PAKET UMROH BULAN FEBRUARI MARET APRIL MEI 2018

kesuksesan

Successful people live well, laugh often, and love much. They've filled a niche and accomplished tasks so as to leave the world better than they found it, while looking for the best in others, and giving the best they have.

saco-indonesia.com, Orang-orang yang sukses hidup dengan lengkap. Mereka bahagia dan penuh rasa syukur dan cinta terhadap segala sesuatu dalam kehidupan mereka.

Mereka sudah menemukan tujuan hidup mereka dan menunaikan misi mereka di dunia ini dengan baik, sehingga dunia ini menjadi tempat yang lebih baik dari pada ketika mereka belum datang.

Dunia menjadi lebih baik karena orang-orang yang sukses ini selalu melihat potensi terbaik dalam diri semua manusia di sekitar mereka, dan mereka selalu memberikan yang terbaik pula yang mereka punya kepada dunia.

MENJAGA KEMULIAAN MANUSIA (2)

Pada artikel pertama telah kita bahas tentang mempertahankan kemuliaan manusia secara sepintas. Pada kesempatan ini kita akan menelusuri tahap demi tahap berbagai hal tentang manusia. 1. Penyampaian Misi , menimbulkan kecurigaan dari para malaikat. Dan Ingatlah ketika Tuhanmu berfirman kepada para malaikat: "Sesungguhnya Aku hendak menjadikan seorang khalifah di muka bumi". Mereka berkata: "Mengapa Engkau hendak menjadikan (khalifah) di bumi itu orang yang akan membuat kerusakan padanya dan menumpahkan darah, padahal kami senantiasa bertasbih dengan memuji Engkau dan menyucikan Engkau?" Tuhan berfirman: "Sesungguhnya Aku mengetahui apa yang tidak kamu ketahui". (QS.2:30) Ketika Allah swt. memberitahukan kepada para malaikat-Nya bahwa Dia akan menjadikan Adam a.s sebagai khalifah di bumi, maka para malaikat itu bertanya, mengapa Adam a.s yang akan diangkat menjadi khalifah di bumi padahal Adam a.s itu dari keturunannya kelak akan berbuat kerusakan dan menumpahkan darah di bumi. Dan para malaikat itu menganggap bahwa diri mereka adalah lebih patut memangku jabatan itu, sebab mereka makhluk yang selalu bertasbih, memuji dan menyucikan Allah swt. Allah swt. tidak membenarkan anggapan mereka itu dan Dia menjawab bahwa Dia mengetahui yang tidak diketahui oleh para malaikat itu. Apa-apa yang akan dilakukan Allah swt. adalah berdasarkan pengetahuan dan hikmah-Nya yang Maha Tinggi walaupun tak dapat diketahui oleh mereka, termasuk pengangkatan Adam a.s menjadi khalifah di bumi. Yang dimaksud dengan kekhalifahan Adam a.s di bumi adalah kedudukannya sebagai khalifah atau wakil Allah swt. di bumi ini, untuk melaksanakan perintah-perintah-Nya dan memakmurkan bumi serta memanfaatkan segala apa yang ada padanya. Dari pengertian ini lahirlah ungkapan yang mengatakan bahwa manusia adalah "Khalifatullah di bumi Dan Ingatlah ketika Tuhanmu berfirman kepada para malaikat: "Sesungguhnya Aku hendak menjadikan seorang khalifah di muka bumi". Ini merupakan kehendak yang luhur yaitu menyerahkan pengendalian bumi ini kepada makhluk yang baru. Ini merupakan kedudukan yang tinggi bagi manusia dalam tatanan alam wujud diatas bumi yang luas ini . Dan ini adalah kemuliaan yang dikehendaki untuk manusia oleh Sang Pencipta yang Maha Mulia. Namun ada kesangsian atau kecurigaan dari para Malaikat kalau Manusia ini antinya tidak akan mampu menjadi khalifah. Kesangsian malaikat itu tercermin dalam pertanyaan mereka kepada Allah . Kalimat “ mengapa Engkau hendak……….., padahal kami senantiasa………….. menunjukkan kecurigaan atau kesangsian seperti makhluk sebelumnya. Perkataan malaikat ini member kesan bahwa mereka mempunyai bukti-bukti keadaan atau berdasarkan pengalaman masa lalunya di bumi atau dengan ilham pandangan bathinya yang menyingkap sedikit tentang tabiat makhluk baru ini atau tentang tuntutan hidupnya dimuka bumi dan yang menjadikan mereka mengetahui atau memprediksi bahwa manusia ini kelak akan membawa kerusakan di bumi dan menumpahkan darah. Selanjtnya mereka sebagai malaikat dengan fithrahnya yang suci yang tidak tergambar olehnya kecuali kebaikan yang mutlak dan kepatuhan yang menyeluruh mengumandangkan tasbih dengan memuji Allah dan menyucikan-NYA serta senantiasa beribadah kepada-NYA dengan tiada merasa letih. Jalalain menjelaskan dalam tafsirnya bahwa “Ingatlah hai Muhammad (ketika tuhanmu berfirman kepada para Malaikat , Sesungguhnya Aku hendak menjadikan seorang khalifah dimuka bumi yang akan mewakili aku dalam melaksanakan hokum-hukum atau peraturan-peraturan-Ku padanya , yaitu Adam. Kata mereka (malaikat) ,”Kenapa hendak engkau jadikan dibumi itu orang yang hendak berbuat kerusakan padanya yakni dengan perbuatan maksiat dan menumpahkan darah , artinya melakukan pembunbuhan-pembunuhan sebagai mana dilakukan oleh bangsa jin yang juga mendiami bumi. Penekanan bahwa khalifah itu : “ yang akan mewakili Aku (Allah) dalam melaksanakan hukum-hukum atau peraturan-peraturan-KU (Allah) padanya (dibumi) inilah yang sangat diragukan oleh para malaikat. Namun tidaklah semua keturunan Adam seperti yang diragukan oleh para Malaikat , diantaranya manusia itu ada yang siap bertanggung jawab . Maka Allah menjawabnya ,” Sesungguhnya Aku mengetahui apa yang tidak kamu ketahui”. 2. Pengujian : menimbulkan pengakuan dari para malaikat Dan Dia mengajarkan kepada Adam nama-nama (benda-benda) seluruhnya, kemudian mengemukakannya kepada para Malaikat lalu berfirman: "Sebutkanlah kepada-Ku nama benda-benda itu jika kamu memang orang-orang yang benar!" (QS.3:31) Dalam ayat ini Allah swt. menunjukkan suatu keistimewaan yang telah dikaruniakan-Nya kepada Adam a.s yang tidak pernah dikaruniakan-Nya kepada makhluk-makhluk-Nya yang lain, yaitu ilmu pengetahuan dan kekuatan akal atau daya pikir yang memungkinkannya untuk mempelajari sesuatu dengan sedalam-dalamnya. Keistimewaan ini diturunkan pula kepada turunannya, yaitu umat manusia. Oleh sebab itu, manusia (Adam a.s. dan keturunannya) lebih patut dari malaikat untuk dijadikan khalifah. Ayat ini menerangkan bahwa Allah swt. mengajarkan kepada Adam a.s. nama-nama dan sifat-sifat dari semua benda yang penting-penting di antara-Nya. Adapun cara mengajarkan nama benda-benda tersebut kepada Adam a.s. ialah dengan memberikan ilham kepadanya serta menanamkan daya pikir, yang memungkinkannya untuk mengembangkan pengetahuannya itu. Setelah nama benda-benda itu diajarkan-Nya kepada Adam a.s. maka Allah swt. memperlihatkan benda-benda itu kepada para malaikat dan diperintahkan-Nya agar mereka menyebutkan nama benda-benda tersebut yang telah diajarkan-Nya kepada Adam a.s. Dan ternyata mereka tak dapat menyebutkannya. Hal ini untuk memperlihatkan keterbatasan ilmu pengetahuan para malaikat itu dan agar mereka mengetahui keunggulan Adam a.s. terhadap mereka dan agar dapat pula mereka mengetahui ketinggian hikmah-Nya dalam memilih Adam a.s. sebagai khalifah. Juga untuk menunjukkan bahwa jabatan sebagai khalifah, yaitu untuk mengatur segala sesuatu dan untuk menegakkan kebenaran dan keadilan di bumi ini memerlukan ilmu pengetahuan yang banyak serta kemampuan dan daya pikir yang kuat. Perintah Allah swt. kepada mereka untuk menyebutkan nama makhluk-makhluk itu juga merupakan suatu peringatan kepada mereka yang tadinya merasa bahwa diri mereka adalah lebih patut untuk diangkat sebagai khalifah, maka Allah swt. menunjukkan kekurangan mereka sehingga seakan-akan Ia berfirman kepada mereka, "Hai para malaikat! Jika kamu menganggap Adam dan keturunannya tidak patut dijadikan khalifah di bumi dan kamu merasa lebih patut memangku jabatan itu, maka cobalah buktikan kebenaran alasan itu, cobalah kamu sebutkan nama benda-benda ini yang Aku perlihatkan kepadamu". Ternyata mereka tidak dapat menyebutkannya karena mereka memang tidak diberi ilmu seperti yang dikaruniakan Allah kepada manusia. Karena mereka tidak dapat mengetahui dan menyebutkan nama benda-benda yang dapat mereka lihat di hadapan mereka, tentulah mereka lebih tidak mengetahui hal-hal yang gaib yang belum mereka saksikan, antara lain ialah hikmah Allah swt. dalam menjadikan Adam a.s. sebagai khalifah. Mereka menjawab: "Maha Suci Engkau, tidak ada yang kami ketahui selain dari apa yang telah Engkau ajarkan kepada kami; sesungguhnya Engkaulah Yang Maha Mengetahui lagi Maha Bijaksana.(QS.2:32) Setelah para malaikat menyadari kurangnya ilmu pengetahuan mereka karena tidak dapat menyebutkan nama makhluk-makhluk yang ada di hadapan mereka, lalu mengakui terus terang kelemahan diri mereka dan berkata kepada Allah swt. bahwa Dia Maha Suci dari segala sifat-sifat kekurangan yang tidak layak bagi-Nya dan mereka menyatakan tobat kepada-Nya. Mereka pun yakin bahwa segala apa yang dilakukan Allah swt. tentulah berdasarkan ilmu dan hikmah-Nya yang Maha Tinggi dan Sempurna, termasuk masalah pengangkatan Adam a.s. menjadi khalifah. Mereka mengetahui bahwa ilmu pengetahuan mereka hanyalah terbatas kepada apa yang di ajarkan-Nya kepada mereka. Dengan demikian habislah keragu-raguan mereka tentang hikmah Allah swt. dalam pengangkatan Adam a.s. menjadi khalifah di bumi. Dari pengakuan para malaikat ini, dapatlah dipahami bahwa pertanyaan yang mereka ajukan semula mengapa Allah mengangkat Adam a.s. sebagai khalifah, bukanlah merupakan suatu sanggahan dari mereka terhadap kehendak Allah swt, melainkan hanyalah sekadar pertanyaan meminta penjelasan. Setelah penjelasan itu diberikan dan setelah mereka mengakui kelemahan mereka, maka dengan rendah hati dan penuh ketaatan mereka mematuhi kehendak Allah, terutama dalam pengangkatan Adam a.s. menjadi khalifah. Mereka memuji Allah swt karena Dia telah memberikan ilmu pengetahuan kepada mereka sesuai dengan kemampuan yang ada pada mereka. Selanjutnya, mereka mengakui pula dengan penuh keyakinan dan menyerah kepada ilmu Allah yang Maha luas dan hikmah-Nya yang Maha Tinggi. Lalu mereka menegaskan bahwa hanyalah Allah yang Maha Mengetahui dan Maha Bijaksana. Hal ini mengandung suatu pelajaran bahwa manusia yang telah dikaruniai ilmu pengetahuan yang lebih banyak dari yang diberikan kepada para malaikat dan makhluk-makhluk lainnya, hendaklah selalu mensyukuri nikmat tersebut, serta tidak menjadi sombong dan angkuh karena ilmu pengetahuan yang dimilikinya serta kekuatan dan daya pikirannya. Sebab, betapa pun tingginya ilmu pengetahuan dan teknologi manusia pada zaman kita sekarang ini, namun masih banyak rahasia-rahasia alam ciptaan Tuhan yang belum dapat dijangkau oleh ilmu pengetahuan manusia, misalnya ialah hakikat roh yang ada pada diri manusia sendiri. Allah swt. telah memperingatkan bahwa ilmu pengetahuan yang dikaruniakan-Nya kepada manusia hanyalah sedikit sekali dibandingkan kepada ilmu dan hakikat-Nya. Allah berfirman: "Hai Adam, beritahukanlah kepada mereka nama-nama benda ini". Maka setelah diberitahukannya kepada mereka nama-nama benda itu, Allah berfirman: "Bukankah sudah Ku katakan kepadamu, bahwa sesungguhnya Aku mengetahui rahasia langit dan bumi dan mengetahui apa yang kamu lahirkan dan apa yang kamu sembunyikan?"(QS.2:33). Setelah ternyata para malaikat itu tidak tahu dan tidak dapat menyebutkan nama benda-benda yang diperlihatkan Allah kepada mereka, maka Allah memerintahkan kepada Adam a.s. untuk memberitahukan nama-nama tersebut kepada mereka. Dan Adam melaksanakan perintah itu lalu diberitahukannya nama-nama tersebut kepada mereka. Kemudian, setelah Adam a.s. selesai memberitahukan nama-nama tersebut kepada malaikat dan diterangkannya pula sifat-sifat dan keistimewaan masing masing makhluk itu, maka Allah berfirman kepada para malaikat itu, bahwa Dia telah pernah mengatakan kepada mereka bahwa sesungguhnya Dia mengetahui pula apa-apa yang mereka lahirkan dengan ucapan-ucapan mereka dan pikiran-pikiran yang mereka sembunyikan dalam hati mereka. Selamanya Dia menciptakan sesuatu tidaklah dengan sia-sia belaka, melainkan berdasarkan ilmu dan hikmah-Nya. Dalam masalah pengangkatan Adam a.s. sebagai khalifah di bumi ini terkandung suatu makna yang tinggi dari hikmah Ilahi yang tak diketahui oleh para malaikat menjadi khalifah dan penghuni bumi ini, niscaya mereka tidak akan dapat mengetahui rahasia-rahasia alam ini, serta ciri khas yang ada pada masing-masing makhluk, sebab para malaikat itu sangat berbeda keadaannya dengan manusia. mereka tidak mempunyai kebutuhan apa-apa, seperti sanding pangan dan harta benda. Maka seandainya merekalah yang dijadikan penghuni dan penguasa di bumi ini, niscaya tak akan ada sawah dan ladang, tak akan ada pabrik dan tambang-tambang, tak akan ada gedung-gedung yang tinggi menjulang, tak akan ada musik dan seni. Juga tidak akan lahir bermacam-macam ilmu pengetahuan dan teknologi seperti yang telah dicapai umat manusia sampai sekarang ini yang hampir tak terhitung jumlahnya. Pengangkatan manusia menjadi khalifah, berarti pengangkatan Adam a.s. dan keturunannya menjadi khalifah terhadap makhluk-makhluk lainnya di bumi ini karena keistimewaan yang telah dikaruniakan Allah swt. kepada mereka yang tidak diberikan kepada makhluk-makhluk-Nya yang lain, seperti kekuatan akal yang memungkinkan untuk mengembangkan ilmu pengetahuannya guna menyelidiki dan memanfaatkan isi alam di bumi ini, seperti kesanggupan mengatur alam menurut ketentuan-ketentuan Allah. Dengan kekuatan akalnya itu, manusia dapat memiliki pengetahuan dan kemampuan yang hampir tak terbatas, serta dapat melakukan hal-hal yang hampir tak terhitung jumlahnya. Dengan kekuatan itu, manusia dapat menemukan hal-hal yang baru yang belum ada sebelumnya. Dia dapat mengolah tanah yang gersang menjadi tanah yang subur. Dan dengan bahan bahan yang telah tersedia di bumi ini manusia dapat membuat variasi-variasi baru yang belum pernah ada. Dikawinkannya kuda dengan keledai, maka lahirlah hewan jenis baru yang belum pernah ada sebelumnya, yaitu hewan yang disebut "bagal". Dengan mengawinkan atau menyilangkan tumbuh-tumbuhan yang berbunga putih dengan yang berbunga merah, maka lahirlah tumbuh-tumbuhan jenis baru, yang berbunga merah putih. Diolahnya logam menjadi barang-barang perhiasan yang beraneka ragam dan alat-alat keperluan hidupnya sehari-hari. Diolahnya bermacam -macam tumbuh-tumbuhan menjadi bahan pakaian dan makanan mereka. Dan pada zaman sekarang ini dapat disaksikan berjuta-juta macam benda hasil penemuan manusia, baik yang kecil maupun yang besar, sebagai hasil kekuatan akalnya. Adapun para malaikat, mereka tidak mempunyai hawa nafsu yang akan mendorong mereka untuk bekerja mengolah benda-benda alam ini dan memanfaatkannya untuk kepentingan hidup mereka. Oleh karena itu, apabila mereka yang telah dikaruniakan kekuatan akal serta bakat-bakat dan kemampuan yang demikian diangkat menjadi khalifah Allah di bumi, maka hal ini adalah wajar dan menunjukkan pula kesempurnaan ilmu dan ketinggian hikmah Allah swt. dalam mengatur makhluk-Nya. Dari ketiga ayat diatas kalau kita telaah lbih dalam, disini kita dengan mata hati kita dalam cahaya kemuliaan melihat apa yang dilihat para malaikat di kalangan makhluk yang tinggi. Kita menyaksikan sejemput kecil dari rahasia Ilahi yang besar yang dititipkan-NYA pada makhluk yang bernama manusia, ketika Dia menyerahkan kepadanya kunci-kunci kekhalifahan . Rahasia kekuasaan itu diisyaratkan pada nama-nama benda, serta pada penamaan orang-orang dan benda-benda yang berupa lafal-lafal yang terucapkan hingga menjadikannya isyarat-isyarat bagi orang-orang dan benda-benda yang dapat diindra. Kita mengetahui nilainya ketika kita menggambarkan kesulitan yang sangat besar , yang tidak dapat kita mengerti seandainya manusia tidak diberi kekuasaan (kemampuan) terhadap isyarat nama benda-benda itu. Kita juga akan kesulitan dalam memahami dan mempergaulinya ketika masing-masing orang memberikan pemahaman tentang sesuatu kepada yang lain membutuhkan kehadiran sesuatu dihadapanya untuk memahami keadaanya. Misalmya keadaan gunung yang tidak ada jalan untuk memahaminya kecuali pergi kegunung itu, keadaan seseorang yang tidak ada jalan untuk mengetahuinya kecuali menghadirtkan orang itu. Ini semua kesulitan yang amat besar yang tidak terbayangkan dalam kehidupan , dan kehidupan itu tidak akan dapat berjalan dijalanya seandainya Allah tidak memberikan kepada manusia kekuasaan terhadap isyarat-isyarat dengan nama benda-benda itu. Sedangkan malaikat tidak memerlukan kekhususuan ini, karena tidak ada urgensinya dengan tugas-tugas mereka . Oleh karena itu mereka tidak diberi yang demikian. Maka ketika Allah mengajarkan rahasia ini kepada Adam dan mengemukakannya kepada para malaikat apa yang telah dikemukakan-NYA kepada Adam mereka tidak mengetahui nama-nama itu. Mereka tidak mengetahui bagaimana menempatkan rumus-rumus (isyarat-isyarat) lafal bagi sesuatu dan seseorang. Menyatakan kelemahanya dengan menyucikan Tuhanya, mengakui kelemahanya itu dan mengakui keterbatasan pengetahuanya. Padahal semua itu sudah diketahui dan dikenal oleh Adam. Kemudian didoronglah mereka untuk mengetahui hikmah Tuhan yang maha Mengetahui lagi Maha Bijaksana. “Bukankah sudah Ku katakan kepadamu, bahwa sesungguhnya Aku mengetahui rahasia langit dan bumi dan mengetahui apa yang kamu lahirkan dan apa yang kamu sembunyikan?”’.> MENJAGA KEMULIAAN MANUSIA (2)

