charles koch agrees with bernie sanders on corporatism and criminal justice?

WaPo |  As he campaigns for the Democratic nomination for president, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders (I) often sounds like he’s running as much against me as he is the other candidates. I have never met the senator, but I know from listening to him that we disagree on plenty when it comes to public policy.

Even so, I see benefits in searching for common ground and greater civility during this overly negative campaign season. That’s why, in spite of the fact that he often misrepresents where I stand on issues, the senator should know that we do agree on at least one — an issue that resonates with people who feel that hard work and making a contribution will no longer enable them to succeed.

The senator is upset with a political and economic system that is often rigged to help the privileged few at the expense of everyone else, particularly the least advantaged. He believes that we have a two-tiered society that increasingly dooms millions of our fellow citizens to lives of poverty and hopelessness. He thinks many corporations seek and benefit from corporate welfare while ordinary citizens are denied opportunities and a level playing field. 

I agree with him.  Fist tap Dale.

the fault-line in american politics

Global Guerrillas | The fault line in American politics is no longer Republican vs. Democrat nor conservative vs. liberal but establishment vs. anti-establishment. This is an inevitable result of serial failure in establishment policies." Failure as a Way of Life  Bill Lind

Donald Trump is crushing the establishment of the Republican party.  Sanders is doing the same with the Dems.  With that in mind, here are a few insights into Trump that I found useful:

Donald Trump isn't a fool.  Here's a recent interview that shows Donald Trump is much more interesting than the performance art of his stump and debate.  BTW:  he's a non-interventionist when it comes to foreign policy.

"From the start, Trump targeted the (mostly) white working class, which happens to be 40 percent of the country. And he’s done it not just with issues, but with how he talks — the ball-busting, the “bragging,” the over-the-top promises... But it speaks volumes — whole encyclopedias — about the ignorance of our political and media elites that they’re only now realizing that much of what Trump’s been doing is just busting balls.  It’s a blue-collar ritual, with clear rules — overtly insulting, sure, but with infinite subtleties. It can be a test of manliness, a sign of respect, a way of bonding and much more.

America hasn’t been great for the working class for decades — which is why “Make America Great Again” is a great slogan for a guy who’s talking tough on the problems that blue-collar Americans (and more than a few middle-class folks) see as killing them."  And it is killing them:  "The rise in mortality from 1999 to 2014 was 22 percent: Up 134 deaths per 100,000 for whites aged 45 to 54 whose education ended in high school....  (due to) jumps in suicides and in deaths from drug abuse."Donald Trump has Invented a New Way to Win Mark Cunningham

the zenith of Bee Dee high-civilization - racial hygiene - the best of intentions...,

WaPo |  “Imbeciles” is the arch title that lawyer-journalist Adam Cohen has given his narrative of Buck v. Bell, the 1927 case in which the justices approved Virginia’s involuntary sterilization of “feeble minded,” epileptic and other purportedly genetically “unfit” citizens.

The vote was 8 to 1. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.’s opinion dispensed with young Carrie Buck’s physical integrity in five paragraphs, the six cruelest words of which characterized Virginia’s interest in preventing Buck from burdening the state with her defective offspring: “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”

As Cohen shows, everything had to go wrong in the legal system to produce this horror, and everything did, starting with a crooked local process that declared Buck intellectually inferior based on her out-of-wedlock pregnancy — an indicator, state doctors averred, of promiscuity, which connoted feeblemindedness.

In fact, she had been raped by her foster parents’ nephew; the couple then sought to cure this embarrassment by having Buck sent away to the state colony for her “kind.”

Virginia established the institution to isolate those who supposedly threatened “racial hygiene” and prevent them from breeding. All told, more than 30 states had such laws during the mid-20th century, though only California surpassed Virginia’s 8,300 involuntary sterilizations. It conductedroughly 20,000.

Today, the evil of such laws is universally recognized. The governors of North Carolina, Virginia and California apologized a decade ago, and in 2013 North Carolina approved $50,000 for each surviving victim.

