Iran War Impacts

Hy McHenry & Christoper Tidmore discuss the Louisiana economy, movies, military, and careers. We talk about the (lack of?) reasons for the Iran War. Hy reflects upon Francis Scott Key to end the show.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Battles. The politicians addressed the digitators and magicians. Who's to
see the money? They just don't. There's nothing to feel.
The holes, well, then are fill in their pockets, bad holes.
The politicians bouncing down the road every with no moment,

(00:26):
corruption and dysfunction. It's gonna take divide is.

Speaker 2 (00:30):
Avention Orleans Parish loses twenty five hundred people out of
a population of three hundred and fifty thousand. That's significant,
and they're dispourseed portionally young and professionals. And for those
that say, well it's a democratic parish, Louisiana loses even more,
the number two counting in the country, Vermillion parish for

(00:51):
population loss. What is the answer to all that? We'll
talk about some real ideas on today's show. We'll also
talking about the Army raising the admission rate to forty
age forty two to be able to enter the military.
We're talking with an expert who joined the military kind
of late in life. On that my co post and last,
but not least, we're going to talk about the potential

(01:12):
of sending seven thousand Americans to seize an island in
the Persian Gulf. Are we looking at a ground war
caused several Republicans to storm out of a Senate meeting.
What is the real implications that and more on this
edition of The Founder Show.

Speaker 3 (01:26):
God bless you all out there, and it's now time
for the Founders show the voice of the Founding Fathers,
Your Founding Fathers coming to you. Deep within the bowels
are those mystic and cryptic alligator swamps of the Big Easy,
that old Crescent City, New Orleans, Louisiana. And high up
on top of that old liberty cypress tree draped in

(01:48):
Spanish moss way out on the Eagles Branch, is none
other then your Spengary Baba of the Republic, Chaplain Hi mcenry.

Speaker 2 (01:56):
Who with Christopher Tidmore, your roving reporter, resident Radical modern
and associate editor of the Louisiana Weekly newspaper at louisianawekly
dot net. And we do want to talk about the
Iran War and what is going on with the potential
of some ground operations in Kidlck Island. But I want
to start off with a more local story, and that's
the fact that Orleans lost twenty five hundred people. For

(02:16):
those of you that are listening, Jefferson guess what, it
wasn't much better for you. In fact, consistently, many parishes
across the state, whether it has a Democratic or Republican leadership,
lost population here in Louisiana. Now this is at the
same time that well, Mississippi's lost some Texas and Florida
and Tennessee are picking up population left and right. And

(02:37):
so what are we doing wrong? Why are our young
people leaving? And it boils down to a simple, one word,
plural answer.

Speaker 4 (02:45):
Jobs.

Speaker 2 (02:46):
You can't get funding jobs. I used to joke about
New Orleans and this is the city in general. I said,
We've got the economy of Bogata, Columbia, and the housing
crisis of New Haven, Connecticut, because it's extremely expensive to
buy a house here. Now used to be cheap. This
used to be a place where housing was affordable. Post
Hurricane Katrina. Twenty years later, it's not. Houses are exceedingly

(03:08):
expensive where you go for the amount of money that
we actually make in this economy. And so people tell
us the answers. One of the answers has been we
need to invest more in hospitality. Walt leje Third a
good friend of mine who I's been chatting with. He
and I ran for the legislature. I have great confidence
in him as a leader of the Convention Bureau. But

(03:29):
the fact is, is a convention center hotel, putting the
height limits in the warehouse district going from one hundred
and twenty four feet to four hundred feet, building a
skyscraper and historic district and ripping down two hundred year
old warehouses the way to do it, he says, So
is it?

Speaker 4 (03:46):
Other people?