KPK Periksa Kepala Bapedda Banten

Komisi Pemberantasan Korupsi (KPK) terus akan melakukan penelusuran kasus dugaan korupsi proyek pengadaan alat kesehatan di Provinsi Banten dengan memeriksa sejumlah saksi. 
 
Hari ini, Kamis (13/3/2014), KPK akan menjadwalkan pemeriksaan terhadap PNS Dinas Kesehatan Banten, Aridawati Koto, Kepala Bapedda Banten, Widodo Hadi, dari swasta Yuni Astuti, dan manajer Operasional PT BPP, Dadang Prijatna.
 
Menurut Kepala Bagian Informasi dan Pemberitaan KPK, Priharsa Nugraha, sejumlah pihak itu akan diperiksa sebagai saksi. "Diperiksa sebagai saksi," katanya saat dikonfirmasi.
 
Dari saksi yang telah dijadwalkan, baru Widodo yang sudah terlihat hadir di Gedung KPK. Ia tiba sekira pukul 09.50 WIB dengan mengenakan baju batik warna hijau.
 
Saat tiba, ia tidak berkomentar seputar pemeriksaan yang akan dijalaninya hari ini. Dalam perkara ini, KPK juga telah menetapkan beberapa tersangka diantaranya Gubernur Banten, Ratu Atut Chosiyah dan adiknya Tubagus Chaeri Wardana alias Wawan.

2014 Ini Adalah Tahun Politik Berbahaya

Saco-Indonesia.com - SITUASI berbahaya dalam kehidupan politik sering mengambil bentuk yang rumit dan halus.

Tidak selalu tentang kekuatan dominan yang mampu menyingkirkan oposisi. Bahaya itu bisa muncul dari keterlibatan masyarakat sipil. Kondisi Indonesia tahun 1960-an dikenal melalui film The Year of Living Dangerously. Di sana, simbol yang dihasilkan kekuatan politik dominan untuk menggalang kekuatan digunakan masyarakat sipil guna meneror masyarakat sipil lainnya. Namun, bahaya politik hampir selalu didorong apa yang terjadi di arena politik negara.

Tahun 2014 adalah the year of politicking dangerously untuk Indonesia yang juga melibatkan masyarakat sipil. Ia akan membuktikan apakah terjadi keadaan yang disebut ilmuwan politik Michael Johnston sebagai warga negara yang terpaksa tak demokra- tis. Kondisi ini lahir pada konteks negara dengan sistem politik formal demokratis, tetapi belum mampu menghadirkan mekanisme akuntabilitas para pejabat publik.  

Warga sipil yang mengambil sikap tak demokratis secara putus asa dan pragmatis memilih wakil rakyat atau pemimpin semata karena orang itu berasal dari daerahnya. Berdasarkan pertimbangan sosial mereka, wakil yang demikian setidaknya akan sedikit  memberikan perhatian atau keuntungan. Pada dasarnya sudah terjadi ketidakpercayaan yang sangat luas pada sistem politik dan para politisi seperti di Indonesia sekarang. Semua partai hampir tak dapat dipercayai. Berdasarkan pandangan seperti itu, rakyat apatis menilai calon dengan berbagai kriteria yang seharusnya secara sehat dikembangkan.