But the story isn’t over: Virginia has promised $25,000 per person in compensation but appropriated only enough for 16 awards. The Golden State has no compensation plan.

And Buck v. Bell, though basically a dead letter, has never been formally overruled. It stands as a baleful monument — not to the court’s malice, but to the eternal flaws in human nature that cause people to commit injustice with the best of intentions.

the land of the thief and the home of the slave...,

libertyblitzkrieg |  What a cute little Banana Republic this America has become. Our government can’t put a single bank executive in jail for destroying the global economy, but when a mere peasant is caught not paying back his student debt, a team of U.S. Marshals arrive at his door to arrest him at gunpoint.

Land of the thief, home of the slave, indeed.

Fox26 reports:

Believe it or not, the US Marshals Service in Houston is arresting people for not paying their outstanding federal student loans.

Paul Aker says he was arrested at his home last week for a $1500 federal student loan he received in 1987.

He says seven deputy US Marshals showed up at his home with guns and took him to federal court where he had to sign a payment plan for the 29-year-old school loan.

Congressman Gene Green says the federal government is now using private debt collectors to go after those who owe student loans.

Green says as a result, those attorneys and debt collectors are getting judgements in federal court and asking judges to use the US Marshals Service to arrest those who have failed to pay their federal student loans.

Our reliable source with the US Marshal in Houston say Aker isn’t the first and won’t be the last.

They have to serve anywhere from 1200 to 1500 warrants to people who have failed to pay their federal student loans.

Now here’s the most absurd part. Yahoo notes that:

Unfortunately, it looks like it was a lapse in communication that landed Aker in handcuffs (to be clear, he did not spend time in jail — he was escorted by Marshals to court). And, to add insult to injury, he was ordered to pay more than $1,200 in fees back to the U.S. Marshals service for the cost of arresting him. 

Yes, Federal US Marshals spent $1,200 arresting a guy for $1,500 in debt. Brilliant use of taxpayer funds. Yet somehow they still can’t find a single bank executive who did anything wrong.

voting with your middle finger cause you smell that naaassssstidddy hyperhydrosis....,

cluborlov |  On the Democratic side, we have Hillary the Giant Flying Lizard, but she seems rather impaired by just about everything she has ever done, some of which was so illegal that it will be hard to keep her from being indicted prior to the election. She seems only popular in the sense that, if she were stuffed and mounted and put on display, lots of folks would pay good money to take turns throwing things at her. And then we have Bernie, the pied piper for the “I can't believe I can't change things by voting” crowd. He seems to be doing a good job of it—as if that mattered.

On the Republican side we have Donald and the Seven Dwarfs. I previously wrote that I consider Donald to be a mannequin worthy of being installed as a figurehead at the to-be-rebranded Trump White House and Casino (it is beneath my dignity to mention any of the Dwarfs by name) but Donald has a problem: he sometime tells the truth. In the most recent debate with the Dwarfs he said that Bush lied in order to justify the invasion of Iraq. Candidates must lie—lie like, you know, like they are running for office. And the problem with telling the truth is that it becomes hard to stop. What bit of truthiness is he going to deliver next? That 9/11 was an inside job? That Osama bin Laden worked for the CIA, and that his death was faked? That the Boston Marathon bombing was staged, and the two Chechen lads were patsies? That the US military is a complete waste of money and cannot win? That the financial and economic collapse of the US is now unavoidable? Even if he can stop himself from letting any more truthiness leak out, the trust has been broken: now that he's dropped the T-bomb, how can he be relied upon to lie like he's supposed to?

And so we may be treated to quite a spectacle: the Flying Lizard, slouching toward a federal penitentiary, squaring off against the Donald the T-bomber. That would be fun to watch. Or maybe the Lizard will implode on impact with the voting booth and then we'll have Bernie vs. the T-bomber. Being a batty old bugger, and not wanting to be outdone, he might drop some T-bombs of his own. That would be fun to watch too.