Speaker 2 (03:46):
The Port of New Orleans came in the Louisiana International Terminals,
proceeding down and Violet, and they said international trade will
So I keep asking the question, how many jobs do
you produce? And I get crickets. When I answer, You're like, well,
it's got its support, it's got to produce jobs. Here's
the interesting statistic that no one is paying attention to.
There's a series of private equity firms that are going

(04:10):
out and buying existing manufacturing businesses, legacy businesses with not
a huge profit margin. But they're manufacturing businesses in the
United States. So you're like, that's the hot thing to buy.
Here's why they're buying them. They've figured out with AI,
with artificial intelligence, you can not just have robots on

(04:31):
the assembly line. You can literally have an assembly plant
with no human beings, a manager, maybe a guy to
repair some equipment, and that's it. You think I'm talking
about Star Trek level fabrication. The answer is no, this
is already happening. During the pandemic, we were cut off
from the fabric markets in South East Asia, you know

(04:51):
where basically cheap clothes come from. So a group of
people got together and in North Carolina, where we used
to have a textile industry, started opening a series of
clothing manufacturers and guess what, no employees, all automated, all
AI and guests, and they figured out pretty much, you
can build anything that way. So we could actually bringing

(05:12):
all manufacturing back to the United States. That's not a
bad thing, but it's not going to produce any jobs
the way we thought about it. Technology is placing that ad.
So heavy industry has been one of the two areas
we here in Louisiana, We've always been a state of
heavy industry. And for those day what are you talking about? Petrochemicals?
Forty five percent of the nation's petrochemicals hydrocarbons are processed

(05:34):
on the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans
where a place. We have the LNG export ports. These
are all great things. We also had. You know, eighty
percent of the nation's coffee is process of the Folgers
facility here in New Orleans. But here's the fact it's
not producing jobs. So trying to double down on industry,

(05:54):
which is what the governor's plan is. It's all well
and good intentioned, and thirty years ago have made a difference.
It's not going to get us great jobs one or two,
not many Port of New Orleans having it at Guess
what same thing is happening with these containers. You increasingly
have cranes and everything that's so automated. Used to be
you had hundreds of good pay and Steve Adorn jobs

(06:16):
at a port. It was a way to a man
unloading ships, could support a family, take care of it.

Speaker 4 (06:22):
Guess what.

Speaker 2 (06:23):
That's not true anymore, and hasn't been true for decades.
So it's not the port. Other people are like, well,
we can do this and that maybe it's tech. We'll
make New Orleans the next tech capital.

Speaker 4 (06:34):
Folks.

Speaker 2 (06:35):
I hate to tell you this because we have some
smart people here, but New Orleans is not going to
be the next tech capital, what do we do. Here's
how you figure out how an economy works. You come
at the intersection of what you're good at and you
love and what your place is known for. And that's
what you invest in. What you're good at and what

(06:56):
you love and what your place is known for, and
what what are we good at? Culture, music, the elements
of hospitality, festivals. But here's the problem. What is the
thing that the governor the two bills the governor and
the last legislative session vetoed. One of them was the
live performance tax credits, which was one of the main

(07:19):
ways that the jazz Fest, the French Quarterfest, the Opera Festival,
which we'll talk about later. You know, that's a third
of their budget. All of these people who put on
live productions at one hundred thousand dollars level. That requires
a lot of people, a lot of staff, a lot
of performers, a lot of musicians, a lot of below
the line, a lot of backstage reel, producing well paying jobs.

(07:39):
The governor vetoed that legislation even though it was only
ten million dollars for the to lower the income tax.
I love lowering the income tax, but at what cost?
The other one was the digital tax credits. Were like,
well digital, you just told me, Tid Moore. Tech is
not the industry. Yeah, tech is not, but the recording
industry was. We were become the next Nashville, the place

(08:02):
where people recording records because digital recording, which is essentially recording,
was one of the things that you could come to
New Orleans and do very competitively. We have the musicians,
we have the infrastructure, talent, we have the recording. Governor
Veto's that because he says, I don't want any of
these tax credits. The only thing he does in Veto
under intense pressure is the movie tax credits. He cuts

(08:22):
it by thirty million dollars from one hundred and eighty
to one hundred and fifty million. But a strange sort
of thing is he locks it in for five years.
Guess what's happened in the last six months since that
happened that we have a secure There has been an
explosion in film production here in New Orleans because we
have actors, we have musicians, we have the cultural economy.