Apatisme warga

Apatisme warga negara merupakan salah satu bentukan sis- tem politik demokratis formal, tetapi tanpa akuntabilitas.  Berbeda dengan pandangan populer, demokrasi secara substansial bukan soal keterwakilan. Demokrasi yang demikian tidak menjamin perbaikan kesejahteraan yang luas. Proses perwakilan penuh problematik.

Bahkan, seandainya partai berusaha mewakili berbagai kepentingan, hal ini bergantung pada kemampuan partai/individu partai dan masyarakat tentang makna keterwakilan. Problemnya bukan menyuarakan kepentingan, melainkan menempatkan kepentingan dalam pertimbangan kepentingan yang beragam.

Bukan waktu yang menentukan kematangan demokrasi, tetapi bagaimana mekanisme membuat proses belajar tidak terdistorsi.  Kemunculan fenomena rakyat yang terpaksa menjadi tak demokratis adalah salah satu akibat dari terjadinya distorsi dalam proses demokratisasi (ke arah yang lebih tinggi).

Demokratisasi secara berbeda di setiap negara memunculkan institusi dan organisasinya sendiri, formal atau informal.  Antara institusi dan organisasi dengan yang muncul belakangan pasti ada berbagai ”jembatan”-nya. Sebagian dari jembatan itu berbahaya bagi demokratisasi.

Pertanyaan dasar bagi penulis tentang demokratisasi adalah apakah praktik yang berlangsung memperkuat atau memperlemah akuntabilitas dari setiap pemain yang menangani sumber daya publik? Jika tidak, akan terjadi penyimpangan sumber daya publik.

Penyimpangan ini dilakukan melalui hubungan dengan wilayah yang sebelumnya dianggap ilegal. Sebagai contoh, hubungan antara penegak hukum dan organisasi kemasyarakatan yang anarkistis, hubungan antara pihak yang memeriksa dan pihak yang diperiksa, hubungan antara peradilan dan broker, pejabat publik dan perusahaan abal-abal, dan sebagainya.

Melalui hubungan-hubungan ini, sumber daya publik keluar dan digunakan tidak semestinya. Lebih berbahaya lagi adalah terjadi penguatan pengorganisasian di antara pihak yang berhubungan secara ilegal atau tidak absah. Nah, apakah mekanisme demokrasi yang ada, yang dijadikan patokan, dapat mengontrol wilayah-wilayah ini.

Proses pemilu, misalnya, sama sekali tidak mampu mengontrol pembalikan wilayah ilegal ini. Hubungan antara lembaga pemerintah dan parlemen   yang  digambarkan seimbang dalam sistem demokrasi  justru memunculkan hubungan konspiratif. Para broker merupakan jembatan medium hubungan ilegal ini.

Kita boleh berdebat tentang apakah di antara calon presiden ada yang berpotensi membawa perbaikan atau tidak. Namun, persoalan dalam pemilu legislatif dapat menjadi batu besar perubahan Indonesia ke arah lebih baik. Sebagai contoh, institusi DPR periode 2009-2014 yang kinerjanya buruk sekali dan sebagian anggotanya terbukti ataupun diduga melakukan pengkhianatan publik,  sekitar 90 persen anggotanya mencalonkan diri kembali.

Jembatan ilegal

Persoalan jembatan ilegal sudah tumbuh begitu banyak dalam sistem demokrasi Indonesia. Demokratisasi adalah proses penguatan negara bersamaan dengan penguatan masyarakat. Pemimpin mendatang, jika ingin melakukan perubahan, harus dapat mengembangkan mekanisme yang menjadi pendorong keterlibatan masyarakat sipil sebagai energi melawan politisi yang ingin mengambil keuntungan diri dan kelompok. Pengetahuan teknokratik tentang hubungan kerja sama institusi negara dan masyarakat sipil sangat dibutuhkan. Penulis berpendapat ini bagian penting menilai para calon.

Akuntabilitas DPR merupakan bagian sangat penting bagi perjalanan bangsa ke depan. Meski penulis sangat skeptis dengan para calon saat ini, siapa tahu ada partai yang membuat langkah besar sebagai komitmen memperbaiki institusi DPR. Penulis, dan (yakin) juga banyak rakyat Indonesia, ingin mendengar konsep mereka lapisan demi lapisan.

Sumber : Kompas.com

Editor : Maulana Lee

PEMELIHARAAN TERNAK KERBAU

Tinjauan Umum Ternak kerbau sudah dipelihara petani Indonesia dari dahulu kala untuk berbagai tujuan, terutama sebagai sumber tenaga untuk pengolahan tanah dan alat transportasi. Ternak dipelihara dengan cara ekstensif dengan pemberian pakan hijauan dari rumput dengan cara penggembalaan maupun dengan mencari rumput dan memberikannya pada ternak Menurut sejarah perkembangan domestikasi, ternak kerbau yang berkembang di seluruh dunia berasal dari daerah sekitar India. Pada dasarnya ternak kerbau digunakan sebagai ternak kerja, selanjutnya untuk penghasil daging dan juga penghasil susu. Ternak kerbau diklasifikasi sebagai kerbau sungai dan kerbau Lumpur. Di Indonesia lebih banyak terdapat kerbau Lumpur dan hanya sedikit terdapat kerbau sungai di Sumatera Utara yaitu kerbau Murrah yang dipelihara oleh masyarakat keturuan India dan digunakan sebagai penghasil susu. Populasi ternak kerbau di dunia diperkirakan sebanyak 130−150 juta ekor, sekitar 95% berada di belahan Asia selatan, khususnya di India, Pakistan, China bagian selatan dan Thailand (SONI, 1986). Populasi ternak kerbau di Indonesia hanya sekitar 2% dari populasi dunia. Hanya sedikit sekali kerbau lumpur yang dimanfaatkan air susunya, karena produksi susunya sangat rendah yaitu hanya 1−1,5 l/hari, dibandingkan dengan tipe sungai yang mampu menghasilkan susu sebanyak 6−7 l/hari. Namun demikian, di beberapa daerah, susu kerbau lumpur telah lama dimanfaatkan oleh masyarakat. Di Pulau Sumatera banyak ditemukan ternak kerbau mulai dari dataran rendah sampai dengan dataran tinggi. Disamping itu ditemukan juga di daerah rawa, namun masih termasuk dalam bangsa kerbau lumpur. Potensi pakan yang cukup banyak tersedia menjadikan ternak kerbau sebagai komoditas unggulan di sebagian besar daerah di Pulau Sumatera. Usaha ternak kerbau merupakan usaha peternakan rakyat yang dipelihara sebagai usaha sampingan, menggunakan tenaga kerja keluarga dengan skala usaha yang kecil karena kekurangan modal. Disamping itu sebagian peternaknya adalah penggaduh dengan sistem bagi hasil dari anak yang lahir setiap tahunnya. Pemeliharaan ternak umumnya bergantung pada ketersediaan rumput alam. Siang hari peternak menggiring ternak ke tempat penggembalaan dan malam hari dibawa ke dekat pemukiman dan biasanya tanpa kandang, ternak hanya diikat di belakang rumah petani, dan belum biasa memberikan pakan tambahan.Selain produksi dagingnya, kerbau juga sebagai penghasil susu yang diolah dan dijual petani dalam bentuk dadih di Sumatera Barat serta gula puan, sagon puan dan minyak samin di Sumatera Selatan. Secara umum produktivitas susu masih rendah yaitu sekitar 1−2 liter/ekor/hari. Dibandingkan dengan ternak sapi, ternak kerbau agak kurang mendapat perhatian dari berbagai kalangan. Konsekuensinya, produktivitas ternak relatif rendah, bahkan populasi ternak kerbau di Sumatera hanya sedikit meningkat, walaupun masih jauh lebih tinggi dari rataan nasional. Pemeliharaan Ternak Kerbau di Pandaisikek Ternak kerbau yang dipelihara di Pandaisikek adalah jenis kerbau sawah. Tujuan pemeliharaan ternak kerbau tersebut bukanlah  untuk pengembang biakan ataupun penghasil susu, sebab tidak akan kita temukan ternak kerbau  betina di negeri ini. Kerbau yang di pelihara di Pandaisikek hanyalah kerbau jantan dengan tujuan pemeliharaan sebagai berikut: -         Sebagai tenaga pembajak sawah -         Sebagai tenaga kilang tebu (gula tradisional) -         Untuk tujuan penggemukan Kerbau sebagai Tenaga pembajak Sawah : Kerbau merupakan ternak yang telah lama dikenal dan dipelihara petani. Salah satu tujuan utama memelihara kerbau adalah sebagai sumber tenaga kerja untuk membantu kegiatan pertanian terutama membajak sawah, Bajak adalah salah satu alat pengolah tanah tradisional dalam system pertanian orang Pandasikek. Alat tradisional ini berfungsi untuk menggemburkan tanah sebelum dilakukan pemetakan lahan untuk di Tanami palawija ataupun untuk penggemburan tanah setelah di tanami palawija dan kembali di tanam padi. Penggemburan tanah dengan pembajakan sebelum di Tanami palawija adalah pembajakan kering (tanpa air), sedangkan penggemburan tanah dengan pembajakan sebelum di tanami padi adalah pembajakan basah , dimana sebelum pembajakan sawah digenangi dan direndam terlebih dahulu lebih kurang selama satu minggu. Pemeliharaan ternak kerbau sebagai tenaga kilang tebu: Industri gula tebu tradisonal atau lebih dikenal dengan istilah saka telah member konstribusi yang besar bagi perekonomian masayarakat pandaisikek. Pemerasan air tebu sebelum di masak menjadi gula membutuhkan tenaga yang besar, disini peran tenaga kerbau untuk menarik kilang tebu masih sangat dibutuhkan. Ada satu kilang tebu yang sudah menggunakan diesel sabagai alat kilang akan tetapi terkendala dalam memasak air tebu menjadi gula, dimana terjadi penumpukan air tebu yang akan di masak sehingga kualitas gula yang diharapkan tidak tercapai. Dengan demikian sampai saat ini kerbau sebagai tenaga penarik kilang tebu masih sangat efektif dan seimbang karena tidak terjadi penumpukan air tebu sebelum dimasak menjadi gula. Pemeliharaan ternak kerbau untuk tujuan penggemukan : Tujuan pemeliharaan kerbau untuk penggemukan tidak lain sebagai tabungan, kegemaran, sumber pendapatan tambahan dan untuk upacara adat. Demikian pentingnya kehadiran kerbau untuk petani, namun perhatian pemerintah terhadap kerbau sangat kurang, penelitian-penelitian mengenai kerbau hampir tidak ada. Ketiga tujuan pemeliharaan tersebut di atas merupakan suatu kesatuan yang utuh, disamping ternak kerbau sebagai sumber tenaga pembajak sawah dan penarik kilang tebu, seiring dengan berjalannya waktu maka ternak kerbau tersebut makin besar dan makin bertambah berat badan. Sehingga dapat dikatakan bahwa pemeliharaan ternak kerbau di pandaisikek memilki kegunaan ganda (multi purpose).> PEMELIHARAAN TERNAK KERBAU

How Some Men Fake an 80-Hour Workweek, and Why It Matters

Imagine an elite professional services firm with a high-performing, workaholic culture. Everyone is expected to turn on a dime to serve a client, travel at a moment’s notice, and be available pretty much every evening and weekend. It can make for a grueling work life, but at the highest levels of accounting, law, investment banking and consulting firms, it is just the way things are.

Except for one dirty little secret: Some of the people ostensibly turning in those 80- or 90-hour workweeks, particularly men, may just be faking it.

