount Skydance is adding some additional financial promises to its hostile takeover bid for Warner Bros. Discovery as it continues to try to kill Netflix’s deal for WB.

Paramount on Tuesday said it will add an “incremental cash consideration” to WBD shareholders of 25 cents per share, equivalent to approximately $650 million cash value each quarter, for every quarter the proposed Paramount acquisition is not closed beyond Dec. 31, 2026.

That extra “ticking fee” reflects the confidence of Ellison and his team that a Paramount-WBD deal will have a smoother path to regulatory approval than Netflix’s merger with Warner Bros. Paramount (and others) have alleged that Netflix, if it owns HBO Max, would have a virtual monopoly on subscription streaming in multiple markets; Netflix has dismissed this, claiming that even with HBO Max its share of U.S. TV viewing would be 10%, still behind YouTube.

In addition, as part of Paramount’s sweetened deal terms for Warner Bros. Discovery, the company said it would pay the $2.8 billion breakup fee due to Netflix with the termination of the Netflix agreement if WBD shareholders accept Paramount’s $30-per-share offer for Warner Bros. Discovery in its entirety.

I’d much rather see Warner Bros. in Ellison’s hands than the wokesters’ at Netflix, but either way, it’s likely the end of Warner as it’s been known for more than a century.

RABBI MICHAEL BARCLAY: New York’s Winter Shows That Mamdani Is Not a Socialist, but a Devout Muslim

Six of one…

GOOD QUESTION: Commonly Owned: Why Do Media Outlets Understate the Number of AR-15s Americans Own?

If you ran a simple Google search of “how many Americans own AR-15s?”, the results would be woefully lacking. The Google AI tool gives an immediate answer of “approximately 16 million to 24.6 million” Americans who own an AR-15 or similarly styled semiautomatic rifle. Google’s high-end estimate is more than 20 percent off from the most current industry estimates.

The top articles referenced and provided as citation are all far out-of-date. The top article provided, from Georgetown University, is a republish of The Washington Examiner’s Paul Bedard writing about AR-15 popularity — from 2022 — also pegged at 24 million.

The second-highest-placed article — from Stephen Gutowski’s The Reload — is also from 2022 and puts MSR ownership at 24.4 million.

Next is a Washington Post article from 2023, suggesting there are only “20 million AR-15s in circulation.”

NBC News included the figure 24.4 million as well in 2020 in an article titled, “What makes the AR-15 so beloved and so reviled.”

All these publications could use a refresh on their research if they’re going to cover the popularity of the MSR and state legislation being proposed to ban their possession, use and sale.

Maybe the thinking is that it’s easier to get the majority to go along with persecuting an even tinier minority.

YES: For America’s Gender Transition Industry, a Reckoning Is Nigh.

BLUE STATE BLUES: California’s Wealth Streams For The Exits. “Add Facebook/meta head Mark Zuckerberg to the list of billionaires fleeing ahead of enactment of the state’s wealth tax.”

OH, NO… ANYWAY: Bill Maher: Jimmy Kimmel Ended Our Friendship Over Politics.

DOG BITES MAN: Dems Move to Kill Trump’s Western Hemisphere Policy, Replace It with Something Far Worse.

COLORADO: Vacancy tax gimmick won’t make housing ‘affordable.’

Leave it to government to try to improve quality of life by proposing a law that would actually degrade it. Democrats don’t have a monopoly on this sort of legislation, but their philosophy of scarcity, especially artificial scarcity, makes them especially susceptible to its charms.

Rep. Brianna Titone (D-Arvada) and Rep. Elizabeth Velasco (D-New Castle) are seeking to extract money from out-of-town property owners to subsidize “affordable” housing with House Bill 26-1036. The bill would allow municipalities to tax residential properties that they define as vacant, based on the number of days of physical occupancy by their owners. Short-term rentals would be excluded.

The bill would also allow local governments to band together to form special taxing districts for this purpose, even if they were in different counties, as long as they had shared or contiguous boundaries.

How awful is this bill? Let us count the ways.

First, it’s an assault on property rights. Yes, according to the US Census, a couple of Colorado counties – Summit and Eagle – have a substantial number of vacant dwellings. But this isn’t the Soviet Union during Dr. Zhivago. You can’t simply tell people that their houses are nice, but they could be used for so many more people.

I dunno about that because you can’t tell a Colorado Democrat anything.

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: FCC Chair to Newsom: Hey, Where’d the $450 Million Go?

K-12 IMPROVEMENT UPDATE: These Three Red States Are the Best Hope in Schooling.

Louisiana ranks No. 1 in the country in recovery from pandemic losses in reading, while Alabama ranks No. 1 in math recovery.

The state with the lowest chronic absenteeism in schools is Alabama, according to a tracker with data from 40 states.

Once an educational laughingstock, Mississippi now ranks ninth in the country in fourth-grade reading levels — and after adjusting for demographics such as poverty and race, Mississippi ranks No. 1, while Louisiana ranks No. 2, according to calculations by the Urban Institute. Using the same demographic adjustment, Mississippi also ranks No. 1 in America in both fourth-grade and eighth-grade math.

Black fourth graders in Mississippi are on average better readers than those in Massachusetts, which is often thought to have the best public school system in the country (and one that spends twice as much per pupil).

How is this possible when southern states are governed by racist Republicans, and Massachusetts is run by enlightened progressives?

MAKE CONQUISTADORS GREAT AGAIN:

Spanish is not a language of resistance.

It's literally the language of your European colonizers who colonized you so hard you forgot what you were speaking before them.

— Lauren Chen (@TheLaurenChen) February 10, 2026

Who am I kidding? Conquistadors were always great.

