WHEN THE MONEY-SPIGOT DRIES UP IT’S HARD TO BUY PEOPLE’S LOYALTY: The Biggest Reason To Fear Economic Trouble In China:

China has been working to instill more patriotic values in its students, the New York Times reports. . . .

This story points to the biggest reason to fear economic trouble in China: not the gloom and doom from outside analysts, but the mounting evidence that the Chinese government is in some sort of panic about the loyalty of its citizens. We’ve had the purge, we’ve had trouble for foreigners, we’ve had crackdowns on human rights NGOs and Christians, and the propaganda at last week’s New Year’s Eve celebrations was noticeably shriller than usual.

Meanwhile, the people who know China’s situation the best, who have access to inside information that the rest of us don’t, have been giving pretty clear signals that they are terrified of unrest. And while the accelerating capital flight from China has a lot to do with the economy, it is another sign that insiders want out for other reasons, too.

Something big seems to be happening in China, and the increasingly desperate attempts by the regime to assert power suggest that the people who run the country are losing their confidence in the future. Even more than collapsing equity prices or a volatile currency, the political situation in China should make everyone very, very worried.

I’d be interested to know what our own ruling class is doing.

GOODNIGHT WESTERN CIVILIZATION, IT’S BEEN FUN! Whole Foods to open in-store tattoo parlors to appeal to millennials.

HILLARYCO’S NEW LINE — BERNIE’S RACIST! Black Congressional Leader Says Bernie Sanders Has a ‘Very Troubling’ Record.

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MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Socialism not as hot as its spokesman: The young voters flocking to Bernie Sanders may find his rebel status more alluring than his ideas.

RUSSIA AND TURKEY EDGE CLOSER TO WAR IN SYRIA:

Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu has implied that Turkey will take action after the capture of the town of Azez in Syria, a strategic corridor between Aleppo and Turkey for rebel groups, by Syrian regime troops backed by Russian airstrikes.

Speaking to reporters en route to Turkey from the Netherlands, Davutoğlu said that he had told German Chancellor Angela Merkel of the need to stop Russia in Syria in order to prevent further influxes of refugees to Turkey and Europe from the region, the Hürriyet daily reported on Friday. When asked whether Turkey will take action to reopen the corridor to Aleppo, Davutoğlu said, “Wait for the next few days and you will have the answer,” daily Hürriyet reported on Friday.

It’s difficult to know in these moments whether to draw a red line, hand out a reset button, or tweet a clever new hash tag.

HARRY REID: BILL CLINTON STILL ‘KNOWS HOW TO FEEL OUR PAIN.’

Well, there’s plenty of it in the country, based on Hillary and Bernie’s debate remarks last night.

NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG: John Schindler: Mounting Evidence Putin Will Ignite WWIII. By letting Putin get away with whatever he likes in Syria, Obama has created a deeply dangerous situation.

Relations between Russia and Turkey have been dismal since late November, when a Turkish fighter jet shot down a Russian bomber on the border with Syria, killing its pilot. That began a war of words between Moscow and Ankara that ought to concern everyone, since the former has several thousand nuclear weapons and the latter is a member of NATO.

Kremlin propaganda against Ankara has increased of late, setting the stage for further confrontation. As I explained here last week, Russian media outlets initially blamed the Sinai crash of Metrojet 9268 last autumn on the Islamic State, an atrocity which killed 224 innocents, nearly all of them Russians—a quite plausible claim. However, the Kremlin has abruptly shifted course and now blames the mass murder on Turkish ultranationalist terrorists, without any evidence provided to support that explosive assertion.

Where things may be going between Russia and Turkey, ancient enemies who have warred many times over the centuries, was evidenced this week, when the Kremlin announced large-scale surprise military exercises in the regions of the country that are close to Turkey. Troops were moved to full combat readiness, the last stage before a shooting war, with Sergei Shoygu, the Russian defense minister, announcing on TV: “We began our surprise check of the military preparedness in the Southwest strategic direction.”

That would be the direction of Turkey. These snap exercises involve the Southern Military District and the navy’s Black Sea Fleet, which are deeply involved in Russia’s not-so-secret secret war in eastern Ukraine. However, they also involve the navy’s Caspian Sea flotilla, which is nowhere near Ukraine.

Well, we’ve got John Kerry and Barack Obama standing between us and World War III, so . . . Duck and Cover!

