Month: February 2013

We’re (not) number one

by digby

Via Alternet, here are just a few statistics about the United States that prove our immense arrogance and pride are based upon our superiority. Or not:

“The Global Competitiveness Report 2012-2013,” by the World Economic Forum, is the latest annual ranking of 144 countries, on a wide range of factors related to global economic competitiveness .

On each of their many rankings, #1 represents the best nation, and #144 represents the worst nation.

Gross Domestic Product is the only factor where the U.S. ranks as #1, which we do both on “GDP” and on “GDP as a Share of World GDP.”

Health Care has the U.S. ranking #34 on “Life Expectancy,” and #41 on “Infant Mortality.”

Education in the U.S. is also mediocre. On “Quality of Primary Education,” we are #38. On “Primary Education Enrollment Rate,” we are #58. On “Quality of the Educational System,” we are #28. On “Quality of Math and Science Education,” we are #47. On “Quality of Scientific Research Institutions,” we are #6. On “PCT [Patent Cooperation Treaty] Patent Applications [per-capita],” we are #12. On “Firm-Level Technology Absorption” (which is an indicator of business-acceptance of inventions), we are #14.

Trust is likewise only moderately high in the U.S. We rank #10 on “Willingness to Delegate Authority,” #42 on “Cooperation in Labor-Management Relations,” and #18 in “Degree of Customer Orientation” of firms.

Corruption is apparently a rather pervasive problem in the U.S.

On “Diversion of Public Funds [due to corruption],” the U.S. ranks #34. On “Public Trust in Politicians,” we are #54. On “Irregular Payments and Bribes,” we are #42. On “Judicial Independence,” we are #38. On “Favoritism in Decisions of Government Officials” (otherwise known as governmental cronyism), we are #59.

On “Organized Crime,” we are #87. On “Ethical Behavior of Firms,” we are #29. On “Reliability of Police Services,” we are #30. On “Transparency of Governmental Policymaking,” we are #56. On “Efficiency of Legal Framework in Challenging Regulations,” we are #37. On “Efficiency of Legal Framework in Settling Disputes,” we are #35. On “Burden of Government Regulation,” we are #76. On “Wastefulness of Government Spending,” we are also #76. On “Property Rights” protection (the basic law-and-order measure), we are #42.

There’s much more at the link. The author concludes:

The U.S, overall, is very far from being #1 – not really in contention, at all, for the top spot. The rankings suggest instead that this nation is sinking toward the Third World. The nations that stand high on most of these lists are Finland, Switzerland, Singapore, New Zealand, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Japan, Canada, Qatar, Netherlands, Iceland, Ireland, and Hong Kong.

The nations that generally rank in the bottom half of these rankings are the ones that are typically cited as being “Third World,” or poor.

Of course we have a dominant global military empire to run so we have other things to think about. That’s naturally going to suck up huge amounts of the nation’s wealth and energy. Sure you could make the argument that this is costing us our own way of life, but that would be unpatriotic. So, we’ll just have to settle for being second rate. Which we definitely are.

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The Objectivist doth protest too much

by David Atkins

Division? What division? I don’t see any division:

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) says his tea party response to President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address Tuesday night won’t compete but will augment Sen. Marco Rubio’s Republican response.

“To me, I see it as extra response, I don’t see it as necessarily divisive,” Paul said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union. “I won’t say anything on there that necessarily is like, ‘Oh, Marco Rubio’s wrong.’ He and I don’t always agree, but the thing is, this isn’t about he and I, this is about the tea party, which is a grassroots movement…”

That’s “him and me,” Mr. Paul. Republicans are supposed to be the English-first party, and a good Objectivist should know when to use the objective case.

All joking aside, the fact that Rand Paul is even getting to make a second rebuttal to the State of the Union is indicative not only of the obvious and growing rupture in the Republican Party between those who want to dodge the demographic iceberg and those who would to go down with the ship. It’s also indicative of the degree to which Washington is wired for Republican control.

If there were any justice, the President’s State of the Union would be rebutted not only by a couple of arch-right Republicans, but by an actual progressive Democrat. A balanced set of responses would include one by Bernie Sanders, or at least one by a Senator willing to read Jacob Hacker’s excellent take on employment and the state of the economy.