(08:43):
If you want young people to stop leaving, you have
to have a good you have to have a good
education system. We've made advances, but not nearly enough. But
I give the governor credit. He's you know, some of
the stuff he's doing helps. Some of the local stuff
that's going on helps. You need a pretty good medical infrastructructure.
Not everybody has health insurance, but New Orleans versus city

(09:03):
at size, we're about to have three medical schools. We've
got Oshner Tulane University. We've got a fantastic medical infrastructure.

Speaker 4 (09:11):
We got that.

Speaker 2 (09:13):
We've got a great every I don't know many people
who don't enjoy living here. This is not no disrespect,
this is not like Cleveland. But what we don't have
is even for prosperous families, young people get out of
college and the ability to get a job that they
can support themselves. I don't know about you, high how
many friends have you had whose kids basically move back

(09:33):
home and are in the approaching thirty and can't afford
to get their own place. Not because they're lazy, they're
fully employed, but they can't afford it, and they're fighting
till finally they give up and said, I'll take a
job in New York or Pittsburgh or Austin or for
that matter, you know, Tacoma, Washington.

Speaker 3 (09:51):
Interesting, Christopher, you know, speaking of Newle's is a nice
place to live whenever. The This is like about years
ago I met a location scout and they were interested
in our property to use it, and and so they
when I was talking with them about it, I said,
what is it?

Speaker 4 (10:12):
Why is it?

Speaker 3 (10:13):
I know that we have some good tax credits and
that that how we've become Hollywood South and and people really,
you know, the the movie folks love coming here. I said,
but what is it? Why do they What's what makes
that happen? And she said, this is what she told me.
She said, it has gotten to be a phenomena in
Hollywood now that when they're approached for a movie, the

(10:36):
first thing they ask is where are they going to
do it? And if they don't say New Orleans, they
turn it down. That's how much the Hollywood folks really
like New Orleans. So there's something about this city that
is very attractive for happy living, let's say. And that's
a that's a world plus we have. We should capitalize

(10:56):
on that. I'll tell you another thing. I'll see about
this And I've said it before. Every year, every day
you can go to the levee. You look out over
the Mississippi River and you can watch the greatest watershed
of wealth in the world going up the river and
coming down the river. And folks all other cities that

(11:17):
have that kind of traffic, they always figure out way
ease to get in on the action. And whereas let's
say copper's coming with the largest import of cotton. Let's
say copper is you know the thing, Well, they'll figure
they'll make copper factories to be able to process the copper.

Speaker 4 (11:34):
What do we do. We just let it go.

Speaker 3 (11:35):
We may transfer it from one boat to another way,
but it's gone. We're not taking advantage that's right there
in front of us. And I think it's one of
the greatest losses and most foolish things that this city does.
I don't know if it's a politician's payola, whatever is
driving keeping that from happening, but we need to get
to the bottom of it. It needs to be fixed

(11:56):
and we need to start prospering like everybody else does.

Speaker 4 (12:00):
On trade. What do you think, chrisva Well?

Speaker 2 (12:04):
I agree that trade is critical and that we have
the largest port infrastructure in the world, from Baton Rouge
to Port Fuchon to the mouth of the river. It
is the largest port in the world, and one of
the problems is we can't get the ports to work
with one another. That's improving, but it's still a real problem.
But a more basic problem is I would have agreed
with you more thirty years ago. Doesn't mean we don't

(12:24):
do the ports, we don't invest in it, but increasingly
I need everybody to get this through their heads.

Speaker 4 (12:32):
It's very simple.

Speaker 2 (12:33):
We are becoming an economy where you don't need highly
paid workers to make anything, produce anything, or transfer anything.
Let me say that again, the entire not just the
Louisiana economy, the entire American and really, dare I say
world economy is becoming an economy where you don't need

(12:56):
people working jobs to create a product, good, or service
that has high quality. So what do you You're like, well,
then what is it? Well, the good news of that
is that products that we buy will continue to go
down and cost. That's how you fight inflation. It's a
better product, good, or service, and if you don't have
labor costs, they go down. However, it's a real problem

(13:18):
if you're trying to give people jobs. One of the
reasons why we have a concentration of wealth in this country.
And look, I'm going to say something that's not particularly liberal.
It's quite conservative. There's a bit of a lie that
we do worse than our parents dead acknowledging for inflation.
Middle class incomes have risen by seventy five percent in
the last fifty years. But and this is the butt