Many of them were, at least, at one elite consulting firm studied by Erin Reid, a professor at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business. It’s impossible to know if what she learned at that unidentified consulting firm applies across the world of work more broadly. But her research, published in the academic journal Organization Science, offers a way to understand how the professional world differs between men and women, and some of the ways a hard-charging culture that emphasizes long hours above all can make some companies worse off.

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Ms. Reid interviewed more than 100 people in the American offices of a global consulting firm and had access to performance reviews and internal human resources documents. At the firm there was a strong culture around long hours and responding to clients promptly.

“When the client needs me to be somewhere, I just have to be there,” said one of the consultants Ms. Reid interviewed. “And if you can’t be there, it’s probably because you’ve got another client meeting at the same time. You know it’s tough to say I can’t be there because my son had a Cub Scout meeting.”

Some people fully embraced this culture and put in the long hours, and they tended to be top performers. Others openly pushed back against it, insisting upon lighter and more flexible work hours, or less travel; they were punished in their performance reviews.

The third group is most interesting. Some 31 percent of the men and 11 percent of the women whose records Ms. Reid examined managed to achieve the benefits of a more moderate work schedule without explicitly asking for it.

They made an effort to line up clients who were local, reducing the need for travel. When they skipped work to spend time with their children or spouse, they didn’t call attention to it. One team on which several members had small children agreed among themselves to cover for one another so that everyone could have more flexible hours.

A male junior manager described working to have repeat consulting engagements with a company near enough to his home that he could take care of it with day trips. “I try to head out by 5, get home at 5:30, have dinner, play with my daughter,” he said, adding that he generally kept weekend work down to two hours of catching up on email.

Despite the limited hours, he said: “I know what clients are expecting. So I deliver above that.” He received a high performance review and a promotion.

What is fascinating about the firm Ms. Reid studied is that these people, who in her terminology were “passing” as workaholics, received performance reviews that were as strong as their hyper-ambitious colleagues. For people who were good at faking it, there was no real damage done by their lighter workloads.

It calls to mind the episode of “Seinfeld” in which George Costanza leaves his car in the parking lot at Yankee Stadium, where he works, and gets a promotion because his boss sees the car and thinks he is getting to work earlier and staying later than anyone else. (The strategy goes awry for him, and is not recommended for any aspiring partners in a consulting firm.)

A second finding is that women, particularly those with young children, were much more likely to request greater flexibility through more formal means, such as returning from maternity leave with an explicitly reduced schedule. Men who requested a paternity leave seemed to be punished come review time, and so may have felt more need to take time to spend with their families through those unofficial methods.

The result of this is easy to see: Those specifically requesting a lighter workload, who were disproportionately women, suffered in their performance reviews; those who took a lighter workload more discreetly didn’t suffer. The maxim of “ask forgiveness, not permission” seemed to apply.

It would be dangerous to extrapolate too much from a study at one firm, but Ms. Reid said in an interview that since publishing a summary of her research in Harvard Business Review she has heard from people in a variety of industries describing the same dynamic.

High-octane professional service firms are that way for a reason, and no one would doubt that insane hours and lots of travel can be necessary if you’re a lawyer on the verge of a big trial, an accountant right before tax day or an investment banker advising on a huge merger.

But the fact that the consultants who quietly lightened their workload did just as well in their performance reviews as those who were truly working 80 or more hours a week suggests that in normal times, heavy workloads may be more about signaling devotion to a firm than really being more productive. The person working 80 hours isn’t necessarily serving clients any better than the person working 50.

In other words, maybe the real problem isn’t men faking greater devotion to their jobs. Maybe it’s that too many companies reward the wrong things, favoring the illusion of extraordinary effort over actual productivity.

Jozef Paczynski, Inmate Barber to Auschwitz Commandant, Dies at 95

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Ben E. King, Soulful Singer of ‘Stand by Me,’ Dies at 76

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Rhapsody, a Lofty Literary Journal, Perused at 39,000 Feet

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Last summer at a writers’ workshop in Oregon, the novelists Anthony Doerr, Karen Russell and Elissa Schappell were chatting over cocktails when they realized they had all published work in the same magazine. It wasn’t one of the usual literary outlets, like Tin House, The Paris Review or The New Yorker. It was Rhapsody, an in-flight magazine for United Airlines.

It seemed like a weird coincidence. Then again, considering Rhapsody’s growing roster of A-list fiction writers, maybe not. Since its first issue hit plane cabins a year and a half ago, Rhapsody has published original works by literary stars like Joyce Carol Oates, Rick Moody, Amy Bloom, Emma Straub and Mr. Doerr, who won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction two weeks ago.

As airlines try to distinguish their high-end service with luxuries like private sleeping chambers, showers, butler service and meals from five-star chefs, United Airlines is offering a loftier, more cerebral amenity to its first-class and business-class passengers: elegant prose by prominent novelists. There are no airport maps or disheartening lists of in-flight meal and entertainment options in Rhapsody. Instead, the magazine has published ruminative first-person travel accounts, cultural dispatches and probing essays about flight by more than 30 literary fiction writers.

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An airline might seem like an odd literary patron. But as publishers and writers look for new ways to reach readers in a shaky retail climate, many have formed corporate alliances with transit companies, including American Airlines, JetBlue and Amtrak, that provide a captive audience.

Mark Krolick, United Airlines’ managing director of marketing and product development, said the quality of the writing in Rhapsody brings a patina of sophistication to its first-class service, along with other opulent touches like mood lighting, soft music and a branded scent.

“The high-end leisure or business-class traveler has higher expectations, even in the entertainment we provide,” he said.

Some of Rhapsody’s contributing writers say they were lured by the promise of free airfare and luxury accommodations provided by United, as well as exposure to an elite audience of some two million first-class and business-class travelers.

“It’s not your normal Park Slope Community Bookstore types who read Rhapsody,” Mr. Moody, author of the 1994 novel “The Ice Storm,” who wrote an introspective, philosophical piece about traveling to the Aran Islands of Ireland for Rhapsody, said in an email. “I’m not sure I myself am in that Rhapsody demographic, but I would like them to buy my books one day.”

In addition to offering travel perks, the magazine pays well and gives writers freedom, within reason, to choose their subject matter and write with style. Certain genres of flight stories are off limits, naturally: no plane crashes or woeful tales of lost luggage or rude flight attendants, and nothing too risqué.

“We’re not going to have someone write about joining the mile-high club,” said Jordan Heller, the editor in chief of Rhapsody. “Despite those restrictions, we’ve managed to come up with a lot of high-minded literary content.”

Guiding writers toward the right idea occasionally requires some gentle prodding. When Rhapsody’s executive editor asked Ms. Russell to contribute an essay about a memorable flight experience, she first pitched a story about the time she was chaperoning a group of teenagers on a trip to Europe, and their delayed plane sat at the airport in New York for several hours while other passengers got progressively drunker.

“He pointed out that disaster flights are not what people want to read about when they’re in transit, and very diplomatically suggested that maybe people want to read something that casts air travel in a more positive light,” said Ms. Russell, whose novel “Swamplandia!” was a finalist for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize.

She turned in a nostalgia-tinged essay about her first flight on a trip to Disney World when she was 6. “The Magic Kingdom was an anticlimax,” she wrote. “What ride could compare to that first flight?”

Ms. Oates also wrote about her first flight, in a tiny yellow propeller plane piloted by her father. The novelist Joyce Maynard told of the constant disappointment of never seeing her books in airport bookstores and the thrill of finally spotting a fellow plane passenger reading her novel “Labor Day.” Emily St. John Mandel, who was a finalist for the National Book Award in fiction last year, wrote about agonizing over which books to bring on a long flight.

“There’s nobody that’s looked down their noses at us as an in-flight magazine,” said Sean Manning, the magazine’s executive editor. “As big as these people are in the literary world, there’s still this untapped audience for them of luxury travelers.”

United is one of a handful of companies showcasing work by literary writers as a way to elevate their brands and engage customers. Chipotle has printed original work from writers like Toni Morrison, Jeffrey Eugenides and Barbara Kingsolver on its disposable cups and paper bags. The eyeglass company Warby Parker hosts parties for authors and sells books from 14 independent publishers in its stores.

JetBlue offers around 40 e-books from HarperCollins and Penguin Random House on its free wireless network, allowing passengers to read free samples and buy and download books. JetBlue will start offering 11 digital titles from Simon & Schuster soon. Amtrak recently forged an alliance with Penguin Random House to provide free digital samples from 28 popular titles, which passengers can buy and download over Amtrak’s admittedly spotty wireless service.

Amtrak is becoming an incubator for literary talent in its own right. Last year, it started a residency program, offering writers a free long-distance train trip and complimentary food. More than 16,000 writers applied and 24 made the cut.

Like Amtrak, Rhapsody has found that writers are eager to get onboard. On a rainy spring afternoon, Rhapsody’s editorial staff sat around a conference table discussing the June issue, which will feature an essay by the novelist Hannah Pittard and an unpublished short story by the late Elmore Leonard.

“Do you have that photo of Elmore Leonard? Can I see it?” Mr. Heller, the editor in chief, asked Rhapsody’s design director, Christos Hannides. Mr. Hannides slid it across the table and noted that they also had a photograph of cowboy spurs. “It’s very simple; it won’t take away from the literature,” he said.

Rhapsody’s office, an open space with exposed pipes and a vaulted brick ceiling, sits in Dumbo at the epicenter of literary Brooklyn, in the same converted tea warehouse as the literary journal N+1 and the digital publisher Atavist. Two of the magazine’s seven staff members hold graduate degrees in creative writing. Mr. Manning, the executive editor, has published a memoir and edited five literary anthologies.

Mr. Manning said Rhapsody was conceived from the start as a place for literary novelists to write with voice and style, and nobody had been put off that their work would live in plane cabins and airport lounges.

Still, some contributors say they wish the magazine were more widely circulated.

“I would love it if I could read it,” said Ms. Schappell, a Brooklyn-based novelist who wrote a feature story for Rhapsody’s inaugural issue. “But I never fly first class.”

Advertisement Politics Obama Finds a Bolder Voice on Race Issues

As he reflected on the festering wounds deepened by race and grievance that have been on painful display in America’s cities lately, President Obama on Monday found himself thinking about a young man he had just met named Malachi.

A few minutes before, in a closed-door round-table discussion at Lehman College in the Bronx, Mr. Obama had asked a group of black and Hispanic students from disadvantaged backgrounds what could be done to help them reach their goals. Several talked about counseling and guidance programs.

“Malachi, he just talked about — we should talk about love,” Mr. Obama told a crowd afterward, drifting away from his prepared remarks. “Because Malachi and I shared the fact that our dad wasn’t around and that sometimes we wondered why he wasn’t around and what had happened. But really, that’s what this comes down to is: Do we love these kids?”

Many presidents have governed during times of racial tension, but Mr. Obama is the first to see in the mirror a face that looks like those on the other side of history’s ledger. While his first term was consumed with the economy, war and health care, his second keeps coming back to the societal divide that was not bridged by his election. A president who eschewed focusing on race now seems to have found his voice again as he thinks about how to use his remaining time in office and beyond.

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Obama Speaks of a ‘Sense of Unfairness’

In the aftermath of racially charged unrest in places like Baltimore, Ferguson, Mo., and New York, Mr. Obama came to the Bronx on Monday for the announcement of a new nonprofit organization that is being spun off from his White House initiative called My Brother’s Keeper. Staked by more than $80 million in commitments from corporations and other donors, the new group, My Brother’s Keeper Alliance, will in effect provide the nucleus for Mr. Obama’s post-presidency, which will begin in January 2017.