As it is, we’re getting a State of the Union Speech by a deficit-obsessed centrist, rebutted by an arch-right Goldwater conservative, who is himself outdone by an Objectivist nut. And this is supposed to represent the complement of American viewpoints.

God help us.

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The SOTU of our dreams

by digby

Bill Moyers asked a bunch of smart people what they would like to see the President say in the State of the Union address this year. Their answers are all good and I urge you to rad them. if we could put them all together it would make a hell of a speech.

The one aptly called “Austerity is not the answer” from economist Robert Pollin would be especially good, followed by this from Jacob Hacker:

My fellow Americans, we cannot tackle our nation’s deepest problems until we tackle its biggest current problem. And that problem is that too many men and women who want to work cannot.

When Americans are out of work, they cannot support their families or invest in their futures. Young people move home and struggle under student debt. Older Americans leave the workforce for good, often without health care or adequate savings for retirement. The longer workers are out of a job, the harder it is for them to get back on their feet. And the harder it is for our nation to get back on its feet. When jobs are plentiful, wages rise. When jobs are plentiful, people invest in skills. When jobs are plentiful, the ladder of advancement is scalable. When jobs are plentiful, we are able to honor the sacred commitments we have made to the security and advancement of the American people.

Some say we cannot afford to get Americans back to work. They are wrong. If our economy were running at full speed, we wouldn’t have a budget problem. As the experience of our great ally across the Atlantic, Britain shows, trying to slash the budget now will only make the jobs problem — and our budget challenges — worse. We know this, experience has shown it. The United States has recovered more quickly than Europe because we have understood that the budget isn’t just a line of numbers. It is a set of priorities, for today and for the future. And our top priority must be getting Americans back to work.

That is why I am calling on Congress to spur job creation through large-scale investment in our nation’s productive capacity. This is not just about helping those who are struggling; it is about our future, our children’s future, our planet’s future. In a global knowledge economy, we need more than ever to bolster our competitive standing. We need to invest in roads and bridges, in broadband available to all, in our elementary and high schools and community colleges. We need to invest in clean energy and green technology to head off the threat of global warming. And we need to step up our investments in research and development and science — to provide the seed corn for the next entrepreneurial harvest.

The road back from the crisis that Wall Street helped create is a long one. And yes, we are moving down that road at last. Last year, our economy added over 2 million jobs. But we must speed up our pace. At the current rate of job creation, it will be almost a decade before we return to the employment levels that prevailed before the crisis.

We cannot wait that long.

We can dream can’t we?

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Just don’t call it a double standard because that would be totally wrong

by digby

Adam Serwer points out that the same logic the Obama administration used in releasing to the public its predecessor’s secret memos justifying torture almost certainly applies the the memos justifying the drone assassination program. He references President Obama’s April 2009 speech at CIA headquarters in which he responded to conservative complaints that he had released the documents:

As I made clear, in releasing the [Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel] memos as a consequence of a court case that was pending and to which it was very difficult for us to mount an effective legal defense. I acted primarily because of the exceptional circumstances that surrounded these memos, particularly the fact that so much of the information was public—had been publicly acknowledged. The covert nature of the information had been compromised…What makes the United States special, and what makes you special, is precisely the fact that we are willing to uphold our values and ideals even when it’s hard—not just when it’s easy; even when we are afraid and under threat—not just when it’s expedient to do so. That’s what makes us different.

Serwer observes:

The Obama administration, which was losing court fights over the torture memos, has so far succeeded in preventing the courts from compelling the release of the targeted-killing memos. But everything else Obama said about the torture memos—that there are exceptional circumstances (in this case, the deaths of American terror suspects), for example, or that the program is essentially public knowledge—also applies to his targeted-killing memos.

The key difference between the torture memos and the targeted-killing memos is that the torture memos were written during the Bush administration, while the targeted-killing memos were written during Obama’s. Another difference is that because Obama banned torture by executive order, it was highly unlikely that Americans would be affected by the practices the torture memos justified. The same cannot be said for the targeted-killing memos, which are still in force and apply to an ongoing government program.