(13:41):
upper middle class and incomes that's about two hundred and
fifty thousand dollars a year have raised by four hundred percent.
So we feel comparatively poor. And housing stocks have become
more expensive, and so any value that we get for
lower prices have gone away. So this is a long
way of saying we're not going to use manufacturing. High

(14:05):
manufacturing is not going to be even using the port
our panacea. The Louisiana International Port has been talking about
rolloler effects, particularly in New Orleans East, because they're building
a new toll road that comes off the interstate and
there they've got the land there. Chalmette for the most
part doesn't want them because they figured that's this residential neighborhood,

(14:28):
the traffic and all the trucks would go. But there's
a great opportunity for for value added industries. In New
Orleans East. You come off the Me Shoe Facility, You've
got some of the biggest high tech facilities.

Speaker 4 (14:39):
In the earth.

Speaker 2 (14:39):
There the the the Artemis rocket that is going to
the moon. Guess where it was assembled at the Me Shoe.
So we have some high tech jobs here. We've got some,
We've got some brilliant people here. But it's but it's
not culture. Because culture, Why do all those hollywoo people

(15:00):
you're talking about when it come to New Orleans? It's
the culture. Look, I've written a million words in my
career as a journalist. I've only come up with one
original thought. It's an honest thing, because usually you're stealing
from other people.

Speaker 4 (15:12):
So very well said christ.

Speaker 2 (15:14):
My one original thought is New Orleans is a failure
at everything but living. But God, do we know how
to live well. The statement is not just it's not
a derogatory statement. It's a statement that when we concentrate
on what we love to do. This is true of
any human being in life. You know, do something you love,
you'll never work a day in your life. If we
do music, if we do festivals, if we do arts,

(15:35):
if we do performance really well, and we can get
you know how much A nineteen. So I've done a
lot of work with the New Orleans Opera. I'm not
working with them right now, just finish a contract they
want me back, but a whole bunch of things. But
I've been proud to work with the Hawk and Scenes Studio,
which provides sets for not just to operas, but to
theatrical productions. It's here in Louisiana to thirty seven states,

(15:56):
three Canadian provinces, in five countries every year. So the
sets that are background they hire. Kid eighteen, you can
be hired as an apprentice essentially to learn the carpentry
and artistic effects. By the time you're twenty one, you're
making forty dollars an hour. Now that with something that

(16:16):
we're not just doing here in New Orleans. We're exporting
these sets, we're renting them. And that is a story
that should be harket screened from the mountaintops. That that's
the kind of below the line stuff that we can do.
This is a kid with a high school education I
have to even go to college. Helps but doesn't and
we need to show that this is the place. Look,

(16:37):
we have three hundred and sixty five days in a year.
How many festivals do we have in New Orleans and
the rounds, like within a one hour to two hour
radius three hundred and sixty six. We have more festivals
than we have days within a two hour drive that
we don't market that to the world. What do we market?
We market jazz Fest. Jazz Fest is great, they just

(16:57):
announced their schedule. I go every year. I can't increasingly
it's harder to afford it, but I go to a
locals day for one hundred dollars every year. We have
French quarter fests, which increasingly is becoming it. We just
were completing this week the first ever opera festival that
was marketing a little bit around the world. But we
do so many other things here and people could enjoy

(17:19):
it and people could be this this should be the
center of music. But instead we've seated all that to Nashville.
So guess where Here's the thing? You knowless more new
movie productions are coming out of Nashville now that are
coming out of Los Angeles because it ends up rolling
onto it and it's not an accident. You may have
seen Elon Musk had a contest who's going to build
the next hyper loop?

Speaker 4 (17:39):
The underground thing.