“This will remain a mission for me and for Michelle not just for the rest of my presidency but for the rest of my life,” Mr. Obama said. “And the reason is simple,” he added. Referring to some of the youths he had just met, he said: “We see ourselves in these young men. I grew up without a dad. I grew up lost sometimes and adrift, not having a sense of a clear path. The only difference between me and a lot of other young men in this neighborhood and all across the country is that I grew up in an environment that was a little more forgiving.”

Organizers said the new alliance already had financial pledges from companies like American Express, Deloitte, Discovery Communications and News Corporation. The money will be used to help companies address obstacles facing young black and Hispanic men, provide grants to programs for disadvantaged youths, and help communities aid their populations.

Joe Echevarria, a former chief executive of Deloitte, the accounting and consulting firm, will lead the alliance, and among those on its leadership team or advisory group are executives at PepsiCo, News Corporation, Sprint, BET and Prudential Group Insurance; former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell; Senator Cory Booker, Democrat of New Jersey; former Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.; the music star John Legend; the retired athletes Alonzo Mourning, Jerome Bettis and Shaquille O’Neal; and the mayors of Indianapolis, Sacramento and Philadelphia.

The alliance, while nominally independent of the White House, may face some of the same questions confronting former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton as she begins another presidential campaign. Some of those donating to the alliance may have interests in government action, and skeptics may wonder whether they are trying to curry favor with the president by contributing.

“The Obama administration will have no role in deciding how donations are screened and what criteria they’ll set at the alliance for donor policies, because it’s an entirely separate entity,” Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, told reporters on Air Force One en route to New York. But he added, “I’m confident that the members of the board are well aware of the president’s commitment to transparency.”

The alliance was in the works before the disturbances last week after the death of Freddie Gray, the black man who suffered fatal injuries while in police custody in Baltimore, but it reflected the evolution of Mr. Obama’s presidency. For him, in a way, it is coming back to issues that animated him as a young community organizer and politician. It was his own struggle with race and identity, captured in his youthful memoir, “Dreams From My Father,” that stood him apart from other presidential aspirants.

But that was a side of him that he kept largely to himself through the first years of his presidency while he focused on other priorities like turning the economy around, expanding government-subsidized health care and avoiding electoral land mines en route to re-election.

After securing a second term, Mr. Obama appeared more emboldened. Just a month after his 2013 inauguration, he talked passionately about opportunity and race with a group of teenage boys in Chicago, a moment aides point to as perhaps the first time he had spoken about these issues in such a personal, powerful way as president. A few months later, he publicly lamented the death of Trayvon Martin, a black Florida teenager, saying that “could have been me 35 years ago.”

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That case, along with public ruptures of anger over police shootings in Ferguson and elsewhere, have pushed the issue of race and law enforcement onto the public agenda. Aides said they imagined that with his presidency in its final stages, Mr. Obama might be thinking more about what comes next and causes he can advance as a private citizen.

That is not to say that his public discussion of these issues has been universally welcomed. Some conservatives said he had made matters worse by seeming in their view to blame police officers in some of the disputed cases.

“President Obama, when he was elected, could have been a unifying leader,” Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, a Republican candidate for president, said at a forum last week. “He has made decisions that I think have inflamed racial tensions.”

On the other side of the ideological spectrum, some liberal African-American activists have complained that Mr. Obama has not done enough to help downtrodden communities. While he is speaking out more, these critics argue, he has hardly used the power of the presidency to make the sort of radical change they say is necessary.

The line Mr. Obama has tried to straddle has been a serrated one. He condemns police brutality as he defends most officers as honorable. He condemns “criminals and thugs” who looted in Baltimore while expressing empathy with those trapped in a cycle of poverty and hopelessness.

In the Bronx on Monday, Mr. Obama bemoaned the death of Brian Moore, a plainclothes New York police officer who had died earlier in the day after being shot in the head Saturday on a Queens street. Most police officers are “good and honest and fair and care deeply about their communities,” even as they put their lives on the line, Mr. Obama said.

“Which is why in addressing the issues in Baltimore or Ferguson or New York, the point I made was that if we’re just looking at policing, we’re looking at it too narrowly,” he added. “If we ask the police to simply contain and control problems that we ourselves have been unwilling to invest and solve, that’s not fair to the communities, it’s not fair to the police.”

Moreover, if society writes off some people, he said, “that’s not the kind of country I want to live in; that’s not what America is about.”

His message to young men like Malachi Hernandez, who attends Boston Latin Academy in Massachusetts, is not to give up.

“I want you to know you matter,” he said. “You matter to us.”

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Tribute for a Roller Hockey Warrior

Hockey is not exactly known as a city game, but played on roller skates, it once held sway as the sport of choice in many New York neighborhoods.

“City kids had no rinks, no ice, but they would do anything to play hockey,” said Edward Moffett, former director of the Long Island City Y.M.C.A. Roller Hockey League, in Queens, whose games were played in city playgrounds going back to the 1940s.

From the 1960s through the 1980s, the league had more than 60 teams, he said. Players included the Mullen brothers of Hell’s Kitchen and Dan Dorion of Astoria, Queens, who would later play on ice for the National Hockey League.

One street legend from the heyday of New York roller hockey was Craig Allen, who lived in the Woodside Houses projects and became one of the city’s hardest hitters and top scorers.

“Craig was a warrior, one of the best roller hockey players in the city in the ’70s,” said Dave Garmendia, 60, a retired New York police officer who grew up playing with Mr. Allen. “His teammates loved him and his opponents feared him.”

Young Craig took up hockey on the streets of Queens in the 1960s, playing pickup games between sewer covers, wearing steel-wheeled skates clamped onto school shoes and using a roll of electrical tape as the puck.

His skill and ferocity drew attention, Mr. Garmendia said, but so did his skin color. He was black, in a sport made up almost entirely by white players.

“Roller hockey was a white kid’s game, plain and simple, but Craig broke the color barrier,” Mr. Garmendia said. “We used to say Craig did more for race relations than the N.A.A.C.P.”

Mr. Allen went on to coach and referee roller hockey in New York before moving several years ago to South Carolina. But he continued to organize an annual alumni game at Dutch Kills Playground in Long Island City, the same site that held the local championship games.

The reunion this year was on Saturday, but Mr. Allen never made it. On April 26, just before boarding the bus to New York, he died of an asthma attack at age 61.

Word of his death spread rapidly among hundreds of his old hockey colleagues who resolved to continue with the event, now renamed the Craig Allen Memorial Roller Hockey Reunion.

The turnout on Saturday was the largest ever, with players pulling on their old equipment, choosing sides and taking once again to the rink of cracked blacktop with faded lines and circles. They wore no helmets, although one player wore a fedora.

Another, Vinnie Juliano, 77, of Long Island City, wore his hearing aids, along with his 50-year-old taped-up quads, or four-wheeled skates with a leather boot. Many players here never converted to in-line skates, and neither did Mr. Allen, whose photograph appeared on a poster hanging behind the players’ bench.

“I’m seeing people walking by wondering why all these rusty, grizzly old guys are here playing hockey,” one player, Tommy Dominguez, said. “We’re here for Craig, and let me tell you, these old guys still play hard.”

Everyone seemed to have a Craig Allen story, from his earliest teams at Public School 151 to the Bryant Rangers, the Woodside Wings, the Woodside Blues and more.

Mr. Allen, who became a yellow-cab driver, was always recruiting new talent. He gained the nickname Cabby for his habit of stopping at playgrounds all over the city to scout players.

Teams were organized around neighborhoods and churches, and often sponsored by local bars. Mr. Allen, for one, played for bars, including Garry Owen’s and on the Fiddler’s Green Jokers team in Inwood, Manhattan.

Play was tough and fights were frequent.

“We were basically street gangs on skates,” said Steve Rogg, 56, a mail clerk who grew up in Jackson Heights, Queens, and who on Saturday wore his Riedell Classic quads from 1972. “If another team caught up with you the night before a game, they tossed you a beating so you couldn’t play the next day.”

Mr. Garmendia said Mr. Allen’s skin color provoked many fights.

“When we’d go to some ignorant neighborhoods, a lot of players would use slurs,” Mr. Garmendia said, recalling a game in Ozone Park, Queens, where local fans parked motorcycles in a lineup next to the blacktop and taunted Mr. Allen. Mr. Garmendia said he checked a player into the motorcycles, “and the bikes went down like dominoes, which started a serious brawl.”

A group of fans at a game in Brooklyn once stuck a pole through the rink fence as Mr. Allen skated by and broke his jaw, Mr. Garmendia said, adding that carloads of reinforcements soon arrived to defend Mr. Allen.

And at another racially incited brawl, the police responded with six patrol cars and a helicopter.

Before play began on Saturday, the players gathered at center rink to honor Mr. Allen. Billy Barnwell, 59, of Woodside, recalled once how an all-white, all-star squad snubbed Mr. Allen by playing him third string. He scored seven goals in the first game and made first string immediately.

“He’d always hear racial stuff before the game, and I’d ask him, ‘How do you put up with that?’” Mr. Barnwell recalled. “Craig would say, ‘We’ll take care of it,’ and by the end of the game, he’d win guys over. They’d say, ‘This guy’s good.’”

Ben Carson Says He’ll Seek 2016 G.O.P. Nomination

ate in February, Dr. Ben Carson, the celebrated pediatric neurosurgeon turned political insurrectionist, was trying to check off another box on his presidential-campaign to-do list: hiring a press secretary. The lead prospect, a public-relations specialist named Deana Bass, had come to meet him at the dimly lit Capitol Hill office of Carson’s confidant and business manager, Armstrong Williams. Carson sat back and scrutinized her from behind a small granite table, as life-size cardboard cutouts of more conventional politicians — President Obama, with a tight smile, and Senator John McCain, glowering — loomed behind each of his shoulders. (The mock $3 bill someone had left on a table in Williams’s waiting room undercut any notion that this was a bipartisan zone; it featured Obama wearing a turban.)

Bass seemed momentarily speechless, and not just because no one had warned her that a New York Times reporter would be sitting in on her job interview. Though she knew Williams — a jack-of-all-trades entrepreneur who owns several television stations and a public-affairs business and who hosts a daily talk-radio show — through Washington’s small circle of black conservatives, the two hadn’t spoken in years until he called her two days earlier. He had been struggling to come up with the perfect national spokesperson, he told her. Then, at the gym, her name popped into his head; Williams was fairly certain she was the one. Sitting across from a likely candidate for president, Bass was adjusting to the idea that her life might be about to take a sudden chaotic turn.

“It’s like getting the most random call on a Monday that you simply do not see coming,” she said. “Oftentimes, that is how the Lord works.”

Carson concurred: “It’s always how he works in my life.” Carson is soft-spoken and often talks with his eyes half closed, frequently punctuating his sentences with a small laugh, even if the humor of his statement is not readily apparent. Bass told Carson that she had been a Republican staff member on Capitol Hill then worked for the Republican National Committee. In 2007 she started a Christian public-relations firm with her sister. She enjoyed working on the Hill, she said, but the pay wasn’t as high as the hours were long. “We figured that we worked like slaves for other people, and we wanted to work for ourselves.”

Carson stopped her. “You know you can’t mention that word, right?” Carson waited a beat, then laughed, and Williams and Bass joined in. He was getting to the point; he needed a professional who could help him check his penchant for creating uncontrolled controversy just by talking.

