PAKET UMROH BULAN FEBRUARI MARET APRIL MEI 2018

VIERRA TERLALU LAMA

    saco-indonesia.com,

    sudah lama ku menanti dirimu
    tahu tahu sampai kapankah
    sudah lama kita bersama-sama
    tapi segini sajakah

    *
    entah sampai kapan ooo
    entah sampai kapan

    reff:
    hari ini ku akan menyatakan cinta, nyatakan cinta
    aku tak mau menunggu terlalu lama, terlalu lama

    sadarkah kau, ku adalah wanita
    aku tak mungkin memulai
    sadarkah kau, kau menggantung diriku
    aku tak mau menunggu

    repeat *, reff

    ( hari ini ku akan menyatakan cinta, nyatakan cinta )
    aku tak mau menunggu terlalu lama, terlalu lama

    Editor : dian sukmawati

ANAK RATU ATUT RELA IBUNYA DIPENJARA BERSAMA 16 TAHANAN

saco-indonesia.com, Putra Ratu Atut, Andika Hazrumy, telah menjenguk ibunya di Rutan Pondok Bambu. Andika yang ditemaninya istrinya Ade Rossi. Mereka telah mengaku memberikan dukungan untuk Ratu Atut.

Andika juga mengaku kaget melihat ibunya ditahan dalam ruangan bersama 16 orang. Padahal kapasitas ruangan itu cuma buat 10 orang.

"Bisa bayangkan sendiri, kapasitas 10 tapi dipakai untuk 16 orang. Tapi insyallah ibu tidak mengeluh soal itu. Ibu hanya dekat dengan keluarga. Dengan anak-anaknya. Kami khususnya anak-anaknya telah memberikan suport pada Ibu," kata Andika, Selasa (24/12).

Walau begitu keluarga tak meminta agar penguasa Banten itu pindah kamar. mereka rela ibu mereka menjalani masa pengenalan di sana.

"Pesan ibu kepada kami anak-anaknya agar semua tabah dalam menghadapi cobaan ini," kata Andhika.

