Billy Crystal recently said he has stopped talking to God. “No, ’cause I don’t trust Him,” he told CBS correspondent Tracy Smith. His home burned in the Pacific Palisades fire, and his longtime friend Rob Reiner and Reiner’s wife, Michele, were murdered.

Suppose you were sitting across the table when he said it. What would you say?

We arrive at someone’s sorrow with conclusions before we’ve heard their story. We deliver our answers and leave. They’re still grieving, and now they may also feel guilty for struggling.

I asked that question on my radio program because someone we know may eventually trust us enough to say the same thing. A neighbor who buried a child. Someone who prayed beside a hospital bed and went home alone. Would we hear their anguish or immediately start preparing our answer?

I’ve spent 40 years caring for my wife, Gracie. Her suffering began before I met her. Over her lifetime, she has endured 98 operations and the loss of both legs. Along the way, people have told us what we should believe, how we should feel, and what God was evidently trying to accomplish. Some never acknowledged the weight of what we carried.

Rush Limbaugh used the phrase “drive-by media” to describe reporters who rushed into a story, stirred things up, and moved along, leaving others to deal with the damage. Are we in danger of engaging in drive-by ministry?

We arrive at someone’s sorrow with conclusions before we’ve heard their story. We deliver our answers and leave. They’re still grieving, and now they may also feel guilty for struggling. It costs considerably more to pull up a chair.

Job’s friends managed that at first. They sat silently beside him for seven days because they saw how greatly he suffered. Most of us struggle to give someone seven uninterrupted minutes.

Scripture makes room for anguish. David asks in Psalm 13, “How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever?” Those words are in our Bibles. We ought to be able to hear them from someone sitting in our living rooms. David ultimately recalls God’s steadfast love, but the psalm lets us hear his sorrow along the way.

I learned something about the cost of coming near in a dusty prosthetic clinic in Ghana. Through Standing With Hope, the ministry Gracie envisioned after losing her legs, we’ve provided prosthetic limbs in Ghana for more than 20 years.

RELATED: Before pride drives the tractor through the fence

Photo by Peter Rosenberger

On an early trip, a young Nigerian man arrived wearing a prosthesis. Our team was occupied, so I sat down with him. We didn’t share a language, and I couldn’t find an interpreter. With gestures, I asked him to remove his prosthesis and the liner covering his residual limb.

The smell hit me like it had reached out and slapped me. My eyes watered, and a friend sitting several feet away backed up. I feared an infection, but I found no visible wound. He hadn’t properly washed his limb and liner, and my attempts to explain what he needed to do weren’t getting us anywhere.

I understood that he was Muslim. This was not terribly long after September 11. For all I knew, he could have been an enemy of my faith or my country. I didn’t know. What I knew was that he was missing a leg, needed help with his prosthesis, and had come to our clinic.

So I found clean water, soap, and a towel and demonstrated how to wash his limb and liner. At first, my eyes watered from the smell. As I washed his limb, I began to weep over what Christ had done for me.

My own stench was far worse. And mine wasn’t coming off with soap and water. It required His blood.

I could barely keep myself together. I had come to help put legs on people, and there I sat, overwhelmed by the mercy Christ had shown me.

Sitting with someone in anguish can leave us feeling helpless. Physical or emotional trauma makes us uncomfortable. We want to explain something, fix something, or give them something to do. Their grief may outlast everything we know to say.

RELATED: Gavin Newsom invoked Nietzsche. I thought of ‘Blazing Saddles.’

Eric Thayer/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

Jesus stood at Lazarus’ grave and wept. He knew He was about to raise him, yet He wept. That ought to shape how we approach someone whose sorrow has spilled into words that trouble us.

I want grieving people to know Christ. I want them to know the Savior who bore our sin and rose from the dead. And when I speak of Him, I want to remember how patiently He has dealt with me.

I cannot make sense of why Billy Crystal’s home burned or why his friends were killed. But hearing his words makes me want to pull up a chair and ask, “Tell me about your friends.” Then listen long enough to hear the answer.

That takes time. It may cost us more than we expected. Forty years beside Gracie have taught me that some suffering will still be there when the conversation ends. But Christ has given us ample reason to keep showing up.

He didn’t drive by. He entered.

​God, Opinion & analysis, Trust, Palisades fire, Rob reiner, Billy crystal, Murder, Faith, Christianity 

AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile have dominated the mobile carrier space for decades. While smaller MVNOs pop up from time to time, even these rent their service from the Big Three. Rarely does an entirely new carrier show up to challenge the status quo, but that’s exactly what SpaceX plans to do with its upcoming mobile carrier alternative.