A USED BOOKSTORE IN BERKELEY:

ANDREW MALCOLM: Dem debate: Fierce grilling except for emails, FBI, Top Secret, Benghazi, debt and….

Of the 16,000 words uttered by Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and moderators Gwen Ifil and Judy Woodruff, not one of them concerned Clinton’s deepening email scandal. Not one mention of the words email, e-mail, private server or FBI.

Not a single media question or opponent mention of the huge legal cloud hanging over the party’s presumptive nominee. Nor of the ongoing FBI investigation into unauthorized use of her unsecured private email server for government business, including loose handling of Top Secret documents endangering national security intelligence-gathering and covert operations.

Not any reference to the State Department Inspector General’s subpoena to the Clinton Foundation exploring possible connections between foreign government donations possibly trying to curry favor during Clinton’s four-year tenure as Obama’s secretary of State.

Oh, and not a single word either about Benghazi, the murder of four Americans there, the phony video excuse, the lack of rescue or reinforcement attempts and any Clinton responsibility for the well-documented poor consulate security. Nothing on tax or entitlement reforms. National debt.

A complete pass for Hillary Clinton. Whoosh! Home free. Other than that, it was a serious grilling about being female, admiring Obama, taxing the rich more, free stuff and other liberal issues.

It’s as if Judy Woodruff, Gwen Ifill, and PBS were just trying to help the Democrats or something.

IT’S ON: South Carolina Cruz Ad Hits Trump’s ‘Pattern of Sleaze.’

Related: Ted Cruz yanks ad featuring porn star.

ELIJAH CUMMINGS TRIES TO FLY COVER FOR THE IRS, JIM JORDAN SHOOTS HIM DOWN:

“The problem now is that our committee is in a mindset where we are just trying to get the IRS,” Cummings said.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio.), chairman of the Oversight subcommittee on administrative rules, fired back.

“We’re not trying to get the IRS. The IRS was trying to get conservative Americans who were exercising their First Amendment, free speech right,” he said. “Twenty-three hearings is a pretty small price to pay when you’re trying to protect fundamental liberties in the Constitution, for goodness sake.”

Jordan said the hearings are warranted because the IRS has engaged in a pattern of destroying records and documents.

If they did nothing wrong, why are so many hard drives “mysteriously” crashing and disappearing?

WHY OBAMA SAYS ‘THAT’S NOT WHO WE ARE’: “Calling people un-American, or challenging their love for America, thus runs afoul of liberal lore and Obama’s own rhetorical code. So he reaches for a subtle phrase with less baggage. ‘That’s not who we are’ implicitly accuses political opponents of being apart from the American ideal, of being ‘other.’”

At least until next year, when there’s a good chance the left will believe that dissent is patriotic once again. (Despite that whole “last refuge of a scoundrel” thing they concurrently believe.)

Related: 14 Times Barack Obama’s Rhetoric Made Politics Less Civil.

OUCH: John Lewis on Sanders’ Civil Rights Activism: ‘I Never Saw Him.’

Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., hit Vermont Sen. Bernard Sanders’ past activism during the civil rights movement while throwing his support behind former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Lewis was participating in a press conference on Thursday announcing that the Congressional Black Caucus Political Action Committee was endorsing Clinton. In response to a question from Roll Call about Sanders’ previous work on civil rights, Lewis, a civil rights leader who chaired the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and spoke at the 1963 March on Washington, said he did not work with Sanders.

“I never saw him. I never met him,” Lewis said. “I was involved in the Freedom Rides, the March on Washington, the march from Selma to Montgomery and directed the Voter Education Project for six years. But I met Hillary Clinton. I met President Clinton.”

Lewis’ remarks contrast with Sanders’ frequent highlighting of his record on civil rights. Sanders’ campaign website bio shows him as an organizer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee at the University of Chicago to see Martin Luther King — and incidentally, Lewis — speak in 1963.

Wait, Bill and Hillary were at Selma? Weren’t they kind of young? And wasn’t Hillary a Goldwater Girl then? My dad was at Selma and he never mentioned Bill and Hillary being there. And he would.

Related: John Lewis said he knew the Clintons in the civil rights era, but he didn’t always make that claim.

APPARENTLY WE SHOULD GET ON A BOAT* AND LEAVE AMERICA ASAP, John Podhoretz writes in the New York Post, after watching last night’s Hillary-Bernie debate:

Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders were essentially auditioning last night for the role of Snake Plissken. Do you remember Snake Plissken? He was the eyepatch-wearing hero of “Escape from New York,” the 1981 science-fiction picture in which Manhattan has become a prison and Snake Plissken is the only guy who can find the way out.