The Ben Carson movement began in 2013, when Carson, a neurosurgeon, whose operating-room prowess and up-from-poverty back story had made him the subject of a television movie and a regular on the inspirational-speaking circuit, was invited to address the annual National Prayer Breakfast in Washington. With Barack Obama sitting just two seats away, Carson warned that “moral decay” and “fiscal irresponsibility” could destroy America just as it did ancient Rome. He proposed a substitute for Obamacare — Health Savings Accounts, which, he said, would end any talk of “death panels” — and a flat-tax based on the concept of tithing. His address, combined with the president’s stony reaction, was a smash with Republican activists. Speaking and interview requests flooded in. Carson, then 61, announced his planned retirement a few weeks later, freeing his calendar to accept just about all of them. In the months that followed, his rhetoric became increasingly strident. The claim that drew the most attention, perhaps, was that Obamacare was “the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery.”

Bass’s own use of the word prompted Carson to ask her what she thought about that incident. She considered for a moment.

“If you want to reach people and have them even understand what you’re saying, there is a way to do it, without that hyperbole, that might be. . . . ” She paused. “I just think it’s important not to shut people off before they —”

Carson jumped in. “That doesn’t allow them to hear what you’re saying?”

Bass nodded.

Likening Obamacare to slavery — and slavery was incomparably worse, Carson said — had its political advantages for a candidacy like his. It was the kind of statement that stoked the angriest of the Republican voters: conservative stalwarts who can’t hear enough bad things about Obama. This, in turn, led to more talk-radio and Fox News appearances, more book sales, more donations to the super PAC started in his name, more support in the polls. (The day before the meeting, one poll of Republican voters showed Carson statistically tied for first place with Jeb Bush and Scott Walker.)

Rhetorical excess was good for business, but Carson now wants to be seen as more than a novelty candidate. He has come to learn that such extreme analogies, while true to his views, aren’t especially presidential. They alienate more moderate voters and, perhaps even more damaging, reinforce the impression that he is not “serious” — that he is another Herman Cain, the black former Godfather’s Pizza chief executive who rose to the top of the early presidential polls in 2011 but then bowed out before the Iowa caucuses, largely because of leaked allegations of sexual misconduct, which he denied but from which he never recovered. Cain lingers as a cautionary tale for the party as much as for a right-leaning candidate like Carson. The fact that Cain, with his folksy sayings (“shucky ducky”) and misnomers (“Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan”), reached the top of the national polls — much less that he was eventually followed there by the likes of Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, who all topped one or another poll in the 2012 primary season — wound up being a considerable embarrassment for the eventual nominee, Mitt Romney, and for the longtime party regulars who were trying to fast-track his way to the nomination.

Carson liked Bass and, without directly saying so, made it clear the job was hers for the taking. Carson’s campaign chairman, Terry Giles — a white lawyer whose clients have included the comedian Richard Pryor and the stepson of the model Anna Nicole Smith and who helped reconcile the business interests of the descendants of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. — had assembled a mostly white campaign team, including many from the 2012 Gingrich effort, and Carson wanted a person of color to speak for him. Bass said she would have to mull it over, pray about it. Carson nodded approvingly. “Pray about it,” he said. “See what you think.”

Williams knew the party was intent on protecting the eventual 2016 nominee from the same embarrassment Romney suffered. Already, suspiciously tough articles about Carson were showing up in conservative magazines and on right-wing websites. “They’re protecting these establishment candidates,” Williams said. “This is coming from within the house. This is family.” At the very least, he wanted to make sure that Carson didn’t do their work for them. (Carson would commit another unforced error a week later, when he told CNN that homosexuality was clearly a choice, because a lot of people go in prison straight and “when they come out, they’re gay”; he later apologized.)

“We need somebody to protect him, sometimes, from himself,” he told Bass — laughing, but only half kidding.

A candidacy like Carson’s presents a new kind of problem to the establishment wing of the G.O.P., which, at least since 1980, has selected its presidential nominees with a routine efficiency that Democrats could only envy. The establishment candidate has usually been a current or former governor or senator, blandly Protestant, hailing from the moderate, big-business wing of the party (or at least friendly with it) and almost always a second-, third- or fourth-time national contender — someone who had waited “his turn.” These candidates would tack predictably to the right during the primaries to satisfy the evangelicals, deficit hawks, libertarian leaners and other inconvenient but vital constituents who made up the “base” of the party. In return, the base would, after a brief flirtation with some fantasy candidate like Steve Forbes or Pat Buchanan, “hold their noses” and deliver their votes come November. This bargain was always tenuous, of course, and when some of the furthest-right activists turned against George W. Bush, citing (among other apostasies) his expansion of Medicare’s prescription drug benefit, it began to fall apart. After Barack Obama defeated McCain in 2008, the party’s once dependable base started to reconsider the wisdom of holding their noses at all.

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This insurgent attitude was helped along by changes in the nomination rules. In 2010, the Republican National Committee, hoping to capture the excitement of the coast-to-coast Democratic primary competition between Obama and Hillary Clinton, introduced new voting rules that required many of the early voting states to award some delegates to losing candidates, based on their shares of the vote. The proportional voting rules would encourage struggling candidates to stay in the primaries even after successive losses, as Clinton did, because they might be able to pull together enough delegates to take the nomination in a convention-floor fight or at least use them to bargain for a prime speaking slot or cabinet post.

This shift in incentives did not go unnoticed by potential 2012 candidates, nor did changes in election law that allowed billionaire donors to form super PACs in support of pet candidacies. At the same time, increasingly widespread broadband Internet access allowed candidates to reach supporters directly with video and email appeals and supporters to send money with the tap of a smartphone, making it easier than ever for individual candidates to ignore the wishes of the party.

Into this newly chaotic Republican landscape strode Mitt Romney. There could be no doubt that it was his turn, and yet his journey to the nomination was interrupted by one against-the-odds challenger after another — Cain, Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Ron Paul; always Ron Paul. It was easy to dismiss the 2012 primaries as a meaningless circus, but the onslaught did much more than tarnish the overall Republican brand. It also forced Romney to spend money he could have used against Obama and defend his right flank with embarrassing pandering that shadowed him through the general election. It was while trying to block a surge from Gingrich, for instance, that Romney told a debate audience that he was for the “self-deportation” of undocumented immigrants.

At the 2012 convention in Tampa, a group of longtime party hands, including Romney’s lawyer, Ben Ginsberg, gathered to discuss how to prevent a repeat of what had become known inside and outside the party as the “clown show.” Their aim was not just to protect the party but also to protect a potential President Romney from a primary challenge in 2016. They forced through new rules that would give future presumptive nominees more control over delegates in the event of a convention fight. They did away with the mandatory proportional delegate awards that encouraged long-shot candidacies. And, in a noticeably targeted effort, they raised the threshold that candidates needed to meet to enter their names into nomination, just as Ron Paul’s supporters were working to reach it. When John A. Boehner gaveled the rules in on a voice vote — a vote that many listeners heard as a tie, if not an outright loss — the hall erupted and a line of Ron Paul supporters walked off the floor in protest, along with many Tea Party members.

At a party meeting last winter, Reince Priebus, who as party chairman is charged with maintaining the support of all his constituencies, did restore some proportional primary and caucus voting, but only in states that held voting within a shortened two-week window. And he also condensed the nominating schedule to four and a half months from six months, and, for the first time required candidates to participate in a shortened debate schedule, determined by the party, not by the whims of the networks. (The panel that recommended those changes included names closely identified with the establishment — the former Bush White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, the Mississippi committeeman Haley Barbour and, notably, Jeb Bush’s closest adviser, Sally Bradshaw.)

Grass-roots activists have complained that the condensed schedule robs nonestablishment candidates — “movement candidates” like Carson — of the extra time they need to build momentum, money and organizations. But Priebus, who says the nomination could be close to settled by April, said it helped all the party’s constituencies when the nominee was decided quickly. “We don’t need a six-month slice-and-dice festival,” Priebus said when we spoke in mid-March. “While I can’t always control everyone’s mouth, I can control how long we can kill each other.”

All the rules changes were built to sidestep the problems of 2012. But the 2016 field is shaping up to be vastly different and far larger. A new Republican hints that he or she is considering a run seemingly every week. There are moderates like Gov. John Kasich of Ohio and former Gov. George Pataki of New York; no-compromise conservatives like Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and former Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania; business-wingers like the former Hewlett-Packard chief executive Carly Fiorina; one-of-a-kinds like Donald Trump — some 20 in all, a dozen or so who seem fairly serious about it. That opens the possibility of multiple candidates vying for all the major Republican constituencies, some of them possibly goaded along by super-PAC-funding billionaires, all of them trading wins and collecting delegates well into spring.

Giles says his candidate can capitalize on all that chaos. Rivals may laugh, but Giles argues that if Carson can make a respectable showing in Iowa, then win in South Carolina — or at least come in second should a home-state senator, Lindsey Graham, run — and come in second behind Bush or Senator Marco Rubio in their home state of Florida, he could be positioned to make a real run. But that would depend on avoiding pitfalls like Carson’s ill-considered comments on homosexuality. Rather than capitalizing on the chaos, Carson may only contribute to it.

Ben Carson is, in many ways, the ideal Republican presidential candidate. With a not-too-selective reading of his life story, conservative voters can — and do — see in him an inspiring, up-from-nowhere African-American who shares their beliefs, a right-wing answer to Barack Obama. Before he was born, his parents moved to Detroit from rural Tennessee as part of the second great migration. His father, Robert Solomon Carson, worked at a Cadillac factory. His mother, Sonya — who herself had grown up as one of 24 children and left school at third grade — cleaned houses. When Carson was 8, Sonya discovered that Robert was keeping a second family. She moved, with her two sons, into a rundown group house. It was in a part of town that Carson described to me as crawling with “big rats and roaches and all kinds of horrible things.” Sonya worked several jobs at a time and made up the shortfall with food stamps. (Carson has called for paring back the social safety net but not doing away with it.)

Carson recounts this story in his best-selling 1990 memoir, “Gifted Hands,” which also became the basis for a 2009 movie on TNT, starring Cuba Gooding Jr. as Carson. Raised as a Seventh Day Adventist, Carson realized that he wanted to become a physician during a church sermon about a missionary doctor who, while serving overseas, was almost attacked by thieves but found safety by putting his faith in God. When Carson, then 8, told his mother his new dream, “She said, ‘Absolutely, you could do it, you could do anything,’ ” he told me. Forced by his mother to read two extra books a week, he made it to Yale, then to medical school at the University of Michigan, where he decided to specialize in neurosurgery. He was selected for residency at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center, where he was named director of pediatric neurosurgery at 33, becoming the youngest person, and the first black person, to hold the title. He drew national attention by conducting a succession of operations that had never been performed successfully, most famously planning and managing the first separation of conjoined twins connected through major blood vessels in the brain.

Carson, a two-time Jimmy Carter voter, traces his conservative political awakening to a patient he met during the Reagan years. During a routine obstetrics rotation, he found himself treating an unwed pregnant teenager who had run away from her well-to-do parents. When Carson asked her how she was getting by, she informed him she was on public assistance; this led him to ponder the fact that the government was paying for the result of what he did not view as a “wise decision.” The incident, he says, fed his growing sense that the welfare system too often saps motivation and rewards irresponsible behavior. (When we spoke, he suggested that the government should cut off assistance to would-be unwed mothers, but only after warning them that it would do so within a certain amount of time, say five years. “I bet you’d see a dramatic decrease in unwed motherhood.”)

Carson’s friends at Hopkins say they do not remember him being particularly outspoken about his conservatism. He devoted most of his public engagement to urging poor kids in bad neighborhoods to use “these fancy brains God gave us,” through weekly school visits, student hospital tours and, ultimately, a multimillion-dollar scholarship program. “His issues were always medical care for the poor, education for the poor, equal opportunity — helping the less fortunate and really inspiring them as an example,” a mentor who named him to the chief pediatrics-neurosurgery post at Hopkins, Dr. Donlin Long, told me.

