PAKET UMROH BULAN FEBRUARI MARET APRIL MEI 2018

saco-indonesia.com, Wakil Ketua Komisi Pemberantasan Korupsi (KPK), Bambang Widjojanto, telah mengaku pihaknya tidak akan tergesa-gesa dalam melakukan penahanan terhadap Gubernur Banten, Ratu Atut Choysiah. Pasalnya, KPK juga harus memeriksa terlebih dahulu saksi-saksi secara intensif agar bisa melakukan penahanan.

“Polanya KPK juga tidak terburu-buru untuk menahan orang. Tapi memeriksa saksi-saksi secara intensif,” kata Bambang melalui pesan singkatnya, Jumat (20/12/2013).

Bambang juga mengaku KPK tidak memiliki kekhawatiran Atut akan menghilangkan bukti atas tindakan pidana korupsi maupun Tindakan Pidana Pencucian Uang (TPPU) yang telah dilakukannya. Pasalnya, KPK juga akan menelusuri harta bendanya mengalir.

“Selama ini juga kan KPK tetap berhasil dalam menyita barang-barang mereka. Coba lihat kasus Djoko Susilo,” ucapnya.

Sebelumnya, juru bicara KPK, Johan Budi, juga mengungkapkan hanya penyidik yang tahu mengenai informasi kapan Atut akan ditahan. “Belum ada informasi (Atut ditahan atau tidak). Itu penyidik yang tahu,” kata Johan.

Seperti yang telah diketahui, hari ini, KPK juga akan memeriksa Atut untuk yang pertama kali dengan statusnya sebagai tersangka. Atut telah menjadi tersangka pada Selasa 17 Desember dengan tuduhan diduga ikut terlibat dalam kasus suap Pilkada Lebak yang menyeret mantan Ketua Mahkamah Konstitusi, Akil Mochtar. Atut juga akan ditetapkan menjadi tersangka pada kasus dugaan korupsi pengadaan alat kesehatan di Banten pada periode 2011-2012.

Penetapan tersangka Atut, juga merupakan pengembangan KPK setelah lebih dulu menetapkan adiknya Tubagus Chaeri Wardhana alias Wawan sebagai tersangka suap sengketa Pilkada terhadap Akil. Uang suap senilai Rp1 miliar itu rencananya juga akan diberikan melalui pengacara Susi Tur Andayani. Dalam perkara ini, Atut disangkakan memiliki peran sebagai pihak pemberi suap.


Editor : Dian Sukmawati

saco-indonesia.com, Berikut ini delapan tips belajar cara menjual yang sukses. Mari simak…

• ACTION. Seperti kalau anda ingin bisa berenang, anda harus ACTION berenang. Nyemplung ke dalam kolam, dan mulai belajar renang. Begitupun kalau anda mau pintar berjualan, anda harus mulai menjual. Jika anda tak pernah mencoba menjual, anda tak akan pernah tahu bagaimana rasanya menjual. Yang perlu anda lakukan hanyalah cari produk dan tawarkan ke orang. Baik anda lakukan itu secara online maupun offline.
  Dan tak perlu peduli seandainya anda belum berhasil menjual di kesempatan pertama. Ndableglah! Tetap semangat tawarkan produk anda sampai terjadi penjualan!
• Antisipasi penolakan. Ditolak saat anda hendak menjual itu sudah biasa. Yang penting, anda tahu apa alasan mereka menolak penjualan anda. Biasanya orang menolak karena misal tidak punya uang, tidak suka produknya, dan sebagainya. Karena itu, anda harus siapkan jawaban untuk semua penolakan itu.
• Siapa prospek anda. Kenali siapa orang yang mau anda tawari produk anda. Mengenali prospek amat penting agar anda bisa menjual dengan lebih efektif.
• Yakin. Yakinlah kalau anda bisa menjual. Saat menawarkan yakinlah kalau anda bisa closing. Yakinlah bahwa anda punya penawaran yang dahsyat.
• Tawarkan ke lebih banyak orang. Ilmu menjual sebenarnya sederhana. Semakin banyak yang anda tawari, semakin besar penjualan tercipta. Jadi, rajinlah untuk mencari prospek.
• Jangan pernah menyerah. Tidak mudah patah semangat. Terus jual, jual, dan jual! Tak ada satupun yang akan membuat semangat anda turun.
• Jangan anggap sales. Saat anda menawarkan, jangan pernah menganggap anda sebagai sales sekalipun itu posisi anda. Sebab akan banyak yang memandang sebelah mata. Sebaliknya, bersikaplah seperti CEO. Bayangkan anda sebagai CEO dan anda akan terlihat berbeda.
• Cek suara. Cek 1, 2, 3! ya, seperti kalau anda cek sound, suara anda harus mantap. Jangan sampai suara anda terdengar membosankan. Suara yang mengesankan ini penting kalau anda ketemu orang langsung maupun untuk video/audio marketing.
  Anda bisa rekam suara anda dan putar ulang untuk mengetahui bagaimana suara anda. Minta pendapat dari teman bagaimana mengenai suara anda tersebut.