If releasing the torture memos to the public was justified, it’s very hard to understand why Americans should be kept in the dark about the details of when, how and why their own government can mark them for death.

I’m going to guess that’s exactly why the administration is so keen on keeping them secret.

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What exactly was in the president’s fiscal cliff proposal again?

by digby

The White House keeps saying that the president’s final offer in the fiscal cliff deal is still on the table and I thought it might be a good idea to take a closer look at exactly what that was.  It included the expiration of the Bush tax cuts that were allowed to take place.

And then there was this:

On the spending side of the ledger, Obama offered $800 billion in cuts, plus $130 billion in savings from adopting a new, less generous mechanism for adjusting Social Security benefits for inflation, the so-called “chained consumer price index” (CPI). To soften the blow to liberal Democrats like House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who has warned against any roll-back of benefits, the White House proposed unspecified “tweaks” that will protect “the poorest social security recipients,” the source said. Obama gets another $290 billion in interest payment savings.

The president’s proposed savings include $400 billion in health outlays, $200 billion in mandatory spending in other areas, and $200 billion in discretionary cuts — including $100 from the Pentagon. As described, it does not include a Republican push to raise the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 67

That’s where he’s starting from. The Republicans are starting from the sequester, which takes a meat-ax to discretionary and defense spending. One assumes that the “compromise” will come somewhere in between which means more cuts than Obama was willing to make in that proposal, but fewer than the GOP is pretending to demand, no?

Interesting that the hike in the Medicare age is widely considered to be a Republican proposal. Perhaps there’s the making of a deal there — they’ll insist that it be thrown into the mix. After all, it’s not as if the Democrats will really balk. They’ll make the argument that Obamacare will pick up the slack so it’s all good and I’d guess that the pressure would be intense (as always) to avert the apocalypse. The “tweaks” will be inadequate, (top a benefit that is already terribly inadequate) but everyone will pretend that they’ll do the trick. After all, it will be a while before the elders have to switch to catfood and everyone will have moved on by then.

Krugman was on Fareed Zakaria’s show this morning and said he didn’t think the president was looking for his Grand Bargain anymore. I hope he’s right. But if that’s the case, why in the world does he insist on putting Social Security on the table? It doesn’t add to the deficit and will have no impact on the current economy. The only reason I can see for him to keep doing this is because he wants to fulfill his policy agenda announced at the start of his first term:

I asked the president-elect, “At the end of the day, are you really talking about over the course of your presidency some kind of grand bargain? That you have tax reform, healthcare reform, entitlement reform including Social Security and Medicare, where everybody in the country is going to have to sacrifice something, accept change for the greater good?”

“Yes,” Obama said.

It isn’t because the Republicans are demanding it …

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Hmmmm: The Hagel Hearing sketch that didn’t air

by digby

I don’t know why Saturday Night Live nixed this sketch about the Hagel hearings but there are quire a few possibilities:

McCain: “You get an urgent call from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and he says to you ‘It is vital to Israel’s security that you go on national television that night and perform oral sex on a donkey…Would you do that for Israel?’”

Oy veh…

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Who does the political class listen to? A new report shows it’s not you and me.


by digby

Demos has produced a very important document about our austerity crisis. I don’t think its conclusions will surprise many of you, but it certainly should be eye-opening to general public. It discusses the well-known fact that austerity is counter-productive in an economic down turn and that unemployment remains our greatest barrier to a full recovery. And it lays out the time-line of the politicians’ obsessive focus on deficits at exactly the wrong moment.

But this is where it gets really interesting:

The “donor class”—the segment of the population that donates to political campaigns—is disproportionately comprised of affluent Americans. Of those that contribute more than $200 to a campaign (the point at which detailed disclosure is mandatory), 85 percent have annual household incomes of $100,000 or more.17 An annual income of $100,000 puts a household in the richest 20 percent of income earners.18

In contrast to the majority of Americans, the donor class does not prioritize policies to create jobs and economic growth. While little data is available on how affluent Americans view national priorities, a few surveys do explore this issue. For example, a September 2012 survey by the Economist magazine found that respondents making over $100,000 annually were twice as likely to name the budget deficit as the most important issue in deciding how they would vote than middle- or lower-income respondents.19