Even when Carson got the chance, in 1997, to speak in front of President Bill Clinton, at the national prayer breakfast, he mostly discussed the lack of role models for black children who were not sports stars or rappers. (There was possibly an oblique reference to Clinton’s sex scandals, when he told the audience that, if they are always honest, they won’t have to worry later about “skeletons in the closet.”)

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In 2011, Carson’s politics took a strident turn, mirroring that of many in his party during the Obama years. “America the Beautiful,” his sixth book, which he wrote with Candy Carson, his wife of 39 years, included a get-tough-on-illegal-immigration message and offered anti-establishment praise for the Tea Party. It suggested that blacks who voted for Obama only because he was black were themselves practicing a form of racism. (Earlier this year he admitted to Buzzfeed that portions of the book were lifted directly from several sources without proper attribution.) His prayer-breakfast performance in 2013, and the extremity of his remarks in the months afterward (Obamacare is the worst thing since slavery; the United States is “very much like Nazi Germany”; allowing same-sex marriage could lead to allowing bestiality), left some of his old friends bewildered. Students at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine protested his planned convocation address there in 2013, and he eventually backed out. When I asked Carson about the view at Hopkins that he had changed, he said his themes are still the same: “hard work, self-reliance, helping other people.” If he had become more overtly political, he said, it was only because the Obama years had led him to believe that “we’re really moving in a direction that is very, very destructive.”

None of this went unnoticed by campaign professionals. In August 2013, John Philip Sousa IV and Vernon Robinson, each of whom professes to be a virtual stranger to Carson, and who had previously been active in the anti-illegal-immigration movement, started the National Draft Ben Carson for President Committee. Sousa was just coming off a campaign to defend the sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, Joe Arpaio, from a recall effort, and he told me that he found Carson’s lack of political experience refreshing. “We have 500 guys and gals with probably a collective 5,000 years experience, and look at the mess we’re in,” he said.

Many others in the party feel the same way. Carson’s PAC finished 2014 with more than $13 million in donations, more than Ready for Hillary. Much of its money has gone toward further fund-raising, but Sousa — the great-grandson of the famous composer — points out that their effort has already built far more than just a war chest, organizing leaders in all 99 of Iowa’s counties. Regardless, Carson credits the fund-raising success of Sousa and Robinson with persuading him to enter the race.

Very early the morning after the job interview, Carson was in a black S.U.V., heading from Washington to the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in Oxon Hill, Md., where he was to give the opening candidate speech of the Conservative Political Action Conference. The event, which functions as an early tryout for Republican presidential contenders, tends to skew rightward in its audience, drawing many of the same sorts of people who shouted at Boehner in Tampa. As such, it tends to favor anti-establishment candidates, but the news leading up to this year’s event was that Jeb Bush hoped to make inroads there.

It was still dark when we set out, and I joked with Carson about the hour, telling him he’d better get used to it. He retorted that his career in pediatric brain surgery made him no stranger to early mornings. This is a big theme of Carson’s presidential pitch: that neither the rigors of the campaign nor those of the White House can faze a man who held children’s lives in his hands. His life in brain surgery has prepared him for the presidency, he maintains, better than lives in politics have for his rivals. At the very least, he says, it conditioned him against getting too worked up about any problem that isn’t life threatening. “I mean, it’s grueling, but interestingly enough, I don’t feel the pressure,” he said.

At the convention hall, we were quickly surrounded by admirers. Two women were already waiting to meet him — white, middle-aged volunteers for Carson’s super PAC, who had traveled from South Carolina. One of them, Chris Horne, was holding a dog-eared and taped Bible. A founding member of the Charleston Tea Party who went on to work for Gingrich’s successful South Carolina primary campaign in 2012, Horne lamented over the attacks that Carson was sure to face. “You served us, you served the Lord, just don’t let them steal that from you,” she said. Her friend told him, “You’ve got God behind you!” Such religious evocations trailed Carson constantly while I walked the CPAC floor with him. Evangelicals are impressed not only with his devotion to their politics but also with his career path; as one of them told me, what’s more pro-life than saving babies?

During our ride to the conference, Carson told me his speech was not looking to “feed the beast.” When his appointed time came, he kept his remarks as tame as promised. “Real compassion” meant “using our intellect” to help people “climb out of dependency and realize the American dream,” he said. The national debt is going to “destroy us,” Obamacare was about “redistribution and control,” but Republicans better come forward with their own alternative before they repeal it, he said.

Because his speech was first, and it started several minutes early, the auditorium was slow to fill. Still, the first day saw a crush of people seeking autographs and pictures as he roamed the hall. The Draft Carson committee’s 150 volunteers swarmed the auditorium, collecting emails and handing out “Run Ben Run” stickers. After a quick interview with Sean Hannity, the conservative-radio and Fox News host — his second in two days — Carson was off to Tampa.

In the hours that followed his talk, the hall offered a view in miniature of what the next 12 to 14 months might hold for the party. Chris Christie, sitting across from the tough-minded talk-radio host Laura Ingraham, boasted about his multiple vetoes of Planned Parenthood funding, his refusal to raise income taxes and his belief that “sometimes people need to be told to sit down and shut up.” Cruz, an audience favorite, warning his fellow Republicans against falling for a “squishy moderate,” declared, “Take all 125,000 I.R.S. agents and put ’em on our Southern border!” Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, surging in polls, boasted that if he could face down the 100,000 union supporters who protested his legislation limiting collective bargaining for public employees, he could certainly handle ISIS. The next day, the traditional CPAC favorite Rand Paul spoke, packing the hall with his supporters who chanted “President Paul.” He warned, counter to the overall hawkish tenor of the event, that “we should not succumb to the notion that a government inept at home will somehow become successful abroad.” But he also vowed to end foreign aid to countries whose citizens are seen burning American flags. “Not one penny more to these haters of America.”

Perhaps the defining moment came near the end of the conference, when Jeb Bush spoke. In a neat trick of political gamesmanship — and a show of establishment muscle — his team had bused in an ample cheering section for the dozens of cameras on hand for his appearance. But a small contingent of Tea Party activists and Rand Paul supporters staged a walk out. When Bush began a question-and-answer session, they turned and left the auditorium to chant “U.S.A., U.S.A.” in the hallway, led by a man in colonial garb waving a huge “Don’t Tread on Me” banner. Plenty of other detractors stayed in the hall and peppered Bush’s remarks with booing as he stood by positions unpopular with the conservative grass roots: support for the Common Core standards and an immigration overhaul that provides a “path to legal status” for undocumented immigrants. Bush took it all in good humor, but finally seemed to give up.

“For those who made an ‘oo’ sound — is that what it was? — I’m marking you down as neutral,” he said. “And I want to be your second choice.”

Bush strategists told me they would not repeat Romney’s mistakes. Of course they would love to glide to an early nomination, they said, but they are prepared for a long contest and won’t be wasting any energy bending under pressure from a Paul or a Cruz or a Carson.

No one doubts that the pressure will increase, though. Despite the best wishes of the party’s leaders, GOP primary voters have given little indication that they will narrow the field quickly.

Before I left, I spotted Newt Gingrich, himself a fleeting presidential front-runner during those strange primary days of 2012. I asked him whether he thought all the party maneuvering — all the attempts to change the rules and fast-track the process — would preclude someone from presenting the sort of outside primary challenge he had carried out in the last election.

“No,” he told me, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Look at where Ben Carson is right now.”

William Price Fox, Admired Southern Novelist and Humorist, Dies at 89

Mr. Fox, known for his well-honed countrified voice, wrote about things dear to South Carolina and won over Yankee critics.

Meet Mago, Former Heavyweight

GREENWICH, Conn. — Mago is in the bedroom. You can go in.

The big man lies on a hospital bed with his bare feet scraping its bottom rail. His head is propped on a scarlet pillow, the left temple dented, the right side paralyzed. His dark hair is kept just long enough to conceal the scars.

The occasional sounds he makes are understood only by his wife, but he still has that punctuating left hand. In slow motion, the fingers curl and close. A thumbs-up greeting.

Hello, Mago.

This is Magomed Abdusalamov, 34, also known as the Russian Tyson, also known as Mago. He is a former heavyweight boxer who scored four knockouts and 14 technical knockouts in his first 18 professional fights. He preferred to stand between rounds. Sitting conveyed weakness.

But Mago lost his 19th fight, his big chance, at the packed Theater at Madison Square Garden in November 2013. His 19th decision, and his last.

Now here he is, in a small bedroom in a working-class neighborhood in Greenwich, in a modest house his family rents cheap from a devoted friend. The air-pressure machine for his mattress hums like an expectant crowd.

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Today is like any other day, except for those days when he is hurried in crisis to the hospital. Every three hours during the night, his slight wife, Bakanay, 28, has risen to turn his 6-foot-3 body — 210 pounds of dead weight. It has to be done. Infections of the gaping bedsore above his tailbone have nearly killed him.

Then, with the help of a young caretaker, Baka has gotten two of their daughters off to elementary school and settled down the toddler. Yes, Mago and Baka are blessed with all girls, but they had also hoped for a son someday.

They feed Mago as they clean him; it’s easier that way. For breakfast, which comes with a side of crushed antiseizure pills, he likes oatmeal with a squirt of Hershey’s chocolate syrup. But even oatmeal must be puréed and fed to him by spoon.

He opens his mouth to indicate more, the way a baby does. But his paralysis has made everything a choking hazard. His water needs a stirring of powdered food thickener, and still he chokes — eh-eh-eh — as he tries to cough up what will not go down.

Mago used to drink only water. No alcohol. Not even soda. A sip of juice would be as far as he dared. Now even water betrays him.

With the caretaker’s help, Baka uses a washcloth and soap to clean his body and shampoo his hair. How handsome still, she has thought. Sometimes, in the night, she leaves the bedroom to watch old videos, just to hear again his voice in the fullness of life. She cries, wipes her eyes and returns, feigning happiness. Mago must never see her sad.

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When Baka finishes, Mago is cleanshaven and fresh down to his trimmed and filed toenails. “I want him to look good,” she says.

Theirs was an arranged Muslim marriage in Makhachkala, in the Russian republic of Dagestan. He was 23, she was 18 and their future hinged on boxing. Sometimes they would shadowbox in love, her David to his Goliath. You are so strong, he would tell her.

His father once told him he could either be a bandit or an athlete, but if he chose banditry, “I will kill you.” This paternal advice, Mago later told The Ventura County Reporter, “made it a very easy decision for me.”

Mago won against mediocre competition, in Moscow and Hollywood, Fla., in Las Vegas and Johnstown, Pa. He was knocked down only once, and even then, it surprised more than hurt. He scored a technical knockout in the next round.

It all led up to this: the undercard at the Garden, Mike Perez vs. Magomed Abdusalamov, 10 rounds, on HBO. A win, he believed, would improve his chances of taking on the heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko, who sat in the crowd of 4,600 with his fiancée, the actress Hayden Panettiere, watching.

Wearing black-and-red trunks and a green mouth guard, Mago went to work. But in the first round, a hard forearm to his left cheek rocked him. At the bell, he returned to his corner, and this time, he sat down. “I think it’s broken,” he repeatedly said in Russian.

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Maybe at that point, somebody — the referee, the ringside doctors, his handlers — should have stopped the fight, under a guiding principle: better one punch too early than one punch too late. But the bloody trade of blows continued into the seventh, eighth, ninth, a hand and orbital bone broken, his face transforming.

Meanwhile, in the family’s apartment in Miami, Baka forced herself to watch the broadcast. She could see it in his swollen eyes. Something was off.

After the final round, Perez raised his tattooed arms in victory, and Mago wandered off in a fog. He had taken 312 punches in about 40 minutes, for a purse of $40,000.

In the locker room, doctors sutured a cut above Mago’s left eye and tested his cognitive abilities. He did not do well. The ambulance that waits in expectation at every fight was not summoned by boxing officials.