Speaker 2 (17:41):
New Orleans has come in with Baltimore and Dallas, and
I'm curious of how he's going to do this because
we don't really have earth and rock under us. We've
got swamp. But if he doesn't, God, he's building it
for free. And if we can do a mile, that
means we could do twenty miles to the airport. It
would solve a lot of our transferation problems. I wish
more luck. I've been to the Vegas one where you

(18:03):
go from the airport to the strip and you're on
his tesl list. It's wonderful, you know. And for those
that are critical of Musk because of political reasons, I said,
you're wrong about this. He has made things really efficient
on this particular issue. But having said that, the other
city where there's already one being built is Nashville. You
know why, because so many young people go to Nashville

(18:24):
for the arts, go to music city and all their
art related projects. By the way, they have one of
the biggest operas in the world in Nashville. It's not
just country music. They go there for so many things.
They have transportation problems. So the people of Nashville turned
around and asked Elon Musk to build a hyperloop because
they desperately needed it. I wish to god we had
that problem. Instead, we lost twenty five hundred people.

Speaker 3 (18:45):
Of course, Christopher, they got the grand old opera opera. Yeah,
that's a joke, folks, that's not real. You know that's country, Western,
yazy bluegrass.

Speaker 4 (18:55):
That joke.

Speaker 2 (18:55):
There's some wisdom because everybody's like, oh, it's a country
music app Do you realize that it's no longer the
country music It is the rock and roll capital. It
is the recording capital. It is everything La and New
York uses is now all in Nashville. And it's a
perfect So my dad went to Vanderbilt University in nineteen sixty.

Speaker 4 (19:13):
Wow, and you know.

Speaker 2 (19:14):
What, Nashville was a backwards little cow town. I remember
nothing there, and today it is one of the most
dynamic cities in the United States. And it is a
lesson that we should be duplicating. And what do we do.
We get rid of the credits. The governor gets rid
of the credits that fuel our industry. That is not smart,

(19:35):
economic and testing you to.

Speaker 4 (19:36):
Okay, it's not for us to take a break, folks.
We'll be right back.

Speaker 5 (19:45):
Rescuing, recovery, re engagement. These are not just words. These
are the action steps we at the New Orleans Mission
take to make a positive impact on the homeless problem
facing the greater New Orleans area. We begin the rescue
process by going out into the community every day to
bring food, pray, and share the love of Jesus with

(20:09):
the hopeless and hurting in our community. Through the process
of recovery, these individuals have the opportunity to take time out,
assess their life, and begin to make new decisions to
live out their God given purpose. After the healing process
has begun and lives are back on track, we walk

(20:29):
each individual as they re engage back into the community
to be healthy, thriving, and living a life of purpose.
No one is meant to live under a bridge. No
one should endure abuse, No one should be stuck in addiction.
The New Orleans Mission is a stepping stone out of
that life of destruction and into a life of hope

(20:52):
and purpose. Partner with us today go to www dot
New Orleansmission dot org, or difference by texting seven seven.

Speaker 2 (21:06):
Speaking of success in the Arts, the New Orleans the
first ever New Orleans Opera Festival continues through this Sunday,
the twenty ninth of March, and ladies and gentlemen, there
is a great opportunity for those that are listening to
this on our Friday or our main broadcast in Wrno
on Sunday, and that is called Pilgrimage, Carlile Floyd's performance
of his great religious opera in musical that uses themes

(21:30):
from the Bible. It'll happen on Palm Sunday, and it's
something like you've never seen. It starts at Saint Louis
Cathedral and then has a jazz second line. The first
movement is at Saint Louis Cathedral, a jazz second line
to the second movement of the Arthline Convent, and then
another jazz second line to a performance near Noka that
where the third and fourth movement and a celebration of
the arts all will be happen. Imagine putting jazz together

(21:54):
with opera and the themes of the Pilgrimage, because it's
a religious pilgrimage. It's its themes from the New Testament
about Easter, and it is an incredible act of both
faith and incredible music. Carla Floyd's Pilgrimage was actually premiered
in New Orleans with Norman Tragel fifty years ago. This
is the fiftieth anniversary and you can get your tickets.
There's still tickets available for the Sunday It's a two

(22:16):
thirty on Sunday at Saint Louis Cathedral. Those tickets are
available at New Orleans Opera Festival dot org. New Orleans
Opera Festival dot org. If you go on look at tickets,
scroll down for Pilgrimage, like your religious pilgrimage, and you
can do your own el communo of jazz and opera
at two thirty on Palm Sunday. It's an incredible effect.
The tickets are very inexpensive and you can join this

(22:39):
wonderful trek of music, art, life and faith at New
Orleans Opera Festival dot org the Pilgrimage. Buy your tickets
right now, wherever you are. Go right now and buy
it and join us at two thirty on Sunday, the
March twenty ninth, at Saint Louis Cathedral for this walk
of faith, New Orleans Opera Festival dot org.