Elon Musk is a man of many companies. At age 24, he co-founded his first venture, called Zip2. Similar to the Yellow Pages phone books of yesteryear, it used the brand-new internet of 1995 to create a directory that made it easier for users to search for and find local businesses online. While it doesn’t sound impressive by today’s standards, the company caught the attention of computer heavyweight Compaq, which acquired it for $305 million before the new millennium.

After decades of dominance by AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile, it’s good that consumers may finally have a fourth viable carrier.

Musk has been building things ever since. He went on to co-found popular payment company PayPal, artificial intelligence giant OpenAI, automotive phenom Tesla, and spacefaring juggernaut SpaceX, among other smaller ventures. Needless to say, the man has a very diverse resume stacked with names that all changed society.

SpaceX, in particular, has been one of Musk’s more flexible companies, serving as a catch-all for various sub-brands and services, like the artificial intelligence company SpaceXSI (formerly SpaceXAI, and simply xAI before that) that powers Grok, national security service Starshield, and a low-Earth-orbit satellite internet provider, Starlink.

Starlink has already proven to be a reliable internet service provider, even in hard-to-reach locales like Antarctica and, one day, maybe even Mars. Up until recently, Starlink only had authorization to provide high-speed broadband internet to users, but now the service is poised to expand.

In a blog post on the SpaceX website, the company unveiled two major milestones for a new venture dubbed Starlink Mobile.

SpaceX announced an agreement to acquire a nationwide low-band spectrum license portfolio of up to 14 megahertz of paired spectrum in the 800 MHz band. This prime low-band spectrum addresses one of the key remaining technical gaps that will pave the way for Starlink Mobile to become a major mobile carrier in the US.

In other words, SpaceX is on the cusp of launching a full-fledged satellite-based mobile carrier service for phones. The only thing standing in the way is official FCC approval. Luckily, we won’t have to wait long, as the FCC is expected to vote on the matter on October 29.

As for the second milestone:

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) also approved Starlink Mobile’s Gen2 constellation application this week, authorizing SpaceX to launch 15,000 satellites that are optimized for 2 GHz spectrum globally. The V2 Starlink Mobile satellites will deliver more than 100 times the bandwidth of our current generation, bringing high-speed service directly to unmodified devices anywhere in the world.

Historically, the 2 GHz spectrum is reserved for connections that require long range and permeability through hard surfaces, making it extremely versatile for a wide range of applications. Since it excels at passing through walls, Starlink Mobile should theoretically be more stable in areas that usually trip up existing carriers, like underground spaces boxed in by concrete, valleys surrounded by steep hills, large structural buildings with lots of metal, and more.

RELATED: Starlink needs a reality check

Matteo Della Torre/NurPhoto/Getty Images

Meanwhile, the fact that Starlink Mobile is supported by Musk’s Starlink satellite network should allow the carrier to cover larger regions with fewer drops in service, and it should also work internationally in any region that allows Starlink to operate. For now, that includes most of the United States, South America, Europe, Australia, and more.

Of course, all of this remains to be seen. Starlink is a well-tested service, having been around since 2018, but that doesn’t automatically mean the cellphone carrier will be just as good. Call quality, signal strength, and random drops will all need to be tested before Starlink Mobile is deemed a success.

Starlink’s internet service is also generally more expensive than other brands, so Starlink Mobile will need to find a competitive pricing model if it really wants to go against the Big Three.

Ultimately, after decades of dominance by AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile, it’s good that consumers may finally have a fourth viable carrier that doesn’t reuse the same old towers or recycle the same technologies found here on Earth.

Starlink and Starlink Mobile are just two of Elon Musk’s extraterrestrial business ventures. Earlier this year, he announced broader plans to put a city on the moon that will serve as a hub to launch Earth-orbiting data centers and even launch rockets bound for Mars.

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​Att, Elon musk, Fcc, Openai, Spacex, Starlink, Tesla, Verizon, Tech 

A mother of a 12-year-old student at Rayburn Middle School in San Antonio, Texas, said he texted her to pick him up from school over alleged comments from a teacher.

A spokesperson for the Northside Independent School District said the district is investigating a claim that a teacher threatened to call immigration officials and police on students.

‘The district takes this report very seriously, and the substitute teacher has been suspended from all district assignments pending the outcome of a thorough investigation.’