Inilah delapan tips cara belajar menjual agar berhasil. Mari praktekkan.

Salam ACTION!

Objek wisata Gunung Bromo tentu juga sudah sering terdengar bukan ditelinga Anda, terutama Masyarakat Jawa Timur sendiri. Siapa yang tak sangka Gunung berapi yang masih dalam status aktif ini juga merupakan salah satu objek wisata yang sangat populer di kawasan Jawa Timur, Indonesia. Gunung dengan ketinggian 2.392 meter di atas permukaan laut ini telah terletak di dalam 4 kawasan yakni Pasuruan, Kab. Probolinggo, Lumajang dan Kab. Malang.

Bagi Anda yang baru pertama kali berwisata ke Gunung Bromo ini jangan heran jika Anda dibuat terkesan akan keindahan panorama alam Bromo yang begitu sangat menakjubkan. Hamparan savana hijau bersamaan dengan lautan pasir yang telah memiliki luas sekitar 10 kilometer persegi benar benar siap memukau siapa saja yang melihatnya. Gunung Bromo juga terkenal akan kawahnya yang begitu indah ketika mengeluarkan asap belerang yang relatif cukup tipis. Disekitar Gunung Bromo juga terdapat Gunung Batok, Gunung Semeru dan Gunung Penanjakan yang telah menjadi lokasi paling strategis untuk dapat melihat sunrise dari puncak Gunung Bromo.

Salah satu peristiwa yang unik di kawasan Gunung Bromo adalah tradisi adat yang bernama “Yadnya Kasada atau Kasodo” yang selalu diselenggarakan penduduk Tengger di sebuah pura yang terletak di bawah kaki Gunung Bromo Utara setiap bulan purnama. Pada saat upacara adat ini berlangsung, jumlah pengunjung yang datang bisa melonjak berlipat lipat termasuk berbagai media Nasional dan Internasional yang datang untuk meliput tradisi yang unik ini. Untuk masalah tempat penginapan Anda tidak perlu khawatir karena di kawasan Bromo sudah banyak berdiri hotel, villa dan tempat penginapan lainnya yang dapat Anda sewa.

Labbaika Allaahumma labbaik.Labbaika Iaa syariika laka labbaik.Innal hamda wanni'mata laka wal mulk.Laa syariika lak. ("Ya Allah, aku datang karena panggilan-Mu.Tiada sekutu bagi-Mu.Segala nimat dan puji adalah kepunyaan dan kekuasaan-Mu.Tiada sekutu bagi-Mu")

Berduyun-duyun jutaan kaum muslimin dari berbagai penjuru dunia, datang menuju Baitullah untuk memenuhi panggilan-Nya, menjalankan ibadah haji yang merupakan rukun Islam kelima.

Suara tangisan, derai air mata, rintihan doa, desahan zikir dan istigfar bergema di setiap penjuru Masjidil Haram. Inilah ungkapan bahagia kaum muslimin yang mendapat undangan untuk menjadi tamu Allah.