Editor : Dian Sukmawati

SEJARAH MINANGKABAU

1. Lintasan Sejarah Minang Kabau Untuk menelusuri kapan gerangan nenek moyang orang Minangkabau itu datang ke Minangkabau, rasanya perlu dibicarakan mengenai peninggalan lama seperti megalit yang terdapat di Kabupaten Lima Puluh Kota dan tempat-tempat lain di Minangkabau yang telah berusia ribuan tahun. Di Kabupaten Lima Puluh Kota peninggalan megalit ini terdapat di Nagari Durian Tinggi, Guguk, Tiakar, Suliki Gunung Emas, Harau, Kapur IX, Pangkalan, Koto Baru, Mahat, Koto Gadan, Ranah, Sopan Gadang, Koto Tinggi, Ampang Gadang. Seperti umumnya kebudayaan megalit lainnya berawal dari zaman batu tua dan berkembang sampai ke zaman perunggu. Kebudayaan megalit merupakan cabang kebudayaan Dongsong. Megalit seperti yang terdapat disana juga tersebar ke arah timur, juga terdapat di Nagari Aur Duri di Riau. Semenanjung Melayu, Birma dan Yunan. Jalan kebudayaan yang ditempuh oleh kebudayaan Dongsong. Dengan perkataan lain dapat dikatakan bahwa kebudayaan megalit di Kabupaten Lima Puluh Kota sezaman dengan kebudayaan Dongsong dan didukung oleh suku bangsa yang sama pula. Menurut para ahli bahwa pendukung kebudayaan Dongsong adalah bangsa Austronesia yang dahulu bermukim di daerah Yunan, Cina Selatan. Mereka datang ke Nusantara dalam dua gelombang. Gelombang pertama pada Zaman Batu Baru (Neolitikum) yang diperkirakan pada tahun 2000 sebelum masehi. Gelombang kedua datang kira-kira pada tahun 500 SM, dan mereka inilah yang diperkirakan menjadi nenek moyang bangsa Indonesia sekarang. Bangsa Austronesia yang datang pada gelombang pertama ke nusantara ini disebut oleh para ahli dengan bangsa Proto Melayu (Melayu Tua), yang sekarang berkembang menjadi suku bangsa Barak, Toraja, Dayak, Nias, Mentawai dan lain-lain. Mereka yang datang pada gelombang kedua disebut Deutero Melayu (Melayu Muda) yang berkembang menjadi suku bangsa Minangkabau, Jawa, Makasar, Bugis dan lain-lain. Dari keterangan tersebut di atas dapat disimpulkan bahwa nenek moyang orang Minangkabau adalah bangsa melayu muda dengan kebudayaan megalit yang mulai tersebar di Minangkabau kira-kira tahun 500 SM sampai abad pertama sebelum masehi yang dikatakan oleh Dr. Bernet Bronson. Jika pendapat ini kita hubungkan dengan apa yang diceritakan oleh Tambo mengenai asal-usul orang Minangkabau kemungkinan cerita Tambo itu ada juga kebenarannya. Menurut sejarah Iskandar Zulkarnain Yang Agung menjadi raja Macedonia antara tahun 336-323 s.m. Dia seorang raja yang sangat besar dalam sejarah dunia. Sejarahnya merupakan sejarah yang penuh dengan penaklukan daerah timur dan barat yang tiada taranya. Dia berkeinginan untuk menggabungkan kebudayaan barat dengan kebudayaan timur. Tokoh Iskandar Zulkarnai dalam Tambo Minangkabau secara historis tidak dapat diterima kebenarannya, karena dia memang tidak pernah sampai ke Minangkabau. Di samping di dalam sejarah Melayu, Hikayat Aceh dan Bustanul Salatin Tokoh Iskandar Zulkarnain ini juga disebut-sebut, tetapi secara historis tetap saja merupakan seorang tokoh legendaris. Sebaliknya tokoh Maharajo Dirajo yang dikatakan oleh Tambo sebagai salah seorang anak Iskandar Zulkarnain, kemungkinan merupakan salah seorang Panglima Iskandar Zulkarnain yang ditugaskan menguasai pulau emas (Sumatera), termasuk di dalamnya daerah Minangkabau. Dialah yang kemudian menurunkan para penguasa di Minangkabau, jika kita tafsirkan apa yang dikatakan Tambo berikutnya. Sayangnya Tambo tidak pernah menyebutkan tentang kapan peristiwa itu terjadi selain ”pada masa dahulunya” yang mempunyai banyak sekali penafsirannya. Tambo juga mengatakan bahwa nenek moyang orang Minangkabau dari puncak gunung merapi. Hal ini tidak dapat diartikan seperti yang dikatakan itu, tetapi seperti kebiasaan orang Minangkabau sendiri harus dicari tafsirannya, karena orang Minangkabau selalu mengatakan sesuatu melalui kata-kata kiasan, ”tidak tembak langsung”. Tafsirannya kira-kira sebagai berikut: Sewaktu Maharajo Dirajo sedang berlayar menuju pulau emas dalam mengemban tugas yang diberikan oleh Iskandar Zulkarnain, pada suatu saat dia melihat daratan yang sangat kecil karena masih sangat jauh. Setelah sampai ke daratan tersebut ternyata sebuah gunung, yaitu gunung merapi yang sangat besar. Tetapi oleh pewaris Tambo kemudian gunung Merapi sangat kecil yang mula-mula kelihatan itulah yang dikatakan sebagai tanah asal orang Minangkabau. Selanjutnya cerita Tambo yang demikian, juga masih ada sampai sekarang pada zaman kita ini. Ada baiknya kita kutip apa yang dikatakan Tambo itu sebagai yang dikatakan oleh Sang Guno Dirajo: ”…Dek lamo bakalamoan, nampaklah gosong dari lauik, yang sagadang talua itiak, sadang dilamun-lamun ombak…” (sesudah lama berlayar akhirnya kelihatanlah pulau yang sangat kecil kira-kira sebesar telur itik yang kelihatan hanya timbul tenggelam sesuai denga turun naiknya ombak). Selanjutnya dikatakan:”…Dek lamo - bakalamoan aia lauik basentak turun, nan gosong lah basentak naiak, kok dareklah sarupo paco, namun kaba nan bak kian, lorong kapado niniak kito, lah mendarek maso itu, iyo dipuncak gunuang marapi…” (karena sudah lama berlayar dan pasang sudah mulai surut, gosong yang kecil tadi makin besar, daratan yang kelihatan itu tak obahnya seperti perca, maka dinamakanlah daratan itu dengan pulau perca yang akhirnya didarati oleh nenek moyang kita yang mendarat kira-kira di gunung merapi). Peristiwa inilah yang digambarkan oleh mamangan adat Minangkabau berbunyi “dari mano titiak palito, dari telong nan barapi, dari mano asal niniak kito, dari puncah gunuang marapi” (dari mana titik pelita dari telong yang berapi, dari mana datang nenek kita, dari puncak gunung merapi). Mamangan adat ini sampai sekarang masih dipercaya oleh sebagian besar masyarakat Minangkabau.. Bagi kita yang menarik dari cerita Tambo ini bukanlah mengenai arti kata-katanya melainkan adalah cerita itu memberikan indikasi kepada kita tentang nenek moyang orang Minangkabau asalnya datang dari laut, (dengan berlayar) yang waktunya sangat lama. Kedatangan nenek moyang inilah yang dapat disamakan dengan masuknya nenek moyang orang Minangkabau. Dengan demikian masuknya nenek moyang orang Minangkabau dapat diperkirakan waktu kedatangannya: yaitu antara abad kelima sebelum masehi dengan abad pertama sebelum masehi, sesuai dengan umur kebudayaan megalit itu sendiri. Kembali kepada permasalahan pokok pada bagian ini, maka menurut Soekomo, tradisi Megalit pada mulanya merupakan batu yang dipergunakan sebagai lambang untuk memperingati seorang kepala suku. Sesudah kepala suku