A student reported on Oct. 6 that the unnamed substitute teacher made the threats to misbehaving students and referenced Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the threat.

The district has suspended the teacher while investigating the veracity of the allegations, spokesperson Barry Perez said to KSAT-TV.

The accused instructor was hired in Aug. 2024, and no previous complaints had been made against the substitute, according to the district.

A mother of a 12-year-old student told WOAI-TV that he texted her about the incident from school.

“He let me know that a substitute teacher threatened the classroom that he was going to call the police and ICE,” Amanda San Miguel said.

“He was scared. I got a text message from him. He wanted to be picked up early and I said, ‘No, what’s going on?'” she added.

She said she thought her child just wanted to come home early, but later received a call from the principal confirming the incident.

“It is true, and when she said that my heart just dropped, and I was like, ‘Oh my God, let me get in the car and go down there,'” she said.

She said she was enraged by the incident.

RELATED: More than 100 outraged community members denounce elementary school teacher over 2-word post about ICE

“Campus administrators took steps to immediately remove the substitute while they investigated the allegation,” Perez said, according to My San Antonio.

He also confirmed that school officials had spoken with the parent of the student involved.

“The district takes this report very seriously, and the substitute teacher has been suspended from all district assignments pending the outcome of a thorough investigation,” the district said.

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​Texas, Immigration and customs enforcement, Immigration, Education, Politics 

I’m a Jew who lives in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, and nobody on my block can tell. I don’t wear a kippah. I don’t keep Shabbat. On a Saturday afternoon, I can walk down Eastern Parkway without standing out.

Many of my neighbors don’t have that luxury. Their hats, coats, and tzitzit identify them from a block away. Those visible signs of Jewish life also make them targets in a city long considered one of the best places in the world to be Jewish.

New York already publishes hate-crime figures. It should also examine the rhetoric behind those crimes.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani says he wants to protect them. On September 29, he released New York City’s first Strategy to Combat Antisemitism. Parts of the plan deserve credit. It directs $1 million to security at vulnerable houses of worship, doubles “hate-prevention” grants to $6.4 million, and expands eighth-grade visits to the Museum of Jewish Heritage. Synagogues struggling to pay for guards, cameras, and locks need the help.

But the 33-page strategy has a glaring blind spot: It never confronts the anti-Semitism that increasingly uses the word “Zionist” as a substitute for “Jew.”

The report’s concrete examples of anti-Semitic violence are Charlottesville in 2017, the Tree of Life synagogue massacre in 2018, and the Poway synagogue shooting in 2019. All were horrific. None happened in New York City. The document acknowledges that anti-Jewish crime increased after October 7, 2023, but does not examine the role of anti-Zionist agitation in that increase.

According to the Anti-Defamation League, the share of anti-Semitic incidents in New York City involving Israel or Zionism rose from 5% in 2022 to 37% in 2023 and 58% in 2024. Yet the mayor’s plan never addresses the relationship between anti-Zionist rhetoric and attacks on Jewish New Yorkers.

It also declines to adopt a definition of anti-Semitism. The city says it can fight hatred “without needing to adopt a definition for this specific form of hate.” The report discusses competing definitions, then leaves the decision unresolved. That is convenient when some of the most poisonous language comes from activists on the mayor’s side of the political divide.

In Crown Heights, we have heard that language firsthand. Last year, a group called Crown Heights Bites Back distributed free groceries near Utica Avenue and Eastern Parkway. It also distributed flyers warning that “Zionist white supremacists” would “kill us, exploit us, raise our rents and evict us.” At a vigil for Gavin Cato, whose 1991 death preceded the Crown Heights riots, masked activists from the group shoved a Jewish man. The group also praised the murder of two Israeli embassy staffers.

The accusation has spread beyond my neighborhood. Nerdeen Kiswani of Within Our Lifetime claimed that “Zionist landlords” exploited black communities to fund settlements in Palestine. Brooklyn Democrat district leader Carmella Charrington compared a family property dispute to Israeli activity in the West Bank, even though the state attorney general’s office had described the underlying matter as an inheritance dispute. In Chelsea, flyers opposing a public-housing redevelopment denounced a “Zionist occupation”; others attacked “Talmudists” and “Rothschilds.” The same reporting documented both sets of accusations.