Alangkah bahagianya mereka yang mampu memenuhi panggilan-Nya. Mereka mampu melaksanakan thawaf, shalat dan berdoa di depan ka'bah. Bahkan tak sedikit diantara mereka yang mampu mencium Hajar Aswad di tengah desakan jutaan umat manusia.

Haji, bukanlah ibadah fisik, bukan pula ibadah harta. Namun, haji merupakan ibadah multi dimensi, dimana terdapat dimensi lain yang mesti ada dalam pelaksanaan ibadah haji.

Dalam pelaksanaan ibadah haji, ada empat dimensi yang dibutuhkan untuk mendukung kekhusyuan dan kelancaran ibadah haji tersebut. Adapun keempat dimensi tersebut adalah :

Pertama, Quwwah Jasadiyah (Kekuatan Fisik).
Perjalanan ibadah haji yang kita lakukan adalah perjalanan fisik, misalnya Thawaf (mengelilingi ka'bah) sebanyak tujuh kali putaran, sai (perjalanan antara Shafa dan Marwa), jumrah, dll. Itu semua tentunya membutuhkan kekuatan fisik. Ketika fisik kita lemah dalam melakukan Thawaf, maka kekhusyuan pun akan terganggu. Oleh karena itu, kita dituntut untuk mempersiapkan fisik kita sebelum berangkat ke baitullah. Lakukan olah raga yang cukup dan berikanlah  nutrisi (gizi) yang seimbang (pada tubuh kita), agar fisik kita tetap sehat dan kuat  dalam melaksanakan ibadah haji.

Kedua, Quwwah Maaliyah (Kekuatan Harta).
Mengeluarkan biaya untuk keperluan haji akan dinilai Allah SWT setara dengan mengeluarkan biaya untuk Perang Sabil, satu dirham akan menjadi tujuh ratus kali lipat (HR. Ibnu Abi Syaibah, Ahmad, Thabrani dan Baihaqi). Dalam melaksanakan ibadah haji, yang dibutuhkan bukan hanya semangat yang tinggi atau fisik yang kuat, namun yang tak kalah pentingnya adalah memiliki harta yang cukup. Cukup untuk bekal selama di tanah suci maupun bekal untuk keluarga yang ditinggalkan. Ketika harta kita cukup untuk berangkat haji, begitu kita berniat, segera siapkan diri kita untuk menuju rumah Allah. Rasulullah saw pernah memberikan nasehat, "Bersegeralah melaksanakan haji, karena sesungguhnya seorang di antara kamu tidak mengetahui apa yang akan merintanginya di masa yang akan datang." (H.R. Ahmad).

Ketiga, Quwwah Ilmiyah (Kekuatan Ilmu).
Dalam pelaksanaan ibadah haji, tentunya harus dilakukan sesuai dengan ilmunya (sunnahnya). Untuk itu, sebelum kita berangkat haji, kita harus menguasai terlebih dahulu materi tentang manasik haji, mulai dari thawaf, sai, jumrah dan lain-lain. Mengapa haji yang kita lakukan harus benar? Karena derajat haji mabrur akan mudah di raih, jika dalam pelaksanaan ibadah haji dilakukan dengan benar (sesuai dengan contoh Rasulullah saw).

Keempat, Quwwah Ruhiyah (Kekuatan Ruhani).
Haji adalah ibadah yang membutuhkan kesadaran yang tinggi agar dapat merasakan betapa indah dan nikmatnya menjadi tamu Allah. Luruskan niat dan tanamkan keikhlasan dalam diri kita, bahwa haji yang kita laksanakan hanya karena Allah semata, bukan ingin mendapatkan titel "Haji" sepulangnya dari makkah atau ingin mendapatkan kedudukan terhormat di masyarakat karena telah berhasil berangkat ke tanah suci. Oleh karena itu, mulai saat ini, tinggalkan segala perbuatan yang dilarang oleh-Nya dan sempurnakanlah segala perintah-Nya, niscaya kita akan mendapat kedudukan tertinggi di surga, sebagaimana sabda Rasulullah saw,

"Orang-orang yang sedang berhaji atau berumroh adalah tamu-tamu Allah dan para peziarah rumah-Nya, jika mereka meminta sesuatu dari-Nya niscaya Ia akan memberinya. Dan jika mereka memohon ampunan dari-Nya niscaya Ia akan mengampuninya. Dan jika mereka berdoa kepada-Nya niscaya Ia akan mengabulkannya. Dan jika mereka bersyafaat (memintakan sesuatu untuk orang lain) kepada-Nya niscaya Ia akan menerima syafaatnya" (H.R. Ibnu Majah).