HOW ARE THOSE MATH SCORES COMING ALONG? Los Angeles Teachers’ Union Caught Implementing Anti-ICE ‘Resistance.’

JAPAN VS BRITAIN: A Japanese Lesson for Troubled Britain.

The contrast between America’s great island allies on opposite ends of the world couldn’t be more drastic.

Japan has just given its commonsense conservative prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, a two-thirds supermajority in the national legislature’s Lower House; her Liberal Democratic Party took the highest proportion of seats of any party since World War II.

It’s an enormous vote of confidence not only in Takaichi’s economic agenda but also for her willingness to get tough with China.

Beijing’s mouthpieces have called Takaichi an “evil witch,” with China’s consul general in Osaka threatening, “the dirty neck that sticks itself in must be cut off” in response to Takaichi’s indication Japan would aid Taiwan against an invasion.

Such incendiary language didn’t intimidate Takaichi — nor, it turns out, Japan’s voters.

Yet even as Japan was rallying to its courageous prime minister, China was inflicting humiliation on America’s closest European ally.

Read the whole thing.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Find Someone Who Looks at You the Way Dems Look at Violent Criminals. “As we head towards the all-important midterm elections, the Democrats are putting all of their efforts into being the champions of murderers, rapists, and thieves who are in this country illegally. OK, that’s not fair — they are also doing what they can to help out violent criminals who are U.S. citizens.”

FOR THE CHILDREN™:

They’re intentionally housing these migrants close to schools. https://t.co/a1ILNv95Bb pic.twitter.com/a9LJdYed0T

— Amelia (@AmeliajakSolana) February 11, 2026

IT ISN’T JUST THE KIDS GETTING PARTICIPATION TROPHIES: I won ‘Teacher of the Year’ for enthusiasm, but kids weren’t learning.

Luke Morin won “teacher of the year” when he was a young, energetic, engaging — and ineffective — teacher, he writes on Holly Korbey’s BellRinger. He got flowers from the superintendent and his picture in the paper. But his sixth-grade English students weren’t learning very much.

Years later, after visiting effective schools and studying what make them work, he was “the highest-performing teacher in Colorado.” Nobody noticed.

In her “Learning from Greatness newsletter, Korbey asked why school leaders don’t investigate and emulate what’s working elsewhere. Why is there so little curiosity about success?

Maybe because there’s little interest in promoting it.

SADLY, THIS IS PROBABLY CORRECT:

It's a simple answer:

The Iranian uprising is anti-islam in nature.

London is a fanatical islamic enclave.

Hope this helps. pic.twitter.com/oUqMGdQFFP

— 𝐍𝐢𝐨𝐡 𝐁𝐞𝐫𝐠 ♛ ✡︎ (@NiohBerg) February 10, 2026

They’ve had their fill of Islamic rule in Iran, but London is just really getting going.

ICYMI: Hollywood Is Sick — but It’s L.A. That’s Dying.

HMM:

Has to do with the cartels. Texas just took control of a major cartel compound.

— Reaganette (@Ezinger44) February 11, 2026

Developing…

THANKS, ELON: Ukrainian assault troops go on the attack — with help from Elon Musk.

On Feb. 4, billionaire Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite communications company throttled the thousands of terminals across Ukraine. At the behest of the Ukrainian government, the firm shut down all terminals moving at 75 km/hr or faster. That effectively grounded thousands of satellite-guided drones on both sides of Russia’s 48-month wider war on Ukraine.

The Ukrainians quickly submitted a list of their own Starlink terminals, which Musk’s company reauthorized for high-speed use. The effect of the related moves was that Ukraine retained Starlink access; Russia, which has been using smuggled and stolen Starlink systems, lost it. “Looks like the steps we took to stop the unauthorized use of Starlink by Russia have worked,” Musk wrote.

For the Ukrainian armed forces, the sudden Starlink gap was an opportunity. A few days after Russia’s terminals went down, Ukrainian forces counterattacked in several sectors along the 1,200-km front line—especially in Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhia Oblasts in southeastern Ukraine.

Late last year, the Ukrainians concentrated some of their best-resourced assault battalions and regiments in the southeast in a desperate bid to slow Russia’s ongoing offensive around Huliaipole, a key logistics hub that fell to the Russian 127th Motor Rifle Brigade in late December.

But it remains a cat-and-mouse game: Russia circumvents Starlink shutdown to control UAVs.

MAN, DID I EVER VOTE FOR THIS: Trump Frees America from Climate Shackles.

I STUCK WITH THE PUPPY BOWL THIS YEAR: TPUSA Halftime Show Ruled a Fumble. “I’ve written this article three times now, going back and forth over how criticizing Turning Point USA (TPUSA) would go over with an audience full of Charlie Kirk fans, myself among them. After surveying social media and talking to a few people, I’ve decided it needs to be said: TPUSA’s alternate halftime show was a fumble, and an ugly one.”

YOUR OCCASIONAL REMINDER THAT TEACHERS UNIONS DON’T GIVE A DAMN ABOUT THE KIDS: Teachers strike closes SF schools as union, district at odds over pay and health care.

ICYMI: Even MS NOW Mocks Kamala Harris’s ‘Headquarters’ Reboot.

WILL SHE CHANGE HOW SHE VOTES TO REFLECT THIS RADICALLY NEW COMMONPLACE INSIGHT?

These people will scream at you that you’re a moral leper, for years, decades even, right up to the millisecond they realize, ‘Gee, that’s actually right,’ at which point the belief instantaneously becomes reasonable to have. https://t.co/9yanbM6UYh

— Coddled Affluent Professional (@feelsdesperate) February 10, 2026