Blood was pooling in Mago’s cranial cavity as he left the Garden. He vomited on the pavement while his handlers flagged a taxi to St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital. There, doctors induced a coma and removed part of his skull to drain fluids and ease the swelling.

Then came the stroke.

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It is lunchtime now, and the aroma of puréed beef and potatoes lingers. So do the questions.

How will Mago and Baka pay the $2 million in medical bills they owe? What if their friend can no longer offer them this home? Will they win their lawsuits against the five ringside doctors, the referee, and a New York State boxing inspector? What about Mago’s future care?

Most of all: Is this it?

A napkin rests on Mago’s chest. As another spoonful of mush approaches, he opens his mouth, half-swallows, chokes, and coughs until it clears. Eh-eh-eh. Sometimes he turns bluish, but Baka never shows fear. Always happy for Mago.

Some days he is wheeled out for physical therapy or speech therapy. Today, two massage therapists come to knead his half-limp body like a pair of skilled corner men.

Soon, Mago will doze. Then his three daughters, ages 2, 6 and 9, will descend upon him to talk of their day. Not long ago, the oldest lugged his championship belt to school for a proud show-and-tell moment. Her classmates were amazed at the weight of it.

Then, tonight, there will be more puréed food and pulverized medication, more coughing, and more tender care from his wife, before sleep comes.

Goodbye, Mago.

He half-smiles, raises his one good hand, and forms a fist.

Ghostly Voices From Thomas Edison’s Dolls Can Now Be Heard

Though Robin and Joan Rolfs owned two rare talking dolls manufactured by Thomas Edison’s phonograph company in 1890, they did not dare play the wax cylinder records tucked inside each one.

The Rolfses, longtime collectors of Edison phonographs, knew that if they turned the cranks on the dolls’ backs, the steel phonograph needle might damage or destroy the grooves of the hollow, ring-shaped cylinder. And so for years, the dolls sat side by side inside a display cabinet, bearers of a message from the dawn of sound recording that nobody could hear.

In 1890, Edison’s dolls were a flop; production lasted only six weeks. Children found them difficult to operate and more scary than cuddly. The recordings inside, which featured snippets of nursery rhymes, wore out quickly.

Yet sound historians say the cylinders were the first entertainment records ever made, and the young girls hired to recite the rhymes were the world’s first recording artists.

Year after year, the Rolfses asked experts if there might be a safe way to play the recordings. Then a government laboratory developed a method to play fragile records without touching them.

The technique relies on a microscope to create images of the grooves in exquisite detail. A computer approximates — with great accuracy — the sounds that would have been created by a needle moving through those grooves.

In 2014, the technology was made available for the first time outside the laboratory.

“The fear all along is that we don’t want to damage these records. We don’t want to put a stylus on them,” said Jerry Fabris, the curator of the Thomas Edison Historical Park in West Orange, N.J. “Now we have the technology to play them safely.”

Last month, the Historical Park posted online three never-before-heard Edison doll recordings, including the two from the Rolfses’ collection. “There are probably more out there, and we’re hoping people will now get them digitized,” Mr. Fabris said.

The technology, which is known as Irene (Image, Reconstruct, Erase Noise, Etc.), was developed by the particle physicist Carl Haber and the engineer Earl Cornell at Lawrence Berkeley. Irene extracts sound from cylinder and disk records. It can also reconstruct audio from recordings so badly damaged they were deemed unplayable.

“We are now hearing sounds from history that I did not expect to hear in my lifetime,” Mr. Fabris said.

The Rolfses said they were not sure what to expect in August when they carefully packed their two Edison doll cylinders, still attached to their motors, and drove from their home in Hortonville, Wis., to the National Document Conservation Center in Andover, Mass. The center had recently acquired Irene technology.

Cylinders carry sound in a spiral groove cut by a phonograph recording needle that vibrates up and down, creating a surface made of tiny hills and valleys. In the Irene set-up, a microscope perched above the shaft takes thousands of high-resolution images of small sections of the grooves.

Stitched together, the images provide a topographic map of the cylinder’s surface, charting changes in depth as small as one five-hundredth the thickness of a human hair. Pitch, volume and timbre are all encoded in the hills and valleys and the speed at which the record is played.

At the conservation center, the preservation specialist Mason Vander Lugt attached one of the cylinders to the end of a rotating shaft. Huddled around a computer screen, the Rolfses first saw the wiggly waveform generated by Irene. Then came the digital audio. The words were at first indistinct, but as Mr. Lugt filtered out more of the noise, the rhyme became clearer.

“That was the Eureka moment,” Mr. Rolfs said.

In 1890, a girl in Edison’s laboratory had recited:

There was a little girl,

And she had a little curl

Right in the middle of her forehead.

When she was good,

She was very, very good.

But when she was bad, she was horrid.

Recently, the conservation center turned up another surprise.

In 2010, the Woody Guthrie Foundation received 18 oversize phonograph disks from an anonymous donor. No one knew if any of the dirt-stained recordings featured Guthrie, but Tiffany Colannino, then the foundation’s archivist, had stored them unplayed until she heard about Irene.

Last fall, the center extracted audio from one of the records, labeled “Jam Session 9” and emailed the digital file to Ms. Colannino.

“I was just sitting in my dining room, and the next thing I know, I’m hearing Woody,” she said. In between solo performances of “Ladies Auxiliary,” “Jesus Christ,” and “Dead or Alive,” Guthrie tells jokes, offers some back story, and makes the audience laugh. “It is quintessential Guthrie,” Ms. Colannino said.

The Rolfses’ dolls are back in the display cabinet in Wisconsin. But with audio stored on several computers, they now have a permanent voice.

Obama Finds a Bolder Voice on Race Issues

As he reflected on the festering wounds deepened by race and grievance that have been on painful display in America’s cities lately, President Obama on Monday found himself thinking about a young man he had just met named Malachi.

A few minutes before, in a closed-door round-table discussion at Lehman College in the Bronx, Mr. Obama had asked a group of black and Hispanic students from disadvantaged backgrounds what could be done to help them reach their goals. Several talked about counseling and guidance programs.

“Malachi, he just talked about — we should talk about love,” Mr. Obama told a crowd afterward, drifting away from his prepared remarks. “Because Malachi and I shared the fact that our dad wasn’t around and that sometimes we wondered why he wasn’t around and what had happened. But really, that’s what this comes down to is: Do we love these kids?”

Many presidents have governed during times of racial tension, but Mr. Obama is the first to see in the mirror a face that looks like those on the other side of history’s ledger. While his first term was consumed with the economy, war and health care, his second keeps coming back to the societal divide that was not bridged by his election. A president who eschewed focusing on race now seems to have found his voice again as he thinks about how to use his remaining time in office and beyond.

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Obama Speaks of a ‘Sense of Unfairness’

In the aftermath of racially charged unrest in places like Baltimore, Ferguson, Mo., and New York, Mr. Obama came to the Bronx on Monday for the announcement of a new nonprofit organization that is being spun off from his White House initiative called My Brother’s Keeper. Staked by more than $80 million in commitments from corporations and other donors, the new group, My Brother’s Keeper Alliance, will in effect provide the nucleus for Mr. Obama’s post-presidency, which will begin in January 2017.

“This will remain a mission for me and for Michelle not just for the rest of my presidency but for the rest of my life,” Mr. Obama said. “And the reason is simple,” he added. Referring to some of the youths he had just met, he said: “We see ourselves in these young men. I grew up without a dad. I grew up lost sometimes and adrift, not having a sense of a clear path. The only difference between me and a lot of other young men in this neighborhood and all across the country is that I grew up in an environment that was a little more forgiving.”

Organizers said the new alliance already had financial pledges from companies like American Express, Deloitte, Discovery Communications and News Corporation. The money will be used to help companies address obstacles facing young black and Hispanic men, provide grants to programs for disadvantaged youths, and help communities aid their populations.

Joe Echevarria, a former chief executive of Deloitte, the accounting and consulting firm, will lead the alliance, and among those on its leadership team or advisory group are executives at PepsiCo, News Corporation, Sprint, BET and Prudential Group Insurance; former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell; Senator Cory Booker, Democrat of New Jersey; former Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.; the music star John Legend; the retired athletes Alonzo Mourning, Jerome Bettis and Shaquille O’Neal; and the mayors of Indianapolis, Sacramento and Philadelphia.

The alliance, while nominally independent of the White House, may face some of the same questions confronting former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton as she begins another presidential campaign. Some of those donating to the alliance may have interests in government action, and skeptics may wonder whether they are trying to curry favor with the president by contributing.

“The Obama administration will have no role in deciding how donations are screened and what criteria they’ll set at the alliance for donor policies, because it’s an entirely separate entity,” Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, told reporters on Air Force One en route to New York. But he added, “I’m confident that the members of the board are well aware of the president’s commitment to transparency.”

The alliance was in the works before the disturbances last week after the death of Freddie Gray, the black man who suffered fatal injuries while in police custody in Baltimore, but it reflected the evolution of Mr. Obama’s presidency. For him, in a way, it is coming back to issues that animated him as a young community organizer and politician. It was his own struggle with race and identity, captured in his youthful memoir, “Dreams From My Father,” that stood him apart from other presidential aspirants.

But that was a side of him that he kept largely to himself through the first years of his presidency while he focused on other priorities like turning the economy around, expanding government-subsidized health care and avoiding electoral land mines en route to re-election.

After securing a second term, Mr. Obama appeared more emboldened. Just a month after his 2013 inauguration, he talked passionately about opportunity and race with a group of teenage boys in Chicago, a moment aides point to as perhaps the first time he had spoken about these issues in such a personal, powerful way as president. A few months later, he publicly lamented the death of Trayvon Martin, a black Florida teenager, saying that “could have been me 35 years ago.”

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That case, along with public ruptures of anger over police shootings in Ferguson and elsewhere, have pushed the issue of race and law enforcement onto the public agenda. Aides said they imagined that with his presidency in its final stages, Mr. Obama might be thinking more about what comes next and causes he can advance as a private citizen.

That is not to say that his public discussion of these issues has been universally welcomed. Some conservatives said he had made matters worse by seeming in their view to blame police officers in some of the disputed cases.

“President Obama, when he was elected, could have been a unifying leader,” Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, a Republican candidate for president, said at a forum last week. “He has made decisions that I think have inflamed racial tensions.”

On the other side of the ideological spectrum, some liberal African-American activists have complained that Mr. Obama has not done enough to help downtrodden communities. While he is speaking out more, these critics argue, he has hardly used the power of the presidency to make the sort of radical change they say is necessary.

The line Mr. Obama has tried to straddle has been a serrated one. He condemns police brutality as he defends most officers as honorable. He condemns “criminals and thugs” who looted in Baltimore while expressing empathy with those trapped in a cycle of poverty and hopelessness.

In the Bronx on Monday, Mr. Obama bemoaned the death of Brian Moore, a plainclothes New York police officer who had died earlier in the day after being shot in the head Saturday on a Queens street. Most police officers are “good and honest and fair and care deeply about their communities,” even as they put their lives on the line, Mr. Obama said.

“Which is why in addressing the issues in Baltimore or Ferguson or New York, the point I made was that if we’re just looking at policing, we’re looking at it too narrowly,” he added. “If we ask the police to simply contain and control problems that we ourselves have been unwilling to invest and solve, that’s not fair to the communities, it’s not fair to the police.”

Moreover, if society writes off some people, he said, “that’s not the kind of country I want to live in; that’s not what America is about.”

His message to young men like Malachi Hernandez, who attends Boston Latin Academy in Massachusetts, is not to give up.

“I want you to know you matter,” he said. “You matter to us.”

Fatal Police Shootings: Accounts Since Ferguson

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