 
Itulah empat dimensi yang harus kita siapkan untuk melaksanakan ibadah haji. Tanpa persiapan tersebut, kekhusyuan dan kelancaran pun akan terganggu . Untuk itu, mulai saat ini persiapkanlah diri kita untuk menjadi tamu-tamu Allah dengan memiliki empat komponen diatas, agar kita mampu meraih kekhuyuan yang optimal.

Wallaahu a'lam.

Sumber : http://www.percikaniman.org

Baca Juga Artikel Lainnya : PENGERTIAN IBADAH HAJI DAN UMRAH

A lapsed seminarian, Mr. Chambers succeeded Saul Alinsky as leader of the social justice umbrella group Industrial Areas Foundation.

“It was really nice to play with other women and not have this underlying tone of being at each other’s throats.”

Mr. King sang for the Drifters and found success as a solo performer with hits like “Spanish Harlem.”

The 6-foot-10 Phillips played alongside the 6-11 Rick Robey on the Wildcats team that won the 1978 N.C.A.A. men’s basketball title.

BALTIMORE — In the afternoons, the streets of Locust Point are clean and nearly silent. In front of the rowhouses, potted plants rest next to steps of brick or concrete. There is a shopping center nearby with restaurants, and a grocery store filled with fresh foods.

And the National Guard and the police are largely absent. So, too, residents say, are worries about what happened a few miles away on April 27 when, in a space of hours, parts of this city became riot zones.

“They’re not our reality,” Ashley Fowler, 30, said on Monday at the restaurant where she works. “They’re not what we’re living right now. We live in, not to be racist, white America.”

As Baltimore considers its way forward after the violent unrest brought by the death of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man who died of injuries he suffered while in police custody, residents in its predominantly white neighborhoods acknowledge that they are sometimes struggling to understand what beyond Mr. Gray’s death spurred the turmoil here. For many, the poverty and troubled schools of gritty West Baltimore are distant troubles, glimpsed only when they pass through the area on their way somewhere else.

Photo

 

And so neighborhoods of Baltimore are facing altogether different reckonings after Mr. Gray’s death. In mostly black communities like Sandtown-Winchester, where some of the most destructive rioting played out last week, residents are hoping businesses will reopen and that the police will change their strategies. But in mostly white areas like Canton and Locust Point, some residents wonder what role, if any, they should play in reimagining stretches of Baltimore where they do not live.

“Most of the people are kind of at a loss as to what they’re supposed to do,” said Dr. Richard Lamb, a dentist who has practiced in the same Locust Point office for nearly 39 years. “I listen to the news reports. I listen to the clergymen. I listen to the facts of the rampant unemployment and the lack of opportunities in the area. Listen, I pay my taxes. Exactly what can I do?”

And in Canton, where the restaurants have clever names like Nacho Mama’s and Holy Crepe Bakery and Café, Sara Bahr said solutions seemed out of reach for a proudly liberal city.

“I can only imagine how frustrated they must be,” said Ms. Bahr, 36, a nurse who was out with her 3-year-old daughter, Sally. “I just wish I knew how to solve poverty. I don’t know what to do to make it better.”

The day of unrest and the overwhelmingly peaceful demonstrations that followed led to hundreds of arrests, often for violations of the curfew imposed on the city for five consecutive nights while National Guard soldiers patrolled the streets. Although there were isolated instances of trouble in Canton, the neighborhood association said on its website, many parts of southeast Baltimore were physically untouched by the tumult.