itu meninggal, akhirnya peringatan itu berubah menjadi penghormatan yang lambat laun menjadi tanda pemujaan kepada arwah nenek moyang. Bagaimana dengan megalit yang terdapat di Minangkabau? Barangkali fungsi pemujaan terhadap arwah nenek moyang masih tetap berlanjut, seperti Menhir lainnya di Indonesia. Tetapi jika kita hubungkan Menhir itu dengan kehidupan orang Minangkabau yang berkaitan dengan Medan Nan Bapaneh, yaitu tempat duduk bermusyawarah dalam masyarakat Minangkabau sudah mulai berkembang pada zaman pra sejarah, khususnya di zaman berkembangnya tradisi menhir di Minangkabau dan keadaan ini sudah berlangsung semenjak sebelum abad masehi. Dari peninggalan menhir dan keterangan-keterangan yang diberikan oleh pemuka masyarakat sekarang di tempat-tempat menhir itu terdapat seperti di Sungai Belantik, Andieng, Kubang Tungkek, Tiakat, Padang Japang, Limbanang, Talang Anau, Padang Kandih, Balubus, Koto Tangah, Simalanggang, Taeh Baruh, Talago, Ampang Gadang seperti yang dikatakan oleh Yuwono Sudibyo, sebagai berikut: ”Bahwa ketika sekelompok nenek moyang telah menemukan tempat bermukim, yang pertama-tama ditetapkan atau dicari adalah suatu lokasi yang dinamakan gelanggang. Di gelanggang ini dilakukan upacara, yaitu semacam upacara selamatan untuk menghormati kepala suku atau pemimpin rombongan yang telah membawa mereka ke suatu tempat bermukim. Sebagai tanda upacara didirikanlah Batu Tagak yang kemudian kita kenal sebagai menhir. Batu Tagak ini kemudian berubah fungsi, sebahagian menjadi tanda penghormatan kepada arwah nenek moyang dan sebahagian tempat bermusyawarah yang kemudian kita kenal dengan nama Medan nan Bapaneh”. Karena sudah ada kehidupan bermusyawarah, sudah barang tentu pula masyarakat sudah hidup menetap dengan berburu dan pertanian sebagai mata pencaharian yang utama. Hal ini sesuai pula dengan kehidupan para pendukung kebudayaan Dongsong yang sudah menetap. Jika sekiranya peninggalan-peninggalan pra sejarah Minangkabau sudah diteliti dengan digali lebih lanjut, barangkali akan ditemui peninggalan-peninggalan yang mendukung kehidupan berburu dan bertani tersebut. Diwaktu itu sudah dapat diperkirakan bahwa antara Adat Nan Sabana Adat sudah hidup di tengah-tengah masyarakat Minangkabau, mengingat akan ajaran adat Minangkabau itu sendiri, yaitu Alam Takambang jadikan guru. Sedangkan Adat Nan Sabana Adat berisi tentang hukum-hukum alam yang tidak berubah dari dahulu sampai sekarang seperti dikatakan: Adat api mambaka, adat aia mamabasahi, adat tajam malukoi, adat runciang mancucuak dan sebagainya (Adat api membakar, adat air membasahi, adat tajam melukai, adat runcing mencucuk). Demikian juga dengan Adat Nan Diadatkan sudah ada waktu itu, yaitu sebagai hukum yang berlaku dalam masyarakat. Barangkali di zaman inilah berlakunya apa yang dikenal dengan hukum adat yang bersifat zalim dan tidak boleh dibantah yaitu hukum adat yang bernama “Simumbang Jatuah” (simumbang jatuh), mumbang kalau jatuh tidak dapat dikembalikan ke tempatnya lagi. Selanjutnya juga ada hukum yang bernama “si gamak-gamak”, yaitu suatu aturan yang tidak dipikirkan masak-masak. Disamping itu juga terdapat hukum yang dinamakan “Si lamo-lamo” yaitu siapa kuat siapa di atas persis seperti hukum rimba. Barangkali hukum yang dinamakan “Hukum Tariak Baleh” juga berlaku di zaman ini. Hukum Tariak Baleh hampir sama dengan hukum Kisas dalam agama Islam, misalnya orang yang membunuh harus di hukum bunuh pula. Keempat macam hukum adat itu memang sesuai dengan zamannya dimana belum terlalu banyak pertimbangan terhadap suatu yang dihadapi dalam kehidupan. Sampai kapan berlakunya hukum ini mungkin berlangsung sampai masuknya agama Islam pertama ke Minangkabau kira-kira abad ketujuh. Zaman Purba Minangkabau berakhir dengan masuknya Islam ke Minangkabau, yaitu kira-kira abad ketujuh, dimana buat pertama kali di Sumatra Barat sudah didapati kelompok masyarakat Arab tahun 674. Kelompok masyarakat Arab ini sudah menganut agama Islam, bagaimanapun rendahnya pendidikan waktu itu, tentu sudah pandai tulis baca, karena ajaran Islam harus diperoleh dari Qur’an dan Hadist Nabi yang semuanya sudah dituliskan dalam bahasa Arab. Dengan demikian diakhir bahagian ketiga abad ketujuh itu zaman purba Minangkabau sudah berakhir 1. Zaman Mula Sejarah Minangkabau Yang dimaksud dengan zaman mula sejarah Minangkabau ialah zaman yang meliputi kurun waktu antara abad pertama Masehi dengan abad ketujuh. Dalam masa tersebut masa pra Sejarah masih berlanjut, tetapi masa itu dilengkapi dengan adanya berita-berita tertulis tertua mengenai Minangkabau seperti istilah San-Fo Tsi dari berita Cina yang dapat dibaca sebagai Tambesi yang terdapat di Jambi. Di daerah Indonesia lainnya juga sudah terdapat berita atau tulisan seperti kerajaan Mulawarman di Kutai Kalimantan dan Tarumanegara di Jawa Barat. Namun dari berita-berita itu belum banyak yang dapat kita ambil sebagai bahan untuk menyusun sebuah ceritera sejarah, karena memang masih sangat sedikit sekali dan masing-masingnya seakan-akan berdiri sendiri tanpa ada hubungan sama sekali. Untuk zaman ini Soekomono memberikan nama zaman Proto Sejarah Indonesia, yaitu peralihan dari zaman Prasejarah ke zaman sejarah. Berita dai Tambo dan ceritera rakyat Minangkabau hanya mengemukakan secara semu mengenai hal ini, yaitu hanya menyebutkan tentang kehidupan orang Minangkabau zaman dahulu. Dalam hal ini Tambo mengemukakan sebagai berikut: ”…tak kalo maso dahulu…”…(Diwaktu zaman dahulu),. ”…dari tahun musim baganti, dek zaman tuka – batuka, dek lamo maso nan talampau, tahun jo musim nan balansuang…” (Karena tahun musim berganti, karena zaman bertukar-tukar, karena masa yang telah lewat, tahun dengan musim yang berlangsung),”… Antah barapo kalamonyo…”(entah berapa lamanya), dari ungkapan waktu yang demikian memang sulit sekali menentukan kapan terjadinya. Pengertian zaman dahulu itu saja sudah mengandung banyak kemungkinan tafsiran dan sangat relatif. Barangkali kehidupan zaman mula sejarah Minangkabau ini hampir sama dengan kehidupan pada zaman Pra sejarahnya, hanya saja di akhir zaman mula sejarah ini agama Islam sudah masuk ke Minangkabau dan sudah ada berita-berita dari Cina. Dapat dikatakan, bahwa cerita sejarah untuk zaman mula sejarah Minangkabau ini sangat sedikit sekali, bahkan dapat dikatakan merupakan zaman yang paling gelap dalam sejarah Minangkabau. Demikian gelapnya untuk menghubungkan zaman Pra Sejarah dengan zaman sejarahnya kita tidak mempunyai sumber sama sekali, bukan lagi kabur, tetapi sudah gelap gulita.> SEJARAH MINANGKABAU