The housing grievance is especially perverse because Hasidic families struggle with rising costs, too. The borough president’s housing analysis identifies Borough Park and South Williamsburg among Brooklyn’s most rent-burdened neighborhoods. Some young Chabad families have moved to Brownsville because they cannot afford Crown Heights. Some Hasidic developers have grown rich in Brooklyn real estate. So have many others.

RELATED: Our enemies burn Israel’s flag. Our friends plant it.

Michal Fludra/NurPhoto/Getty Images

But the anger rarely lands on a developer. It lands on the man in the black hat waiting for the bus.

The ADL found that Orthodox Jews were victims in 36 of the city’s 69 anti-Semitic assaults in 2024, though they constitute about one-fifth of New York City’s Jews. Mamdani’s own report recognizes that visibly Jewish New Yorkers bear a disproportionate share of attacks. It never grapples with the local rhetoric that can turn a neighborhood housing complaint into an accusation against Jews as a group.

The strategy itself warns that anti-Semitism thrives on conspiracy theories that blame Jews for society’s troubles. What, then, should the city call the claim that “Zionists” are responsible for a family’s rent?

The political difficulty is plain. City Hall rolled out the plan with support from progressive Jewish organizations, including Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, Bend the Arc, and J Street’s local chapter. The rent-and-Zionism rhetoric comes from parts of the same political world. Naming it would require Mamdani to criticize allies as well as enemies.

He can do so when he chooses. In December, after an incoming staffer’s old posts about “money hungry Jews” surfaced, he accepted her resignation. When offensive Chelsea flyers appeared, City Hall denounced them.

RELATED: Mamdani boycotts NYC Israel Day Parade despite attending other ethnic celebrations

Spencer Platt/Getty Images

But when Jewish Insider asked about Charrington, a Democrat district leader elected with progressive backing, the mayor refused to answer three times. His office later condemned her conspiracy rhetoric as anti-Semitic but did not say whether she should remain in party leadership. The condemnation was welcome. The refusal to confront her position was revealing.

City Council Member Eric Dinowitz, an ally who praised the plan’s education and prevention measures, said it missed an opportunity to confront the overlap between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. He was right. That omission leaves a serious hole in an otherwise useful effort.

New York already publishes hate-crime figures. It should also examine the rhetoric behind those crimes, including attacks that connect Jewish identity to Israel or blame Jews for housing costs. And the city’s new prevention money should reach Crown Heights, Williamsburg, and Borough Park, where visibly Jewish residents have suffered assaults.

Mamdani should come to Crown Heights and say the words himself: Blaming Hasidic Jews for your rent is anti-Semitism. If he cannot say that much, no 33-page strategy will close the gap between his promises and the lives my neighbors lead.

​Adl, Antisemitic, Antisemitism, Brooklyn, Conspiracy theories, Grants, Israel, Jew, New york city, Orthodox jews, Palestine, Public policy, Rhetoric, Security, Synagogues, Violence, Zionism, Residents, Zohran mamdani, Opinion & analysis 

A few months in Manhattan have made me part of the city’s bubble. I pay $3 for the subway, worry about rent and groceries, and rarely think about the cost of filling a gas tank. Then I went home to South Jersey and saw the price posted outside a station. I had almost forgotten what the rest of the country pays to get around.

New York City makes that easy. Apartment renters and subway riders experience housing, transportation, and energy policy differently from families who drive to work, take their children to school, and run errands by car. Nine in 10 Americans say they drive at least sometimes. They cannot simply stop paying attention to the price of gasoline.

The election is November 3, and voters won’t grade fuel prices on a curve just because the occupant of the White House has changed.

As of October 14, the national average for regular gas stood at $4.33 a gallon. California topped $6, and several other states exceeded $5. New Jersey, where I grew up, averaged about $4.29 a gallon. Even where prices are lower, a family’s weekly fill-ups eat into money needed elsewhere.

For years, Republicans hammered President Biden over gas prices. Motorists slapped “I Did That” stickers bearing his face on pumps. Looking at that station in South Jersey, I realized Republicans now face a similar reckoning. The election is November 3, and voters won’t grade fuel prices on a curve just because the occupant of the White House has changed.

The administration has moved to ease energy rules. For example, the EPA has repealed vehicle greenhouse gas standards. But regulations alone cannot explain the price at the pump. The conflict around the Strait of Hormuz has disrupted oil markets, and years of delayed infrastructure projects have constrained domestic capacity. A proposed diesel export ban would create its own problems rather than solve the underlying shortage.