Tensions in the city bubbled anew on Monday after reports that the police had wounded a black man in Northwest Baltimore. The authorities denied those reports and sent officers to talk with the crowds that gathered while other officers clutching shields blocked traffic at Pennsylvania and West North Avenues.

Lt. Col. Melvin Russell, a community police officer, said officers had stopped a man suspected of carrying a handgun and that “one of those rounds was spent.”

Colonel Russell said officers had not opened fire, “so we couldn’t have shot him.”

Photo

 

The colonel said the man had not been injured but was taken to a hospital as a precaution. Nearby, many people stood in disbelief, despite the efforts by the authorities to quash reports they described as “unfounded.”

Monday’s episode was a brief moment in a larger drama that has yielded anger and confusion. Although many people said they were familiar with accounts of the police harassing or intimidating residents, many in Canton and Locust Point said they had never experienced it themselves. When they watched the unrest, which many protesters said was fueled by feelings that they lived only on Baltimore’s margins, even those like Ms. Bahr who were pained by what they saw said they could scarcely comprehend the emotions associated with it.

But others, like Lambi Vasilakopoulos, who runs a casual restaurant in Canton, said they were incensed by what unfolded last week.

“What happened wasn’t called for. Protests are one thing; looting is another thing,” he said, adding, “We’re very frustrated because we’re the ones who are going to pay for this.”

There were pockets of optimism, though, that Baltimore would enter a period of reconciliation.

“I’m just hoping for peace,” Natalie Boies, 53, said in front of the Locust Point home where she has lived for 50 years. “Learn to love each other; be patient with each other; find justice; and care.”

A skeptical Mr. Vasilakopoulos predicted tensions would worsen.

“It cannot be fixed,” he said. “It’s going to get worse. Why? Because people don’t obey the laws. They don’t want to obey them.”

But there were few fears that the violence that plagued West Baltimore last week would play out on these relaxed streets. The authorities, Ms. Fowler said, would make sure of that.

“They kept us safe here,” she said. “I didn’t feel uncomfortable when I was in my house three blocks away from here. I knew I was going to be O.K. because I knew they weren’t going to let anyone come and loot our properties or our businesses or burn our cars.”

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.

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

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.

Photo

 

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.”)

Photo

 

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.”

Ms. Turner and her twin sister founded the Love Kitchen in 1986 in a church basement in Knoxville, Tenn., and it continues to provide clothing and meals.

Mr. Napoleon was a self-taught musician whose career began in earnest with the orchestra led by Chico Marx of the Marx Brothers.

Ms. Rendell was a prolific writer of intricately plotted mystery novels that combined psychological insight, social conscience and teeth-chattering terror.

A 2-minute-42-second demo recording captured in one take turned out to be a one-hit wonder for Mr. Ely, who was 19 when he sang the garage-band classic.

WASHINGTON — During a training course on defending against knife attacks, a young Salt Lake City police officer asked a question: “How close can somebody get to me before I’m justified in using deadly force?”

Dennis Tueller, the instructor in that class more than three decades ago, decided to find out. In the fall of 1982, he performed a rudimentary series of tests and concluded that an armed attacker who bolted toward an officer could clear 21 feet in the time it took most officers to draw, aim and fire their weapon.

The next spring, Mr. Tueller published his findings in SWAT magazine and transformed police training in the United States. The “21-foot rule” became dogma. It has been taught in police academies around the country, accepted by courts and cited by officers to justify countless shootings, including recent episodes involving a homeless woodcarver in Seattle and a schizophrenic woman in San Francisco.

Mr. Tepper was not a musical child and had no formal training, but he grew up to write both lyrics and tunes, trading off duties with the other member of the team, Roy C. Bennett.

David Goldman/Associated Press

National Guard soldiers boarding a truck in Baltimore on Sunday.

Baltimore residents prepared to resume the more familiar rhythms of their lives as days passed without new bouts of widespread rioting and as the National Guard began to pull its troops from the city.

In Baltimore, National Guard Pullout Begins as Citywide Curfew Is Lifted