BERAMAL

Rasanya, semua telinga akrab dengan dalil ini. Sebab dia sering diucapkan dalam pembuka nasehat, sebagai kalimat pujian. Bahkan para pemula yang ingin belajar nasehat, tentu menghafal mati dalil ini. Memang keren dalilnya. Paten redaksionalnya. Dan juga sering diulas para penyampai, jika menerangkan bab pengamalan. Karena memang begitulah adanya. Bagi pemerhati keriuh-rendahan beramal, tentu tidak akan melewatkan dalil – dalil ini.

Di dalam KitabNya Allah berfirman; Dan diserukan kepada mereka: “Itulah surga yang diwariskan kepadamu, disebabkan apa yang dahulu kamu kerjakan.” (QS. Al-A’raf [7] : 43). Ayat semisal terdapat juga dalam QS. Az-Zukhruf [43] : 72)
“Masuklah kamu ke dalam surga itu disebabkan apa yang telah kamu amalkan”. (QS. An-Nahl [16] : 32)
“Dan masing-masing orang memperoleh derajat-derajat (seimbang) dengan apa yang dikerjakannya. Dan Tuhanmu tidak lengah dari apa yang mereka kerjakan.” (Al-‘An’am 132)
Dalil – dalil di atas, jelas menunjukkan pentingnya beramal dalam ibadah. Sebab dengannya orang bisa memperoleh tinggi – rendahnya derajat di surga. Oleh karena itu, tak salah orang memperbanyak amal untuk kehidupan di sana kelak. Yang perlu diingat adalah serentetan dalil – dalil di bawah ini. Bukan menakut-nakuti. Demikian banyaknya setidaknya membuat kita berjaga – jaga. Kadang malah bisa membuat kontra produktif, jika tidak arif dan bijaksana dalam memahaminya. Sebab kelihatan saling bertentangan antara satu dan lainnya. Jangankan orang macam saya, dulu para sahabat pun dibuat bingung karenanya.
Sesungguhnya Abu Hurairah berkata, ia mendengar Rasulullah SAW bersabda, “Amal seseorang tidak akan memasukkan seseorang ke dalam surga.” “Engkau juga tidak wahai Rasulullah?”, tanya beberapa sahabat. Beliau menjawab, “Aku pun tidak. Kecuali jika Allah menyelimuti pada (amalan)ku dengan kefadholan dan rahmat.” (Rowahu Bukhary – Jilid 1)
Shahih al-Bukhari kitab ar-riqaq bab al-qashd wal-mudawamah ‘alal-’amal no. 6463, 6464, 6467, juga menyebutkan walau dengan redaksi yang agak berbeda.
“Amal tidak akan bisa menyelamatkan seseorang di antara kalian.” Mereka bertanya: “Tidak pula Engkau wahai Rasulullah SAW?” Beliau menjawab: “Ya, saya pun tidak, kecuali Allah menganugerahkan rahmat kepadaku. Tepatlah kalian, mendekatlah, beribadahlah di waktu pagi, sore, dan sedikit dari malam, beramallah yang pertengahan, yang pertengahan, kalian pasti akan sampai.”
“Tepatlah kalian, mendekatlah, dan ketahuilah bahwasanya amal tidak akan memasukkan seseorang ke dalam surga. Sesungguhnya amal yang paling dicintai Allah itu adalah yang paling sering diamalkan walaupun sedikit.”
“Tepatlah kalian, mendekatlah, dan bergembiralah, karena sesungguhnya amal tidak akan memasukkan seseorang ke dalam surga.” Para shahabat bertanya: “Termasuk juga anda wahai Rasulullah?” Beliau menjawab: “Ya, termasuk juga saya, kecuali jika Allah menganugerahkan ampunan dan rahmat kepadaku.”
Saddidu, asal katanya sadad; ketepatan, sesuatu yang tepat. Maknanya menurut Ibn Hajar, shawab; benar. Artinya, beramallah dengan tepat, benar, mengikuti sunnah dan penuh keikhlasan.
Qaribu yang bermakna ‘mendekatlah’ maknanya ada dua; pertama, jangan menjauhi amal seluruhnya ketika tidak mampu, dan kedua, jangan berlebihan dalam beramal sehingga merasa kelelahan dan bosan. Itu berarti ambillah pertengahan dalam beramal. Ketika malas tiba, bertahan dengan tidak meninggalkan amal seluruhnya, beramallah sedekat- dekatnya, tidak mampu 100% (sadad) beramallah 90% (qarib), dan ketika semangat tiba, beramal dengan tidak berlebihan karena akan menyebabkan kelelahan dan kejenuhan.
Ughdu artinya berpergianlah di waktu pagi, ruhu artinya berpergianlah di waktu sore, dan ad-duljah artinya berpergian di waktu malam. Kata ad-duljah disertai dengan kata syai` (syai` minad-duljah; sedikit/sesaat di waktu malam) karena memang berpergian di waktu malam cukup sulit. Menurut Ibn Hajar, ini seolah-olah isyarat agar shaum di sepanjang hari dari sejak pagi sampai sore, dan shalat tahajjud di sebagian malam. Walaupun, menurutnya, bisa juga diperluas untuk ibadah-ibadah lainnya. Ibadah dalam hal ini diibaratkan dengan berpergian/perjalanan karena memang seorang ‘abid (yang beribadah) itu ibarat seseorang yang sedang berpergian dan menempuh perjalanan menuju surga.
Al-qashda maknanya pertengahan. Dijelaskan dalam riwayat lain sebagai amal yang rutin dikerjakan (dawam) walaupun sedikit-sedikit.
Taghammada diambil dari kata ghimd yang berarti sarung pedang. Taghammada berarti menyarungkan, atau dengan kata lain menutup (satr). Jika dilekatkan dengan kata rahmat dan ampunan, berarti menganugerahkan sepenuhnya (semua penjelasan dalam syarah mufradat ini disadur dari Fath al-Bari kitab ar-riqaq bab al-qashd wal-mudawamah ‘alal-’amal).
Sementara itu, Shahih Muslim kitab shifat al-qiyamah wal-jannah wan-nar bab lan yadkhula ahadun al-jannah bi ‘amalihi no. 7289-7302, tidak hanya disebut tidak akan masuk surga saja, melainkan ditegaskan juga tidak akan selamat dari neraka.
“Amal tidak akan memasukkan seseorang di antara kalian ke surga dan tidak pula menyelamatkannya dari neraka. Demikian juga saya, kecuali dengan rahmat Allah SWT”.
Dulu, pertama kali mendengar hadits ini, saya kaget. Kok begitu ya? Alhamdulillah Allah paring kefahaman. Salah satunya lewat cerita sederhana kisah ahli ibadah dari Bani Israil. Diceritakan ada seorang hamba yang tekun dan rajin beribadah selama 500 tahun. Dia hidup menyendiri di sebuah gunung, tak pernah berbuat dosa sedikitpun. Hari – harinya diisi ibadah dan ibadah, tak lain. Dan kala meninggalnya pun dalam keadaan sedang bersujud. Akhirnya di hari Qiyamat Allah membangkitkan dia dan memasukkannya ke surga. Allah berfirman; “Dengan rahmatku, masuklah kamu ke surge.” Mendengar perkataan tersebut si hamba protes. “Ya Allah, bukankah karena amalanku?”
Allah menjawab; “Karena rohmatku.”
Hamba; “Tidak. Ini semua karena amalanku selama 500 tahun.”
Allah menjawab; “Baiklah. Sekarang akan saya buktikan.” Kemudian Allah memperlihatkan timbangan amal si hamba. Semua amalan si hamba ditempatkan di sisi timbangan dan nikmat – nikmat Allah di sisi satunya lagi. Hasilnya, amalan hamba selama 500 tahun itu tak menggeser sedikit pun nikmat dan anugerah Allah yang diberikan kepadanya. Akhirnya, si hamba sadar dan memahami bahwa sebab masuknya dia ke surga adalah karena rohmat Allah.
Cerita ini semakin meneguhkan nasehat klasik bahwa sebenarnya kita beribadah ini cuma modal dengkul. Semuanya atas peparing Allah. Jadi gak boleh sombong –membanggakan amal - dan gak boleh bengong - tidak dilandasi niat karena Allah.
Selanjutnya saya memetik beberapa nash terkait akan situasi ini. Yaitu adanya lipatan amalan yang diberikan Allah kepada setiap amal baik hambaNya. Sedangkan untuk amal jelek, Allah tidak menulis kecuali seperti apa adanya. Walhasanatu biasyri amtsaliha – dan satu kebaikan itu dengan sepuluh semisalnya. Atau seperti yang tersebut di dalam surat Albaqoroh laksana sebiji padi yang menumbuhkan tujuh tangkai dan setiap tangkai berbuah 100 bulir padi alias 700 kali lipatan. Atau dalam atsar – atsar puasa, dimana disebutkan bahwa pahala amal anak adam itu dilipatkan ila masyaa Allah. Inilah pemahaman lebih lanjut arti  redaksi Kecuali jika Allah menyelimuti pada (amalan)ku dengan kefadholan dan rahmat. Ada lipatan sebagai bentuk kefadhalan Allah dan nikmat dan anugerah Allah – sebagai rahmat, sehingga kita bisa beramal meraih surga setinggi – tingginya. Maka, tak heran ketika kita masuk - keluar masjid pun dituntun dengan doa untuk mengingatkan akan rahmat dan fadhilah Allah ini dalam setiap jengkal langkah kita dalam beramal.
Nah, satu lagi yang “membanggakan” adalah hadits - hadits tersebut di atas memang jarang dikumandangkan. Hanya sesaat – sesaat saja dan oleh orang – orang tertentu saja. Namun, barangkali ketemu, semoga sedikit tulisan ini bermanfaat bagi yang membacanya. Tak lebih.