Not that any of this matters, of course, because the country's trajectory is all set. And no matter who gets elected—Bernie or Donald—on their first day at the White House they will be shown a short video which will explain to them what exactly they need to do to avoid being assassinated.

Granny lying to kneegrows in Harlem yesterday and choked on her own BS...,

WaPo |  Yesterday afternoon, Hillary Clinton delivered a speech on race in Harlem. There’s a political context here, of course, which is that African American voters are central to both the Feb. 27 South Carolina Democratic primary and the entire campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.

But when Clinton speaks about race, something important happens: we get a revealing view not just of what she thinks is important, but of how she understands politics, power, and change.

According to guidance distributed by the Clinton campaign, today’s speech is going to cover a lot of policy ground, including criminal justice, education, housing, and economic opportunity. Clinton will also be discussing “systemic racism,” which is a key phrase to keep in mind to understand how she sees race, and how it differs from the way Barack Obama has dealt with racial issues over the past eight years.”

The idea of systemic racism has symbolic weight, but it’s primarily practical. It does speak to the fundamental truth that black people understand and that some whites resist, that racism exists in a thousand places at once, both those we can see and those we overlook. Saying you understand systemic racism is a way of saying that you see the problem as deep, wide, and historically grounded.

But it’s also a way of saying: This is a problem we, and the president him or herself, can actually do something about. If the racism that imposes itself on people’s lives is to be found in systems, then the way you attack it is to change the way those systems operate, through changes in law and policy.

kneegrows for Granny Goodness ignore her proven dangerousness at their own and the world's peril...,

ICH |  In the Milwaukee debate, Hillary Clinton took pride in her role in a recent UN Security Council resolution on a Syrian ceasefire:

But I would add this. You know, the Security Council finally got around to adopting a resolution. At the core of that resolution is an agreement I negotiated in June of 2012 in Geneva, which set forth a cease-fire and moving toward a political resolution, trying to bring the parties at stake in Syria together.

This is the kind of compulsive misrepresentation that makes Clinton unfit to be President. Clinton's role in Syria has been to help instigate and prolong the Syrian bloodbath, not to bring it to a close.

In 2012, Clinton was the obstacle, not the solution, to a ceasefire being negotiated by UN Special Envoy Kofi Annan. It was US intransigence - Clinton's intransigence - that led to the failure of Annan's peace efforts in the spring of 2012, a point well known among diplomats. Despite Clinton's insinuation in the Milwaukee debate, there was (of course) no 2012 ceasefire, only escalating carnage. Clinton bears heavy responsibility for that carnage, which has by now displaced more than 10 million Syrians and left more than 250,000 dead.

As every knowledgeable observer understands, the Syrian War is not mostly about Bashar al-Assad, or even about Syria itself. It is mostly a proxy war, about Iran. And the bloodbath is doubly tragic and misguided for that reason.

Saudi Arabia and Turkey, the leading Sunni powers in the Middle East, view Iran, the leading Shia power, as a regional rival for power and influence. Right-wing Israelis view Iran as an implacable foe that controls Hezbollah, a Shi'a militant group operating in Lebanon, a border state of Israel. Thus, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Israel have all clamored to remove Iran's influence in Syria.

This idea is incredibly naïve. Iran has been around as a regional power for a long time--in fact, for about 2,700 years. And Shia Islam is not going away. There is no way, and no reason, to "defeat" Iran. The regional powers need to forge a geopolitical equilibrium that recognizes the mutual and balancing roles of the Gulf Arabs, Turkey, and Iran. And Israeli right-wingers are naïve, and deeply ignorant of history, to regard Iran as their implacable foe, especially when that mistaken view pushes Israel to side with Sunni jihadists.

Yet Clinton did not pursue that route. Instead she joined Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and right-wing Israelis to try to isolate, even defeat, Iran. In 2010, she supported secret negotiations between Israel and Syria to attempt to wrest Syria from Iran's influence. Those talks failed. Then the CIA and Clinton pressed successfully for Plan B: to overthrow Assad.