A 2011 Russell Sage Foundation study explored how wealthy respondents prioritized different policy choices. The survey found that 87 percent of affluent households believed budget deficits were a “very important” problem, the highest percentage of all listed perceived problems.20 The authors of the study comment further:

One third (32%) of all the open-ended responses mentioned budget deficits or excessive government spending, far more than mentioned any other issue. At various points in our interviews, respondents spontaneously commented on “government over-spending.” Unmistakably, deficits are a major concern for most of our respondents. Nearly as many of our respondents (84% and 79%, respectively) called unemployment and education “very important” problems. However, each of these problems was mentioned as the most important by only 11%, making them a distant second to budget deficits among the concerns of wealthy Americans.

Reducing the budget deficit is seen as so important to the affluent that a strong majority of them are willing to pay more taxes in order to reduce the federal deficit (65 percent) or cut domestic programs like Medicare, education, and highways (58 percent) for deficit reduction. In contrast, only 34 percent of the general public are willing to pay more taxes and only 27 percent favor spending cuts for deficit reduction.

I don’t think anyone has explored why these people feel this way so we’ll have to guess. It’s not that they are afraid of paying more in taxes since they are obviously willing to do that. So what is it?

I’m going to guess that it stems from a faith-based confidence in the technocrats and financial elites who all insist that this is a huge threat to our economy, combined with the fact that they will not personally be particularly affected by their proposed “fixes.” After all, when you have plenty of money, paying a bit more in taxes really is fairly meaningless — the only potential “sacrifice” is the loss of a luxury good or service. And they don’t care about the chump change that our social insurance plans provide — they’ll be fine without them (or think they will … health care is really expensive for old people.) So this is largely a theoretical solution for them. They won’t suffer for it so they are more than “willing” to accept the “sacrifice” for “the greater good.”

But why do the technocrats and financial elites think this is such a good idea in the first place if it doesn’t really help the economy and degrades the thriving middle class that creates the demand required for solid growth?

Wall Street interests also heavily advocate for debt reduction. The “Fix the Debt” campaign has raised $60 million and recruited 80 corporate CEOs to lobby for a deficit reduction plan that would lower corporate taxes and place the cost burden of deficit reduction on lower income and elderly populations.21 Combined, the 95 companies that make up Fix the Debt have spent almost $1 billion on lobbying and campaign contributions over the past four years.22 In fact, 22 of the companies have spent more on lobbying than they have paid in taxes in the past three years.

If the Fix the Debt plan is adopted, 63 of the companies represented would gain as much as $134 billion in tax windfalls by being allowed to repatriate funds without paying taxes. To pay for this windfall, deep spending cuts would be made to safety net programs such as Medicare. On an individual level, the CEOs backing the plan received a combined total of $41 million in savings last year due to Bush-era tax cuts.

And I would wager that another belief is circulating that the West simply must cut wages and living standards or be overtaken by competitors in places like China and India. I don’t know how fully formed this idea is among the One Percent, but I think it’s there. (And those below them in the Upper 19% should probably rethink their alliances — they are going to get screwed too if that’s the case.)

But beyond all that, I think this is the most astonishing finding in all this:

This is a major divide and it’s obviously not partisan since, for these purposes, wealthy is defined as the top 20% —  and we know that this cohort is composed of members of both Parties.  No, what this reveals is that the GOP anti-government propaganda of the last 30 years has truly just appealed to a narrow segment of the population.  A majority of the country not only believe that the Federal Government should be active in helping people find a job, it should provide jobs if the private sector is unable to do it. 

Nobody in Washington (other than Bernie Sanders and a few members of the progressive caucus) can be said to represent the majority view. And yet Bernie and the CPC are considered extreme outliers. In fact, both political parties are answering pretty much only to the wealthy, with the Democratic administration actually being worse than the Republicans with its insistence on keeping “entitlements” on the table along with tax hikes. This is, after all, the preferred “balanced approach” of most of the wealthy people:

Indeed, one can say that the President’s plan most resembles the UK Tory prime minister’s, with his “balanced approach” of higher taxes and spending cuts:

Britain’s Parliament, led by Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron, enacted steep spending reductions when his coalition government took ­office in 2010. Most departments were required to slash at least 25 percent from their budgets, shaving $180 billion from the nation’s $1.4 trillion debt.