Yet the White House has offered little comfort to motorists. Trump called higher gasoline costs a “very inexpensive price” to pay for what the United States had done in Iran. Energy Secretary Chris Wright pointed to the end of the summer driving season and weaker demand as reasons to expect prices to fall. Seasonal demand may ease, but families still need to drive in October. They need relief, not reassurance that summer is over.

Gas prices cannot be waved away until the next news cycle. They present a real political problem for Republican incumbents in November. Democrats bear responsibility for decades of energy restrictions that have hindered pipelines and domestic production, but Republicans now govern in Washington. Voters have every right to demand results from them.

RELATED: Democrats may ride a blue wave on a red script

Id-work/Getty Images

Democrats have made public transit, walkable cities, and climate policy central to their energy vision. Republicans have sold a different promise: Families should have the freedom and means to live in safe communities, raise children, and drive the pickup truck or minivan that fits their lives. Expensive gasoline makes that promise harder to keep.

From my Manhattan apartment, gasoline prices can look remote. For parents in Pennsylvania, Ohio, or Michigan, driving is neither a luxury nor a political statement. They cannot skip the trip to work or the school pickup because the pump reads $5. A city dweller may be able to substitute a subway ride. Most suburban families cannot.

The administration can point to two possible long-term gains. Trump has promoted a long-planned Alaska gas pipeline, although financing and other details remain unresolved. And four senators from both parties have introduced permitting reform intended to speed construction of energy infrastructure. Those are potentially useful moves, not substitutes for lower prices today. Nor should a natural gas project be confused with an immediate fix for gasoline.

RELATED: Democrats can’t erase the price shock of the Biden years

Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call Inc./Getty Images

The administration has made progress rolling back regulations and encouraging domestic production. Yet Americans still face the costs of delayed projects, inadequate infrastructure, and international instability. The president cannot control every oil shipment or every price sign. He can explain what the government is doing to expand supply, make projects easier to build, and reduce costs over time.

Republicans have spent years arguing against climate mandates and forced dependence on electric vehicles. Opposition alone will not persuade a family paying more to get to work. The affirmative case is straightforward: Americans should decide how to heat their homes, power their businesses, and travel, while government clears obstacles to producing abundant, affordable energy.

I had to leave Manhattan to remember what a gallon of gas costs. Millions of Americans do not have that luxury. They see the cost every time they pull into a station. Republicans who want their votes in November had better see it, too.

​Climate policy, Electric vehicles, Energy policy, Fuel prices, Gas prices, Public transit, White house, New york city, Biden, Trump, Iran war, Midterms, Americans, Diesel prices, Opinion & analysis 

Where was James Talarico — and why isn’t his campaign offering a clearer explanation?

The Texas Democrat’s two-week absence has been explained away as “the flu,” which has set off alarm bells for BlazeTV host Steve Deace, co-host Todd Erzen, and executive producer Aaron McIntire.

“This is so obviously disqualifying, no matter what the truth is,” Erzen says.

“If Talarico somehow wins in Texas, I have to reevaluate a lot,” he adds.

“I haven’t even considered the broader statement angle about what it means for the state of Texas,” Deace agrees. “But that is an excellent point, and I think you’re exactly right. It’s an absolute watershed moment for the state of Texas, for sure.”

“There’s no way that a simple flu knocks somebody out. And the campaign has nothing to say,” he continues.

“Something smells rotten in the state of Denmark here, gentleman,” he adds.

Erzen points out that if it really was “a flu,” the Democrats wouldn’t be letting it go to waste. Instead, they “would be using it to max effect.”

“Yeah, get a flu vaccine and everything else,” Deace agrees.

But even the flu excuse, McIntire says, was “calculated.”

“Everything is calculated. And when they allow this to go on, to enter the bloodstream, to enter the public consciousness, and they’re just fine with people just throwing this out there and all their explanation is, ‘Oh, it was a flu,’” he says.

“That’s calculated. Which means whatever it actually was … assuming it’s not the flu, which that would be incredible because Todd is absolutely right there. If it was a severe flu where he was really on death’s door, they would be beating the drum for vaccination. They would be pounding some sort of issue, some sort of wedge they could make,” he continues.

“But they’re not doing that. So, this is calculated one way or another. And the silence is calculated as well,” he says, “which makes you wonder what indeed actually happened here.”

Deace agrees, adding, “Any time a campaign or a politician is fine with the narrative that they’re completely incompetent … it means that what’s true is worse.”

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​James talarico, Flu, Steve deace, Texas, Senate, Blazetv show