When the unrest of the Arab Spring broke out in early 2011, the CIA and the anti-Iran front of Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey saw an opportunity to topple Assad quickly and thereby to gain a geopolitical victory. Clinton became the leading proponent of the CIA-led effort at Syrian regime change.

Granny Goodness pocketed $3.5 million in pro-israel speaking fees...,

ICH |  Bill and Hillary Clinton are under increasing scrutiny from the mainstream press over paid speeches they have given to big banks in exchange for millions of dollars. According to CNN, the couple has earned a total of $153 million in lecture fees from companies and organizations affiliated with the financial industry.

But the media has been conspicuously silent about the large sums the Clintons have raked in from paid addresses to pro-Israel organizations, including the Jewish National Fund (JNF), which directly participates in the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and Bedouin citizens of Israel. An evaluation of Hillary Clinton’s public disclosures from 2001 to 2015 shows that she and Bill, and their daughter, Chelsea, have earned roughly $4 million in speaking fees from pro-Israel organizations, including JNF and organizations allied with the right-wing government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The vast majority of these documented payments—$3,599,999—have gone toward the Clintons’ personal income, and up to $450,000 has been funneled into the Clinton Foundation.

Ramah Kudaimi, membership outreach coordinator for the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, told AlterNet, "It is the right of voters to know what every single candidate earns in speaking fees, whether from banks or pro-Israel groups that engage in oppressive policies against Palestinians. It is the voters’ right to know if we have candidates running to be president who plan to continue horrific U.S. policies that make us all complicit in Israel’s denial of Palestinian rights.”

Granny Goodness the enemy of iran

mondoweiss | Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton expressed great pride in making enemies of “the Iranians” during this week’s Democratic Party debate. When asked “which enemy are you most proud of?” by CNN debate moderator Anderson Cooper, Clinton listed the NRA, health insurance companies, drug companies, and – finally – “the Iranians” as the actors she’s most pleased to have antagonized. This may strike some as a strange statement from the country’s former chief diplomat – particularly in light of her support, albeit tepid, of the recent Iranian nuclear agreement.

Why would a past Secretary of State – a position dedicated, at least in part, to improving the United States’ relations with other nations – boast of an adversarial relationship with a key Middle Eastern geopolitical power in the aftermath of a historic diplomatic breakthrough?

Insight into that question may be gleaned from just a cursory look at the Clinton campaign’s principal donors. Israeli-American entertainment mogul Haim Saban, and his wife Cheryl, have contributed approximately $2 million to Priorities USA Action – a SuperPAC financing Clinton’s presidential bid.  Saban is a self-proclaimed “one-issue guy” and, according to him, his issue is Israel. Describing a conversation he had with then-candidate Barack Obama in 2008, Saban relayed the following anecdote to New Yorker staff writer Connie Bruck:

“Obama was asked the same question Hillary was asked —‘If Iran nukes Israel, what would be your reaction?’ Hillary said, ‘We will obliterate them.’ We . . . will . . . obliterate . . . them. Four words, it’s simple to understand.

Granny Goodness stressed her committment to israel..,

CNN |  Hillary Clinton backed the Obama administration's Iran nuclear deal during a speech in Washington on Wednesday, but did so by taking a cautious tone she defined as "distrust and verify."

Clinton said the Iran deal -- which has drawn fierce opposition from Republicans and some Democrats -- is not a step toward normalizing relations with Iran, and she devoted a large portion of her speech at the Brookings Institution to speaking about the need to protect Israel.

Speaking directly to Iran, Clinton said, "The United States will never allow you to acquire a nuclear weapon," adding that she "will not hesitate to take military action if Iran attempts to obtain a nuclear weapon."

The former secretary of state reiterated that she supported the deal because it is a critical part "of a larger strategy toward Iran."

"My approach will be distrust and verify," Clinton said. "We should anticipate that Iran will test the next president."