The government estimated 66,000 public jobs would be lost in the first two years of austerity, but so far about 372,000 have been eliminated, according to Lombard Street ­Research, a London forecasting firm.

The Cameron government also imposed a wage freeze for all but the lowest tiers of government workers, tougher requirements to qualify for public housing and disability payments, and massive cuts to the welfare system.

At the same time, the sales tax on most goods and services was raised to 20 percent from 17.5 percent and capital gains taxes on investments increased to 28 percent. Corporate taxes were reduced to 24 percent from 28 percent over five years to encourage business growth and hiring.

Cameron said the measures were necessary for a nation facing its largest-ever peacetime debt, a financial abyss that grew deeper after a massive taxpayer bailout of the nation’s banking industry in 2008 and 2009.

The government and its supporters concede that these steps are painful in the short term, but argue they will maintain the confidence of financial markets, attract business and investment, and lead to prosperity, much as the austerity policies of Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s revived a moribund British economy.

Earlier this month, George Osborne, chancellor of the ­exchequer, the government’s top financial official, announced that austerity measures would need to be extended into 2018 because of a slower recovery than forecast, which he blamed on the broader economic slowdown in Europe. But Osborne asserted that the bitter economic medicine was beginning to show results, as evidenced by the flow of investment into British government bonds, a sign of increasing confidence in the UK economy.

“It’s a hard road, but we are getting there,” Osborne told the House of Commons. “Britain is on the right track — and turning back now would be a disaster.”

It’s hard to believe that any government could be so cavalier about the suffering of its people and the loss of years and years of opportunity and potential by doing this. But that’s what they’re doing. I wonder when the British people are going to rise up against this?  Being stoic is one thing.  Being unnecessarily self-destructive is another.

And guess what?

What has Britain achieved through its austerity? Since Cameron took office in spring 2010, unemployment hasn’t budged much past 7.9%. Consumer confidence declined further. And gross domestic product, the sum of all goods and services, is below the level when Cameron assumed power.

Now, the US has a political system that’s basically gridlocked, unlike Britain’s. And contrary to the shrieking we hear daily from our elites about how this is a terrible, terrible thing and the Market God’s are going to punish us terribly unless we “prove” that we can reduce our budget deficit, I’m going to guess that the Market Gods (or rather, the intelligent humans who are investing their money in them) would rather have gridlock than the results that the British obtained from their austerity program — a double dip recession.

And here’s where we are in this mess: we must face down yet another round of austerity, not knowing if the government is going to immediately cut more spending or agree to rob Social Security and Medicare down the road in order to avert catastrophic austerity in the near term. It’s slightly better than Britain, but we seem to be content with a long period of economic torpor rather than another full fledged double dip recession.  Lucky us.

Everyone seems to be seeing green shoots. But that’s not guaranteed:

In the last month alone, consumer sentiment, by at least one measure, experienced the greatest monthly plunge since the height of the financial crisis. Consumer spending, the key driver of the U.S. economy, this year had outpaced business spending. (Corporate America seemed more finely attuned to the eventual showdown in Washington, D.C. By some estimates, some half a trillion in business cash is on the sidelines.) Consumers are now flagging, too.

The Times Magazine writer who profiled him, Davidson, minces no words about whether Posen’s Keynesian-driven theorems can find a place in America: “Doing neither stimulus nor austerity—which is basically what’s happening in the United States—isn’t working, either. So, [Posen] says, let’s try stimulus, even if we don’t know for sure it’ll do the job.”

Unfortunately, there’s not a Nemo-sized snowball’s chance in hell that will happen. The only question is whether they will be content to just tread water with 7.9% unemployment or whether they want to follow Britain down the rabbit hole.

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“Blind faith in technology, combined with a sense of infallible righteousness.”

by digby

…. also known as American exceptionalism:

Bill Moyers Essay: When We Kill Without Caring

February 7, 2013

In a web-extended version of his broadcast essay, Bill Moyers gives examples of how indiscriminate killing by our military forces not only cuts down innocent bystanders, but drives “their enraged families and friends straight into the arms of the very terrorists we’re trying to eradicate.” Bill says the Vietnam War, the Iraq War, and President Obama’s prolific use of drones all share a “blind faith in technology, combined with a sense of infallible righteousness.”