Oleh: Faizunal Abdillah

Sumber:Al'Quran & Al'Hadist/LDII

Editor:Liwon Maulana (galipat)

MANUSIA INTERNAL DAN MANUSIA EKSTERNAL

Dalam Sebuah Buku Tertulis bahwa mansia terbagi menjadi 2 jenis berdasarkan penyelesaian terhadap suatu masalah,

MANUSIA EKSTERNAL
adalah manusia yang selalu memandang sesuatu yang terjadi padanya sebagai akibat keadaan yang terjadi diluar dirinya, manusia eksternal beranggapan bahwa segala sesuatu yang menimpa dirinya disebabkan oleh keadaan eksternal yang terjadi diluar dirinya. Manusia eksternal selalu berfikir keadaan yang mengontrol dirinya, bukan dirinnya yang mengontrol keadaan, MANUSIA YANG SELALU MENYALAHKAN KEADAAN. Contoh kecilnya saat kalah bermain sepakbola, menurutnya yang salah adalah lapangan atau wasitnya.

MANUSIA INTERNAL
yaitu manusia yang menanggapi sebuah masalah berlawanan dengan manusia eksternal. Manusiayang berfikir bahwa dirinyalah yang harus mengontrol keadaan, tidak mau kalah dengan keadaan. Manusia Internal akan melihat terlebih dahulu apa yang salah pada dirinya, bukan yang lantas menyalahkan keadaan.

You are the driver not a passenger in life

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.

Marcel Pronovost, 84, Dies; Hall of Famer Shared in Five N.H.L. Titles

Pronovost, who played for the Red Wings, was not a prolific scorer, but he was a consummate team player with bruising checks and fearless bursts up the ice that could puncture a defense.

Betsy von Furstenberg, Baroness and Versatile Actress, Dies at 83

Ms. von Furstenberg made her debut in the movies and on the Broadway stage in the early 1950s as a teenager and later reinvented herself as a television actress, writer and philanthropist.

Richard Suzman, 72, Dies; Researcher Influenced Global Surveys on Aging

At the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Suzman’s signature accomplishment was the central role he played in creating a global network of surveys on aging.

Ex-C.I.A. Official Rebuts Republican Claims on Benghazi Attack in ‘The Great War of Our Time’

WASHINGTON — The former deputy director of the C.I.A. asserts in a forthcoming book that Republicans, in their eagerness to politicize the killing of the American ambassador to Libya, repeatedly distorted the agency’s analysis of events. But he also argues that the C.I.A. should get out of the business of providing “talking points” for administration officials in national security events that quickly become partisan, as happened after the Benghazi attack in 2012.

The official, Michael J. Morell, dismisses the allegation that the United States military and C.I.A. officers “were ordered to stand down and not come to the rescue of their comrades,” and he says there is “no evidence” to support the charge that “there was a conspiracy between C.I.A. and the White House to spin the Benghazi story in a way that would protect the political interests of the president and Secretary Clinton,” referring to the secretary of state at the time, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

But he also concludes that the White House itself embellished some of the talking points provided by the Central Intelligence Agency and had blocked him from sending an internal study of agency conclusions to Congress.

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“I finally did so without asking,” just before leaving government, he writes, and after the White House released internal emails to a committee investigating the State Department’s handling of the issue.

A lengthy congressional investigation remains underway, one that many Republicans hope to use against Mrs. Clinton in the 2016 election cycle.