"That won't work if I am in the White House," Clinton added.

banning cash: reinstating naked serfdom - peasants!!!

freemansperspective |  Over the last few months a stream of articles have crossed my screen, all proclaiming the need of governments and banks to eliminate cash. I’m sure you’ve noticed them too.

It is terrorists and other assorted madmen, we are told, who use cash. And so, to protect us from being blown up and dismembered on our very own street corners, governments will have to ban it.

It would actually take some effort to imagine a more obvious, naked attempt at fearmongering. Cash – in daily use for centuries if not millennia – is now, suddenly, the agent of spring-loaded, instant death? And we’re supposed to just accept that line?

But there are good reasons why the insiders are promoting these stories now. The first of them, perhaps, is simply that they can: After 9/11, a massive wave of compliance surged through the West. It may not last forever, but it’s still rolling, and if the entertainment corporations can pump enough fear into minds that want to believe, they may just get them to buy it.

The second reason, however, is the real driver:

Negative Interest Rates

The urgency of their move to ban one of the longest-lasting pillars of daily life means that the backroom elites think it will be necessary soon. It would appear that the central banks, the IMF, the World Bank, the BIS, and all their backers, see the elimination of cash as a central survival strategy.

The reason is simple: cash would allow people to escape from the one thing that could save their larcenous currency system: negative interest rates.

To make this clear, I like to paraphrase a famous (and good) quote from Alan Greenspan, back from 1966, during his Ayn Randian days: The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves.

That was a true statement, and with a slight modification, it succinctly explains the new war on cash:

The preservation of an insolvent currency system requires that the owners of currency have no way to protect it.

banksters got that blood funnel deeply inserted into the old raisins...,

zerohedge |  Some more details from the WSJ: the average 65-year-old borrower has 47% more mortgage debt and 29% more auto debt than 65-year-olds had in 2003.

Some more observations:

Just over a decade ago, student debt was unheard of among 65-year-olds. Today it is a growing debt category, though it remains smaller for them than autos, credit cards and mortgages. On top of that, there are far more people in this age group than a decade ago.

The result: U.S. household debt is vastly different than it was before the financial crisis, when many younger households had taken on large debts they could no longer afford when the bottom fell out of the economy.

The shift represents a “reallocation of debt from young [people], with historically weak repayment, to retirement-aged consumers, with historically strong repayment,” according to New York Fed economist Meta Brown in a presentation of the findings.

Why is this a problem in a world in which cash flow is increasingly scarce? "Older borrowers have historically been less likely to default on loans and have typically been successful at shrinking their debt balances. But greater borrowing among this age group could become alarming if evidence mounted that large numbers of people were entering retirement with debts they couldn’t manage. So far, that doesn’t appear to be the case. Most of the households with debt also have higher credit scores and more assets than in the past."

Assets mostly in the form of equities and bonds, however, those assets will need to be liquidated one way or another to repay what is a record debt load as the Baby Boomer generation grows even old and ever more in debt.

For now, however, the debt repayment cliff has not been hit as banks allow creditors to roll over existing obligations. This means that while debt among the elderly is at record levels, the percentage of this debt that is in some stage of delinquency has been steadily dropping. The NY Fed founds that only 2.2% of mortgage debt was in delinquency, the lowest since early 2007. Credit card delinquencies also declined, while auto loan and student loan delinquencies were unchanged.

the anti-democratic fix is in for Granny Goodness no matter what the Bern manages to do....,

WaPo |  If you think Bernie Sanders was the big winner in New Hampshire this week, you'd be wrong — at least when it comes to the votes that will really help determine the Democratic presidential nominee.

Sure, the Vermont senator won the Granite State primary in a rout over Hillary Clinton, earning 15 delegates to Clinton's 9. But New Hampshire has eight additional "superdelegates," and six of them back Clinton. The other two haven't declared a preference. So at the moment, Sanders and Clinton both have 15 total delegates, and it's possible that the former secretary of state could ultimately pull ahead — in a state she lost, 60 percent to 38 percent.