It’s short, watch it.

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Never again? It’s happening again: The scariest video you’ll watch today.

by David Atkins

Remember Golden Dawn, the Greek fascist party that controls 20 seats in the Greek parliament? Well, in their largest demonstration since the elections, Golden Dawn held a march to the U.S. embassy last week numbering at least 5,000 people and possibly more. This is what it looked like:

Golden Dawn is also reaching out to expat Greeks and German neo-Nazis in southern Germany in order to expand its influence:

Greek community leaders in Germany have condemned the arrival of the party, also known as Chrysi Avgi, and called on authorities to clamp down on a group that they said had shown its readiness to use violence in Greece and could attempt to do the same in Germany.

Golden Dawn, which has close to 20 seats in the Greek parliament, has described the move on its website as the “answer of expat Greeks to the dirty hippies and the regime of democratic dictatorship in our homeland.”

In a statement, the Bavarian office for the protection of the constitution said: “We are keeping an eye on developments.”

It said Golden Dawn had “an international network of contacts, including contacts with neo-Nazis in Bavaria. These contacts are cultivated via mutual visits as well as at meetings at rightwing extremist events in Europe.”

It confirmed that members of Golden Dawn and far-right German groups had organised reciprocal visits to each other’s countries as well as meeting at rightwing extremist meetings outside Germany and Greece.

The Youtube comments on the Golden Dawn video above are indicative of the sentiments involved:

Awakened Whitey writes:

Beautiful. You are putting the rest of us European whites to shame boys, hopefully we can get our shit together and join you in your fight against the international parasite.

1978zeitgeist writes:

Defend your country against mirauding freeloading immigrants, and kick out their leftist traitor conspirators, or your land will not survive. Some European countries and their people will perish. Those who do, deserve their fate. Greece will not.

KyleBrink opines:

Much respect to Golden Dawn. Greece led the White race once. Maybe she will lead us again.

It goes on and on.

These are the wages of austerity. It was true in the Weimar Republic, and it’s true today. “Never again” is a oft-used phrase, but it’s all too empty. No number of holocaust memorials will put a stop to this. Only ending the mass immiseration of proud people via punitive austerity measures will stop it.

Saturday Night at the Movies

A few weeks back, I lamented about how I’ve only managed to catch 2 of the 9 films up for Best Picture at the upcoming Oscars. Funny thing, though…I have managed to catch all of the (traditionally more elusive) Oscar nominees for Best Short Film-Animation and Best Short Film-Live Action. And the good news is you can, too. The five nominees in each sub-category are currently making the rounds as limited-engagement presentations; each collection runs approximately the length of a feature film, with separate admissions required. The films are playing now in Seattle; you can check for dates in your city here.

(Reads woodenly off teleprompter) And the nominees for Best Short Film-Animation are:

Adam and Dog– Clocking in at 15 minutes (making it the lengthiest offering in this category), this is an impressive debut for writer-director Minkyu Lee. With the Garden of Eden as a backdrop, Lee gives an alternate take on the usual origin tale, suggesting Man’s Best Friend may have forged a primordial bond with this Adam fellow before he hooked up with Eve (behold the invention of “fetch”!). Dialogue-free and beautifully animated, it’s a lovely piece. Dog lovers might find themselves getting a bit misty-eyed by the end.

Fresh Guacamole– A cleverly assembled stop-motion feature from Adam Pesapane (aka “PES”) that seems to be over as quickly as it begins. Still, it leaves quite an impression. Pesapane mixes common everyday objects, well-orchestrated sound effects and a Salvador Dali-ish sense of surrealism to create a rather interesting guacamole “recipe”. PES seems to share artistic sensibilities with Pee Wee’s Playhouse set designer Wayne White and claymation artist Bruce Bickford (best known for his work with Frank Zappa).

