Are we giving them too much credit calling them terrorists?

Bill Maher ended Friday's episode of "Real Time" with a rant on America's reaction to the Tsarnaev brothers, the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombings. To Maher, the brothers are just another entry in a long list of terrorists or would-be terrorists that are hardly the criminal masterminds they're depicted as.

"They had no escape plan, no disguises, and they got captured," Maher said, "Because they did not foresee that the Boston Marathon would be photographed."

He also rejected the call from many conservatives to dispense with Dzhokhar's Miranda Rights and try him as an enemy combatant. "Why call every murderer an ememy combatant? That's like calling everyone in porn a porn star. It cheapens it for the real artists," he joked.

In fact, he believes that the most accurate term for the brothers was coined by their own uncle. Maher said: "Let's acknowledge we've entered a new phase in the War on Terror by renaming it the War on Losers," quoting their uncle Ruslan Tsarni, who said their main motive was just "being losers."

Maher rattled off other instances that terrorists have failed in attacking U.S. soil. "The 'Times Square Bomber' couldn't make gasoline explode. The 'Shoe Bomber' couldn't light his shoes on fire, and the 'Underwear Bomber' couldn't light his underoos."

The main victim, he said, is our sense of safety -- and the cost of that sense being shaken.

"Bin Laden's plan wasn't to kill us all," he said. "It was to scare us into overreacting, and destroy ourselves. Because if there's one thing those terrorists proved they can blow up, it's our balance sheet," he continued, pointing out that the Department of Homeland Security has received over $790 billion since the Sept. 11 attacks.

The following post is from a BBC article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/happiness_formula/4783836.stm

According to psychologist Professor Ed Diener there is no one key to happiness but a set of ingredients that are vital.

First, family and friends are crucial - the wider and deeper the relationships with those around you the better.

It is even suggested that friendship can ward off germs. Our brains control many of the mechanisms in our bodies which are responsible for disease.

Just as stress can trigger ill health, it is thought that friendship and happiness can have a protective effect.

According to happiness research, friendship has a much bigger effect on average on happiness than a typical person's income itself.

One economist, Professor Oswald at Warwick University, has a formula to work out how much extra cash we would need to make up for not having friends.

The answer is £50,000.

Marriage also seems to be very important. According to research the effect of marriage adds an average seven years to the life of a man and something like four for a woman.

The second vital ingredient is having meaning in life, a belief in something bigger than yourself - from religion, spirituality or a philosophy of life.

The third element is having goals embedded in your long term values that you're working for, but also that you find enjoyable.

Psychologists argue that we need to find fulfilment through having goals that are interesting to work on and which use our strengths and abilities.

This poem reminds you someone waiting patiently for love. Although I mostly read contemporary poetry without rhyme, I read this today and easily fell into its lap.

A broken appointment
-Thomas Hardy

You did not come,
And marching Time drew on, and wore me numb,—
Yet less for loss of your dear presence there
Than that I thus found lacking in your make
That high compassion which can overbear
Reluctance for pure lovingkindness’ sake
Grieved I, when, as the hope-hour stroked its sum,
You did not come.

You love not me,
And love alone can lend you loyalty;
–I know and knew it. But, unto the store
Of human deeds divine in all but name,
Was it not worth a little hour or more
To add yet this: Once you, a woman, came
To soothe a time-torn man; even though it be
You love not me?

Brutal
- Andrea Cohen

Brutal to give
the prisoner a window—
a blue sky glimpse—

as if an afterlife
existed. Brutal
for you to parade

in a body
in the same
room where I dream you.

Walt Whitman's Poetry is great because it comes with purpose. He explains that while he accepts all the gifts give to him by rich givers, his poetry is his gift to them. For him poetry is the entrance to all the gifts of the universe. The doorway to heaven and God. Here is the poem:

To rich givers

WHAT you give me, I cheerfully accept,
A little sustenance, a hut and garden, a little money—these, as I rendezvous with my poems;
A traveler’s lodging and breakfast as I journey through The States—Why should I be ashamed to own such gifts? Why to advertise for them?
For I myself am not one who bestows nothing upon man and woman;
For I bestow upon any man or woman the entrance to all the gifts of the universe.

I asked the blackbird,
"You sing so sweet
But be so black!
What sets you such?
She replied, "I am broiled
In the furnace of love"
- Guru Granth Sahib

Five reads

When the sun rises
From between the two hills
I have read hope in the morning

I know the flowers must
Be blooming on the slopes
For I have read the breeze

I have read the first Bite
of the reddest cherry
Before the wild birds

I have read the beautiful
Call of the blackbirds
Before the day ends

Above all, your mind,
shiv's song has read,
As it reads mine.

http://youtu.be/GWeusAm_V8c

A poem by Tony Hoagland and some analysis/notes below

Doing This
- Tony Hoagland

I'm driving back and forth
on the gravel lane
before the two-room, stucco house

of the woman I love. She's inside,
making love with a woman
whose white car is parked in the driveway

and it, this car, disturbs me
more than anything. It sticks out of itself
so far into my life. Each time I pass,

I know, with a ten-pound sadness in my chest,
that I can't keep doing this.
And now I realize, far too late,

I should have fought for her, should have
wept and begged and made the full,
hair-extracting spectacle

of what I felt. I should have
shed my pride.
What good is pride? When you die,

I know they turn you
inside out, to see what portion
of your god-allotted guts

you failed to spend on earth.
The ones who arrive in heaven
without a kopek of their fortune left

are welcomed, cheered, embraced.
The rest are chastised and reborn
as salesmen and librarians.

It's so simple,
and that's what gets me--that every time
I drive up and down this street,

looking at that white Toyota in the drive,
it messes up not just this life,
but my eternity as well.

But I keep doing it,
dragging myself back and forth
over this corner of the world

which scrapes and grinds against me,
like a rock on the bow of a ship.
Etching the errors in my surface

deeper, and deeper. And less forgiven.

Notes/Analysis

This poem by Tony Hoagland sings of how we are trapped by attachment.  We cannot give up our wants and keep feeling bad about what we don't achieve in life. In this case it is the love of a woman, but it could be as true of material possessions or stature.  We keep driving back and forth to the lane of our desires.

We often lose the ability to love because of our ego.  The poet loses out on love, and blames himself that he didn't even try enough; he realizes "far too late." He blames his pride: "I should have/shed my pride./What good is pride?"

And an interesting and funny way of depicting reincarnation.  Tony comes up with the story that people who have not spilled all their guts (in essence given up all their pride) are the ones that don't get a space in heaven.  They can get reincarnated in unworthy occupations -- like salesmen and librarians (I am sure some salesmen and librarians think there is no better occupation).

Tony Hoagland tells us this beautifully with a story instead of spelling out the theories of attachment and ego. This is what poetry does. It boils eternal truth for us, adds a little spice, and then we can enjoy it.

What disturbs us the most is the sign of other people having what we desired.  Jealousy burns us.  Everytime we see the sign of anyone who has achieved what we wanted to, we burn.