Quick civics lesson: Delegates are the people who attend the national convention and cast the formal votes for the nominee. Most of them are required to vote according to the results of their states' primaries or caucuses, regardless of their personal opinions. They're just there to represent the previously expressed will of the people. But some delegates, known as superdelegates, can cast ballots for whomever they want; they aren't bound by the popular votes in their states. They're usually party leaders, and they usually favor establishment candidates, in this case Clinton.

The delegate accumulation process can seem like an obscure part of our quirky form of democracy, but it could be important this year. Sanders could, in theory, earn a majority of the 1,670 delegates up for grabs in popular voting all over the country but still lose the nomination if most of the 712 superdelegates side with Clinton at the convention.

CNN's Jake Tapper seemed to have this scenario in mind when he interviewed Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz on Thursday:

deck so stacked, the democratic establishment can't even be bothered to try and hide it...,

WaPo |  Two powerful organizations within the Democratic establishment announced steps Friday that have the potential to provide substantial financial firepower to presidential contender Hillary Clinton by drawing on the support of wealthy donors and corporate interests. 

While providing a likely boost to Clinton, both developments also give rival Bernie Sanders fresh fodder to highlight her relationship with Wall Street and other special interests at a time when the two candidates are locked in an intense nomination fight. Priorities USA Action, the main super PAC supporting Clinton, unleashed a $5 million infusion of spending on her behalf, upending plans to hold its fire until the general election. 

The move calls attention to growing concern within the party’s leadership that her campaign may be in trouble, and it underscores how crucial several upcoming contests have become in Clinton’s battle with Sanders, a senator from Vermont

In addition, the Democratic National Committee announced that it had rolled back restrictions introduced by presidential candidate Barack Obama in 2008 that banned donations from federal lobbyists and political action committees. Both actions offer the potential for financial benefit for Clinton. But both also could backfire. 

Sanders has gained traction with his core argument that special interests have “rigged” the economy against the lower and middle classes. Although Clinton has repeatedly denied that she has been influenced by donations or speaking fees from Wall Street, the likely new flow of money to her campaign could add grist to Sanders’s case. 

As if to prove the point, the Sanders campaign issued a news release Friday with this headline: “Clinton Wall StreetFunded Super PAC Enters Democratic Primary Against Sanders.” And later in the day, Sanders’s campaign communications director, Michael Briggs, called the DNC decision “an unfortunate step backward. We support the restrictions that President Obama put in place at the DNC, and we hope Secretary Clinton will join us in supporting the president.” 

where to invade next?

michaelmoore |  Imagine a place where you don’t have to do any homework, and you don’t have to take those ridiculous standardized tests. Or how ‘bout a place where your public school lunch is a luxurious four-course meal that you have the time to enjoy each day. Imagine a country where all college is free — and it’s impossible to find anyone who has a student loan to pay off. Can you believe there’s actually a place where teenagers can easily get birth control with no parental permission, and that when it comes to getting free health services there’s no issue because, even as a teen, the society respects that only you should have control over your own body. Imagine a world where no hall passes are required to go to the bathroom, where school is not an assembly line (and it doesn’t start at 8 in the friggin’ morning!). And what if, on top of all of this, you could vote at the age of 16 and have a real say in your future.

Well, that place exists. It exists in many countries, all over the world. In fact, in every advanced industrialized country, one or more of the above is already happening every single day. But not here in the U.S.A.

And so I’ve made a movie about all those places, a movie that will take you on a raucous, hilarious ride through the great life that they’re having and we’re not. It’s called WHERE TO INVADE NEXT, and it opens this weekend, February 12th, in theaters across the country.

There’s only one problem: It’s rated “R”.

Now, you might be asking yourself, “Why did the American ratings board (the MPAA) give my film an ‘R’ rating?” Maybe it has something to do with all the things I’ve just listed above. Some people would prefer you not know how teenagers in the rest of the world are treated. Bottom line: They’re not treated like babies and inmates. They are treated like full-grown human beings with dignity and rights. Lots of rights.