Head Over Heels– This is the other stop motion piece of the quintet, written and directed by Timothy Reckart. An elderly couple (voiced by Nigel Anthony and Rayyah McCaul) have quite literally grown apart over the years-he lives on the floor of their modest little house, and she lives on the ceiling. After the house takes flight one day and makes a topsy-turvy landing, the couple tenuously begin to reconcile; of course the main hurdle is going to be reaching a mutual decision as to which end is up (in a matter of speaking). It’s a clever metaphor about the ups and downs of a long-term relationship. I liked this one; it’s kind of like a re-imagining of Up-if Harold Pinter were to write the screenplay.

Maggie Simpson in the Longest Daycare– As you can likely glean, this amusing short is a spinoff from The Simpsons, directed by David Silverman and co-written by series creator Matt Groening, along with James L. Brooks, Al Jean, David Mirkin, Joel H. Cohen and Michael Price. Little Maggie gets dropped off for the day at the “Ayn Rand School for Tots”, and…God help her. After processing, Maggie is determined to be of “average intelligence”. She is whisked past the “Gifted Area” and gets unceremoniously dumped in a room with the rest of the kids who are ghettoized as “Nothing Special”. To be honest, I’ve never been a big fan of the show (can’t get past the cheap animation) but anything that jabs a (satirical) thumb into the eye of the Randroids is A-okay in my book.

Paperman– There has to be at least one Disney Studios offering in this category every year (I believe it’s a rule), and this is it. Directed by John Kahrs and written by Clio Chiang and Kendelle Hoyer, it’s a simple but effective black and white charmer (in the vein of Amélie) about a shy, love-struck Mad Men-era office worker who shares a fleeting I Saw U moment with a young woman while waiting for the subway. Distraught that Fate will never put him in proximity with his dream girl again, he receives assistance from Cupid, in the form of a squadron of paper airplanes (oh lighten up…it’s a cartoon).

And the nominees for Best Short Film-Live Action are:

Asad– Initially, as I watched this South Africa/USA co-production from writer-director Bryan Buckley about a Somali boy who is torn between pursuing the life of a fisherman or a pirate, I started to feel uncomfortable that it almost seemed to be reinforcing certain stereotypes about Somalis. However, when this preface to the credits flashed on the screen: “This film is a tribute to our entire cast, who have lost their country, but not their sense of hope,” followed by annotations after every cast member’s name indicating that they were Somali refugees, I came to see what had preceded it in a very different light.  

Buzkashi Boys– “Buzkashi” is a traditional Afghan version of horse polo that substitutes a dead goat for…whatever the usual object coveted by the players is (I’ve frankly never been able to make heads or tails out of the game). At any rate, the two young protagonists of this film from Sam French (who co-wrote with Martin Desmond Rowe) dream of becoming professional Buzkashi players and national sport heroes. The story weighs their hopes against the hard-scrabble realities of life in modern-day Afghanistan (one boy is a street beggar; the other the son of a blacksmith). Moving performances and exquisite location photography (in Kabul) enhance this rare glimpse of life in the war-torn country.

Curfew– This darkly funny vignette from writer-director Shawn Christensen depicts a day in the life of depressed young man (played by the director) who puts a half-hearted wrist-slashing session on hold after getting a surprise call from his estranged sister, who asks if he could watch her precocious 9-year old daughter for the day. Christensen’s tragicomic spin on urban alienation should feel quite familiar to fans of Louis CK’s television series.  

Death of a Shadow– Dutch writer-director Tom Van Avermaet is a filmmaker to keep an eye on, if this impressively assured and visually stunning homage to German Expressionism is any indication. A sci-fi fantasy that plays like a mashup of Dark City and A Guy Named Joe , the film concerns a “dead” WWI soldier, who exists in a purgatory and is beholden to a phantom-like curator, who has captured the soldier’s “shadow” right at the moment of his demise. If the soldier can photograph 10,000 more of these “shadows” for the creepy “collection”, he will be awarded his life back in return.

Henry– Quebecois writer-director Yan England’s short and sweet character study focuses on a concert pianist as he reflects on significant moments of his life. Any further synopsis risks spoilers; suffice it to say that it’s a poignant reminder about why we should savor all the good times, and not sweat the small stuff. You might want to have Kleenex on hand.

Saturday Night at the Movies review archives