In parts of the book, “The Great War of Our Time” (Twelve), Mr. Morell praises his C.I.A. colleagues for many successes in stopping terrorist attacks, but he is surprisingly critical of other C.I.A. failings — and those of the National Security Agency.

Soon after Mr. Morell retired in 2013 after 33 years in the agency, President Obama appointed him to a commission reviewing the actions of the National Security Agency after the disclosures of Edward J. Snowden, a former intelligence contractor who released classified documents about the government’s eavesdropping abilities. Mr. Morell writes that he was surprised by what he found.

“You would have thought that of all the government entities on the planet, the one least vulnerable to such grand theft would have been the N.S.A.,” he writes. “But it turned out that the N.S.A. had left itself vulnerable.”

He concludes that most Wall Street firms had better cybersecurity than the N.S.A. had when Mr. Snowden swept information from its systems in 2013. While he said he found himself “chagrined by how well the N.S.A. was doing” compared with the C.I.A. in stepping up its collection of data on intelligence targets, he also sensed that the N.S.A., which specializes in electronic spying, was operating without considering the implications of its methods.

“The N.S.A. had largely been collecting information because it could, not necessarily in all cases because it should,” he says.

The book is to be released next week.

Mr. Morell was a career analyst who rose through the ranks of the agency, and he ended up in the No. 2 post. He served as President George W. Bush’s personal intelligence briefer in the first months of his presidency — in those days, he could often be spotted at the Starbucks in Waco, Tex., catching up on his reading — and was with him in the schoolhouse in Florida on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, when the Bush presidency changed in an instant.

Mr. Morell twice took over as acting C.I.A. director, first when Leon E. Panetta was appointed secretary of defense and then when retired Gen. David H. Petraeus resigned over an extramarital affair with his biographer, a relationship that included his handing her classified notes of his time as America’s best-known military commander.

Mr. Morell says he first learned of the affair from Mr. Petraeus only the night before he resigned, and just as the Benghazi events were turning into a political firestorm. While praising Mr. Petraeus, who had told his deputy “I am very lucky” to run the C.I.A., Mr. Morell writes that “the organization did not feel the same way about him.” The former general “created the impression through the tone of his voice and his body language that he did not want people to disagree with him (which was not true in my own interaction with him),” he says.

But it is his account of the Benghazi attacks — and how the C.I.A. was drawn into the debate over whether the Obama White House deliberately distorted its account of the death of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens — that is bound to attract attention, at least partly because of its relevance to the coming presidential election. The initial assessments that the C.I.A. gave to the White House said demonstrations had preceded the attack. By the time analysts reversed their opinion, Susan E. Rice, now the national security adviser, had made a series of statements on Sunday talk shows describing the initial assessment. The controversy and other comments Ms. Rice made derailed Mr. Obama’s plan to appoint her as secretary of state.

The experience prompted Mr. Morell to write that the C.I.A. should stay out of the business of preparing talking points — especially on issues that are being seized upon for “political purposes.” He is critical of the State Department for not beefing up security in Libya for its diplomats, as the C.I.A., he said, did for its employees.

But he concludes that the assault in which the ambassador was killed took place “with little or no advance planning” and “was not well organized.” He says the attackers “did not appear to be looking for Americans to harm. They appeared intent on looting and conducting some vandalism,” setting fires that killed Mr. Stevens and a security official, Sean Smith.

Mr. Morell paints a picture of an agency that was struggling, largely unsuccessfully, to understand dynamics in the Middle East and North Africa when the Arab Spring broke out in late 2011 in Tunisia. The agency’s analysts failed to see the forces of revolution coming — and then failed again, he writes, when they told Mr. Obama that the uprisings would undercut Al Qaeda by showing there was a democratic pathway to change.

“There is no good explanation for our not being able to see the pressures growing to dangerous levels across the region,” he writes. The agency had again relied too heavily “on a handful of strong leaders in the countries of concern to help us understand what was going on in the Arab street,” he says, and those leaders themselves were clueless.

Moreover, an agency that has always overvalued secretly gathered intelligence and undervalued “open source” material “was not doing enough to mine the wealth of information available through social media,” he writes. “We thought and told policy makers that this outburst of popular revolt would damage Al Qaeda by undermining the group’s narrative,” he writes.

Instead, weak governments in Egypt, and the absence of governance from Libya to Yemen, were “a boon to Islamic extremists across both the Middle East and North Africa.”

Mr. Morell is gentle about most of the politicians he dealt with — he expresses admiration for both Mr. Bush and Mr. Obama, though he accuses former Vice President Dick Cheney of deliberately implying a connection between Al Qaeda and Iraq that the C.I.A. had concluded probably did not exist. But when it comes to the events leading up to the Bush administration’s decision to go to war in Iraq, he is critical of his own agency.

Mr. Morell concludes that the Bush White House did not have to twist intelligence on Saddam Hussein’s alleged effort to rekindle the country’s work on weapons of mass destruction.

“The view that hard-liners in the Bush administration forced the intelligence community into its position on W.M.D. is just flat wrong,” he writes. “No one pushed. The analysts were already there and they had been there for years, long before Bush came to office.”

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.

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.”

Negative View of U.S. Race Relations Grows, Poll Finds

Public perceptions of race relations in America have grown substantially more negative in the aftermath of the death of a young black man who was injured while in police custody in Baltimore and the subsequent unrest, far eclipsing the sentiment recorded in the wake of turmoil in Ferguson, Mo., last summer.

Americans are also increasingly likely to say that the police are more apt to use deadly force against a black person, the latest New York Times/CBS News poll finds.

The poll findings highlight the challenges for local leaders and police officials in trying to maintain order while sustaining faith in the criminal justice system in a racially polarized nation.

Sixty-one percent of Americans now say race relations in this country are generally bad. That figure is up sharply from 44 percent after the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown and the unrest that followed in Ferguson in August, and 43 percent in December. In a CBS News poll just two months ago, 38 percent said race relations were generally bad. Current views are by far the worst of Barack Obama’s presidency.

The negative sentiment is echoed by broad majorities of blacks and whites alike, a stark change from earlier this year, when 58 percent of blacks thought race relations were bad, but just 35 percent of whites agreed. In August, 48 percent of blacks and 41 percent of whites said they felt that way.