But here in the USA, the MPAA has deemed my film too dangerous for you to see on your own. So I’d like to fix that. I’d like you to see my movie. And I’d like to help you sneak in to do that this weekend.

Now, I’m probably going to have a shitstorm rain down upon me for doing this. I don’t care. Wrong is wrong, and it is wrong to not let you see this movie. The theaters or the movie studios or the censors may not like what I’m about to suggest, but they’re just going to have to deal with it. It is insulting to you as a 15 or 16-yr to be told you can’t handle the truth. What year is this — 1952?

By now, you probably know all the ways to sneak into an “R”-rated movie — buy a ticket to another film then sneak in; go in to the PG film you bought a ticket for then go out to get popcorn and “forget” your ticket so you can then head in to the “R”-rated film; etc.

d-wave out there clocking gwap and stacking bandos...,

wikipedia |   Adiabatic quantum computation (AQC) relies on the adiabatic theorem to do calculations^[1] and is closely related to, and may be regarded as a subclass of, quantum annealing.^[2][3][4][5] First, a (potentially complicated) Hamiltonian is found whose ground state describes the solution to the problem of interest. Next, a system with a simple Hamiltonian is prepared and initialized to the ground state. Finally, the simple Hamiltonian is adiabatically evolved to the desired complicated Hamiltonian. By the adiabatic theorem, the system remains in the ground state, so at the end the state of the system describes the solution to the problem. Adiabatic Quantum Computing has been shown to be polynomially equivalent to conventional quantum computing in the circuit model.^[6] The time complexity for an adiabatic algorithm is the time taken to complete the adiabatic evolution which is dependent on the gap in the energy eigenvalues (spectral gap) of the Hamiltonian. Specifically, if the system is to be kept in the ground state, the energy gap between the ground state and the first excited state of  provides an upper bound on the rate at which the Hamiltonian can be evolved at time .^[7] When the spectral gap is small, the Hamiltonian has to be evolved slowly. The runtime for the entire algorithm can be bounded by  Where  is the minimum spectral gap for .

AQC is a possible method to get around the problem of energy relaxation. Since the quantum system is in the ground state, interference with the outside world cannot make it move to a lower state. If the energy of the outside world (that is, the "temperature of the bath") is kept lower than the energy gap between the ground state and the next higher energy state, the system has a proportionally lower probability of going to a higher energy state. Thus the system can stay in a single system eigenstate as long as needed.

The D-Wave One is a device made by a Canadian company D-Wave Systems which describes it as doing quantum annealing.^[13] In 2011, Lockheed-Martin purchased one for about US$10 million; in May 2013,Google purchased a D-Wave Two with 512 qubits.^[14] As of now, the question of whether the D-Wave processors offer a speedup over a classical processor is still unanswered. Tests performed by researchers atUSC, ETH Zurich, and Google show that as of now, there is no evidence of a quantum advantage.^[15][16]

unlike last night a genuinely interesting debate: caltech says yes while hebrew university says no...,

wikipedia |  A topological quantum computer is a theoretical quantum computer that employs two-dimensional quasiparticles called anyons, whose world lines cross over one another to form braids in a three-dimensionalspacetime (i.e., one temporal plus two spatial dimensions). These braids form the logic gates that make up the computer. The advantage of a quantum computer based on quantum braids over using trapped quantum particles is that the former is much more stable. The smallest perturbations can cause a quantum particle to decohere and introduce errors in the computation, but such small perturbations do not change the braids' topological properties. This is like the effort required to cut a string and reattach the ends to form a different braid, as opposed to a ball (representing an ordinary quantum particle in four-dimensional spacetime) bumping into a wall. Alexei Kitaev proposed topological quantum computation in 1997. While the elements of a topological quantum computer originate in a purely mathematical realm, experiments infractional quantum Hall systems indicate these elements may be created in the real world using semiconductors made of gallium arsenide at a temperature of near absolute zero and subjected to strong magnetic fields.