Only the America from which they want to liberate us is Barack Obama’s America. Oh, they don’t say as much. Hillary blames the Koch brothers. Bernie blames millionaires and billionaires and the campaign-finance system. They both blame the Republicans.

But let’s face it: It’s Obama’s world. They and we are all just living in it.

And what a world. “There is,” Sanders said, “massive despair all over this country.” Wages low. Millions in prison.

Bernie and Hillary are both admitting what a wretched failure Obama has been as president. Why would America want to give his party another four years?

* Or perhaps a starship, based on Hillary’s retro-futuristic final frontier-ready togs last night.

ANOTHER OBAMA MIDEAST DEBACLE: Petraeus doubts Syria can be put back together again.

Retired Army Gen. David Petraeus expressed doubt in a recent interview with The Hill that Syria can be pieced back together after a nearly five-year civil war.

“Can Syria actually be put back together again? It is by no means clear that it can be put together again; in fact, I tend to think not, but we shall see,” he said in an interview last week.

He made the comments as Secretary of State John Kerry tries to save a struggling peace process between the Shiite-backed Syrian government and Sunni opposition rebels. The conflict helped fuel the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

Kerry is pushing for a cease-fire in Syria in order to get the process back on track when talks resume on Feb. 25.

But Russia has in recent weeks stepped up air attacks on the rebel groups, shoring up Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government and making it less likely to participate in a process that calls for him to step down.

Retired Amb. Ryan Crocker, whom President Obama picked as ambassador to Afghanistan in 2011, predicted in December that the negotiations will be futile as long as Assad believes he will prevail.

“I have the highest regard for Secretary Kerry, but this effort at a political negotiation is going to go nowhere because the Russians, the Iranians and Bashar al-Assad think they’re on a roll — why should they negotiate?” Crocker said.

The administration said that without a political solution, it will have to consider a plan B involving military options, though officials have not said what they will be.

The plan is to provide the illusion of activity until January of 2017, then leave the problem for Obama’s successor. At this point, that’s pretty much their strategy for everything.

ROGER SIMON’S DEMOCRATIC DEBATE RECAP: UNCLE BERNIE, THE MINI-SCHNAUZER.

Read the whole thing.

THE CRASH OF 2016? “This is the markets’ somber message: There is only a thin margin for error between continued recovery and dreaded recession.”

That’s because it’s been a rather thin “recovery.”

NOT LIVING UP TO THE HYPE: Bernie Sanders’ Political Revolution Is Off to a Slow Start: He has pledged to mobilize millions of new Americans to transform politics, but so far, Democratic turnout is down.

The first tests are in, and the signs of a revolution at the ballot box are scant. Rather than a surge of the previously disaffected, Democratic turnout was down in the first two states to hold contests in the nomination race—by 28 percent in Iowa and 13 percent in New Hampshire.

In Iowa, 172,000 Democrats took part in the party caucuses. The number in 2008 was 240,000.

In the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday, 251,000 Democrats voted. The number in 2008 was 288,000.

In other words, the grassroots enthusiasm, vast small-dollar donations, and massive crowds at Sanders’ rallies so far hasn’t translated into historically greater voter turnout for his party.

Meanwhile, Republican voter turnout is up from 2008 levels—by 15,000 in Iowa, and 33,000 in New Hampshire.

The numbers pose a challenge to Sanders’ argument that he’d succeed where President Barack Obama failed in mobilizing Americans to transform the political process. It also may bolster one of the main lines of attack by Hillary Clinton—that Sanders is making promises he can’t keep.

To be fair, Bernie’s making promises he can’t keep, but Hillary’s making promises she won’t keep.

OR PERHAPS IT WAS THOSE TIME TRAVELERS: No, That’s Not A Laptop On An Ancient Greek Grave Marker.

STRANGELY NOT CAUSED BY APPLES: Gravitational Waves Detected 100 Years After Einstein’s Prediction.

DIVE, DIVE, DIVE: Questions grow over banks as profit warnings pile up.

WISDOM IN STRANGE PLACES: Using the Physics of Your Perfect Pancake to Help Save Sight.

BUT NOT FOR GOOD: The Power Of Debt.

BERNIE HAS A DREAM BUT WHAT IS IT? What is Bernie Sanders hiding about his radical history?