Looking ahead, 44 percent of Americans think race relations are worsening, up from 36 percent in December. Forty-one percent of blacks and 46 percent of whites think so. Pessimism among whites has increased 10 points since December.

Continue reading the main story

Do you think race relations in the United States are generally good or generally bad?

60

40

20

0

White

Black

May '14

May '15

Generally bad

 

 

Continue reading the main story

Do you think race relations in the United States are getting better, getting worse or staying about the same?

Getting worse

Staying the same

Getting better

Don't know/No answer

All adults

Whites

Blacks

44%

37

17

46

36

16

41

42

15

 

 

The poll finds that profound racial divisions in views of how the police use deadly force remain. Blacks are more than twice as likely to say police in most communities are more apt to use deadly force against a black person — 79 percent of blacks say so compared with 37 percent of whites. A slim majority of whites say race is not a factor in a police officer’s decision to use deadly force.

Overall, 44 percent of Americans say deadly force is more likely to be used against a black person, up from 37 percent in August and 40 percent in December.

Blacks also remain far more likely than whites to say they feel mostly anxious about the police in their community. Forty-two percent say so, while 51 percent feel mostly safe. Among whites, 8 in 10 feel mostly safe.

One proposal to address the matter — having on-duty police officers wear body cameras — receives overwhelming support. More than 9 in 10 whites and blacks alike favor it.

Continue reading the main story

How would you describe your feelings about the police in your community? Would you say they make you feel mostly safe or mostly anxious?

Mostly safe

Mostly anxious

Don't know/No answer

All adults

Whites

Blacks

75%

21

3

81

16

3

51

42

7

 

 

Continue reading the main story

In general, do you think the police in most communities are more likely to use deadly force against a black person, or more likely to use it against a white person, or don’t you think race affects police use of deadly force?

Police more likely to use deadly force against a black person

Police more likely to use deadly force against a white person

Race DOES NOT affect police use of deadly force

Don't know/No answer

All adults

Whites

Blacks

44%

37%

79%

2%

2%

1%

46%

53%

16%

9%

8%

4%

 

 

Continue reading the main story

Do you favor or oppose on-duty police officers wearing video cameras that would record events and actions as they occur?

Favor

Oppose

Don't know/No answer

All adults

Whites

Blacks

92%

93%

93%

6%

5%

5%

2%

2%

2%

 

 

Asked specifically about the situation in Baltimore, most Americans expressed at least some confidence that the investigation by local authorities would be conducted fairly. But while nearly two-thirds of whites think so, fewer than half of blacks agree. Still, more blacks are confident now than were in August regarding the investigation in Ferguson. On Friday, six members of the police force involved in the arrest of Mr. Gray were charged with serious offenses, including manslaughter. The poll was conducted Thursday through Sunday; results from before charges were announced are similar to those from after.

Reaction to the recent turmoil in Baltimore, however, is similar among blacks and whites. Most Americans, 61 percent, say the unrest after Mr. Gray’s death was not justified. That includes 64 percent of whites and 57 percent of blacks.

Continue reading the main story

As you may know, a Baltimore man, Freddie Gray, recently died after being in the custody of the Baltimore police. How much confidence do you have that the investigation by local authorities into this matter will be conducted fairly?

A lot

Some

Not much

None at all

Don't know/No answer

All adults

Whites

Blacks

29%

31

22

14

5

31

33

20

11

5

20

26

30

22

 

 

In general, do you think the unrest in Baltimore after the death of Freddie Gray was justified, or do you think the unrest was not justified?

Justified

Not justified

Don't know/No answer

All adults

Whites

Blacks

28%

61

11

26

64

11

37

57

6

 

 

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.

Photo

 

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.

Photo

 

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.

Dan Walker, 92, Dies; Illinois Governor and Later a U.S. Prisoner

As governor, Mr. Walker alienated Republicans and his fellow Democrats, particularly the Democratic powerhouse Richard J. Daley, the mayor of Chicago.

Rolf Smedvig, Trumpeter in the Empire Brass, Dies at 62

A former member of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Mr. Smedvig helped found the wide-ranging Empire Brass quintet.

G.O.P. Hopefuls Now Aiming to Woo the Middle Class

WASHINGTON — The last three men to win the Republican nomination have been the prosperous son of a president (George W. Bush), a senator who could not recall how many homes his family owned (John McCain of Arizona; it was seven) and a private equity executive worth an estimated $200 million (Mitt Romney).

The candidates hoping to be the party’s nominee in 2016 are trying to create a very different set of associations. On Sunday, Ben Carson, a retired neurosurgeon, joined the presidential field.

Senator Marco Rubio of Florida praises his parents, a bartender and a Kmart stock clerk, as he urges audiences not to forget “the workers in our hotel kitchens, the landscaping crews in our neighborhoods, the late-night janitorial staff that clean our offices.”

Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, a preacher’s son, posts on Twitter about his ham-and-cheese sandwiches and boasts of his coupon-clipping frugality. His $1 Kohl’s sweater has become a campaign celebrity in its own right.

Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky laments the existence of “two Americas,” borrowing the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s phrase to describe economically and racially troubled communities like Ferguson, Mo., and Detroit.

Photo

 

“Some say, ‘But Democrats care more about the poor,’ ” Mr. Paul likes to say. “If that’s true, why is black unemployment still twice white unemployment? Why has household income declined by $3,500 over the past six years?”

We are in the midst of the Empathy Primary — the rhetorical battleground shaping the Republican presidential field of 2016.

Harmed by the perception that they favor the wealthy at the expense of middle-of-the-road Americans, the party’s contenders are each trying their hardest to get across what the elder George Bush once inelegantly told recession-battered voters in 1992: “Message: I care.”

Their ability to do so — less bluntly, more sincerely — could prove decisive in an election year when power, privilege and family connections will loom large for both parties.

Questions of understanding and compassion cost Republicans in the last election. Mr. Romney, who memorably dismissed the “47 percent” of Americans as freeloaders, lost to President Obama by 63 percentage points among voters who cast their ballots for the candidate who “cares about people like me,” according to exit polls.

And a Pew poll from February showed that people still believe Republicans are indifferent to working Americans: 54 percent said the Republican Party does not care about the middle class.

That taint of callousness explains why Senator Ted Cruz of Texas declared last week that Republicans “are and should be the party of the 47 percent” — and why another son of a president, Jeb Bush, has made economic opportunity the centerpiece of his message.

With his pedigree and considerable wealth — since he left the Florida governor’s office almost a decade ago he has earned millions of dollars sitting on corporate boards and advising banks — Mr. Bush probably has the most complicated task making the argument to voters that he understands their concerns.

On a visit last week to Puerto Rico, Mr. Bush sounded every bit the populist, railing against “elites” who have stifled economic growth and innovation. In the kind of economy he envisions leading, he said: “We wouldn’t have the middle being squeezed. People in poverty would have a chance to rise up. And the social strains that exist — because the haves and have-nots is the big debate in our country today — would subside.”

Continue reading the main story

 

Who Is Running for President (and Who’s Not)?

Republicans’ emphasis on poorer and working-class Americans now represents a shift from the party’s longstanding focus on business owners and “job creators” as the drivers of economic opportunity.

This is intentional, Republican operatives said.

In the last presidential election, Republicans rushed to defend business owners against what they saw as hostility by Democrats to successful, wealthy entrepreneurs.

“Part of what you had was a reaction to the Democrats’ dehumanization of business owners: ‘Oh, you think you started your plumbing company? No you didn’t,’ ” said Grover Norquist, the conservative activist and president of Americans for Tax Reform.

But now, Mr. Norquist said, Republicans should move past that. “Focus on the people in the room who know someone who couldn’t get a job, or a promotion, or a raise because taxes are too high or regulations eat up companies’ time,” he said. “The rich guy can take care of himself.”

Democrats argue that the public will ultimately see through such an approach because Republican positions like opposing a minimum-wage increase and giving private banks a larger role in student loans would hurt working Americans.

“If Republican candidates are just repeating the same tired policies, I’m not sure that smiling while saying it is going to be enough,” said Guy Cecil, a Democratic strategist who is joining a “super PAC” working on behalf of Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Republicans have already attacked Mrs. Clinton over the wealth and power she and her husband have accumulated, caricaturing her as an out-of-touch multimillionaire who earns hundreds of thousands of dollars per speech and has not driven a car since 1996.

Mr. Walker hit this theme recently on Fox News, pointing to Mrs. Clinton’s lucrative book deals and her multiple residences. “This is not someone who is connected with everyday Americans,” he said. His own net worth, according to The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, is less than a half-million dollars; Mr. Walker also owes tens of thousands of dollars on his credit cards.

But showing off a cheap sweater or boasting of a bootstraps family background not only helps draw a contrast with Mrs. Clinton’s latter-day affluence, it is also an implicit argument against Mr. Bush.

Mr. Walker, who featured a 1998 Saturn with more than 100,000 miles on the odometer in a 2010 campaign ad during his first run for governor, likes to talk about flipping burgers at McDonald’s as a young person. His mother, he has said, grew up on a farm with no indoor plumbing until she was in high school.

Mr. Rubio, among the least wealthy members of the Senate, with an estimated net worth of around a half-million dollars, uses his working-class upbringing as evidence of the “exceptionalism” of America, “where even the son of a bartender and a maid can have the same dreams and the same future as those who come from power and privilege.”

Mr. Cruz alludes to his family’s dysfunction — his parents, he says, were heavy drinkers — and recounts his father’s tale of fleeing Cuba with $100 sewn into his underwear.

Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey notes that his father paid his way through college working nights at an ice cream plant.

But sometimes the attempts at projecting authenticity can seem forced. Mr. Christie recently found himself on the defensive after telling a New Hampshire audience, “I don’t consider myself a wealthy man.” Tax returns showed that he and his wife, a longtime Wall Street executive, earned nearly $700,000 in 2013.

The story of success against the odds is a political classic, even if it is one the Republican Party has not been able to tell for a long time. Ronald Reagan liked to say that while he had not been born on the wrong side of the tracks, he could always hear the whistle. Richard Nixon was fond of reminding voters how he was born in a house his father had built.

“Probably the idea that is most attractive to an average voter, and an idea that both Republicans and Democrats try to craft into their messages, is this idea that you can rise from nothing,” said Charles C. W. Cooke, a writer for National Review.

There is a certain delight Republicans take in turning that message to their advantage now.

“That’s what Obama did with Hillary,” Mr. Cooke said. “He acknowledged it openly: ‘This is ridiculous. Look at me, this one-term senator with dark skin and all of America’s unsolved racial problems, running against the wife of the last Democratic president.”

Review: ‘Frontline’ Looks at Missteps During the Ebola Outbreak

y NEIL GENZLINGER

Frontline

Frontline An installment of this PBS program looks at the effects of Ebola on Liberia and other countries, as well as the origins of the outbreak.

The program traces the outbreak to its origin, thought to be a tree full of bats in Guinea.

Taiwan party leader affirms eventual reunion with China

BEIJING (AP) — The head of Taiwan's Nationalists reaffirmed the party's support for eventual unification with the mainland when he met Monday with Chinese President Xi Jinping as part of continuing rapprochement between the former bitter enemies.

Nationalist Party Chairman Eric Chu, a likely presidential candidate next year, also affirmed Taiwan's desire to join the proposed Chinese-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank during the meeting in Beijing. China claims Taiwan as its own territory and doesn't want the island to join using a name that might imply it is an independent country.

Chu's comments during his meeting with Xi were carried live on Hong Kong-based broadcaster Phoenix Television.

The Nationalists were driven to Taiwan by Mao Zedong's Communists during the Chinese civil war in 1949, leading to decades of hostility between the sides. Chu, who took over as party leader in January, is the third Nationalist chairman to visit the mainland and the first since 2009.

Relations between the communist-ruled mainland and the self-governing democratic island of Taiwan began to warm in the 1990s, partly out of their common opposition to Taiwan's formal independence from China, a position advocated by the island's Democratic Progressive Party.

Despite increasingly close economic ties, the prospect of political unification has grown increasingly unpopular on Taiwan, especially with younger voters. Opposition to the Nationalists' pro-China policies was seen as a driver behind heavy local electoral defeats for the party last year that led to Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou resigning as party chairman.

Jayne Meadows, Actress and Steve Allen’s Wife and Co-Star, Dies at 95

Ms. Meadows was the older sister of Audrey Meadows, who played Alice Kramden on “The Honeymooners.”