Speaker 3 (23:02):
Well, folks were back and you are listening to the
founders show the voice of the funding Fathers and the
number one rated weekend show on Wrno. One of the
top talk show stations of the Gulf South. You can
hear us every Sunday morning on wr AT from eight
to nine am, and that's ninety nine point five on
your radio dial. Or you can hear us doing the

(23:23):
week drivetime eight to nine a m. On WSLA and
that's ninety three point nine on the FM dial, or
I mean one five six zero on the f AM dial.

Speaker 4 (23:35):
So folks check us out now.

Speaker 3 (23:36):
The best way to get it really is go to
the iHeartMedia app downloaded on your phone and.

Speaker 4 (23:41):
Your computer or both or whatever.

Speaker 3 (23:43):
It's free, and you can listen to us whenever you
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also go to our website, The Founders Show dot com
and listen to us at your convenience. So thank you
very much. We're back and chrisfa what's happening next?

Speaker 2 (24:06):
Well, of course, and you always listen Tohi McHenry and
Christopher Tidmore here in the Founder Show and obviously the
major news is that President Trump has delayed any attacks
on energy infrastructure until April sixth to try to enter
a ten day talk with Iran. There was a lot
of Republican blowback this week on what in fact, a
group of Republicans stormed out of a closed meeting in

(24:28):
Iran when it was discussed of the seven thousand troops
that have been sent to the region, five thousand marines,
two thousand members of the eighty second Airborne to take
Carl Island, which is the main oil prediction facility in
the Persian Gulf. Obviously, it looks like those plans, at
least for an hour, are on hold. But there's been
a bigger issue that has come up in the wake

(24:48):
of the Iran war, and it kind of relates to
that loss of population. We have fewer and fewer young
people too. Fewer young people have been born over the
last and so that means recruit military recruitment has been
gone down drastically. Traditionally, the military will recruit you. You
can join the military, I should say, until the age
of thirty five. You can join later with a special waiver.

(25:11):
As High was sort of demonstrating in the teaser that
we're doing, but you have to get a special waiver. Also,
if you have any form of criminal record, you could
not join the military. Well, the new plan is to
extend military recruitment until the age of forty two and
to say that you so you can be forty two
and go in as a private with no questions asked.

(25:32):
But the other part is that essentially a first felony
conviction for drug possession or a couple of other areas
are going to be waived. You can still join the military.

Speaker 4 (25:45):
Now.

Speaker 2 (25:46):
It's interesting. I find that kind of funny because I
still remember, I'm old enough to remember. Hi a point
where the judge would say, okay, son, you have a choice.
You're going to jail or you're going to the Marine Corps.
That used to be a thing. That's apparently not a
thing as much anymore. It's very easy to get rejected
because one of the things you have to have to

(26:06):
join the military is a high school degree, and for
a lot of your kids that's kind of difficult. I mean,
they don't have high school degrees. There was a point
where you could join the army and basically you get
your ged, you get your training, you come out with
a skill and this, and really that world doesn't exist anymore,
partially because we're a high tech military, partially because you know,

(26:29):
you have skill sets even and especially for the army.
But what I found interesting about this conversation the context
of potentially putting boots on the ground in Iran, was
that my partner, Hi McHenry, for those that don't know,
twenty plus year veteran of the United States Special Forces
tours in Iraq, in Iraq and Afghanistan, two tours in Afghanistan.

(26:51):
You didn't join as an eighteen year old kid, though
you were a non comm You ended up being a sergeant.
You joined a little later in life.

Speaker 4 (27:00):
Right, Christopher.

Speaker 3 (27:01):
I actually enlisted in the Marine Corps when I was
I guess I was nineteen years old at LSU. I
got a low draft number, and then so I knew
I was gonna go. So I thought, well, what do
I do. I didn't believe in Vietnam. I thought it
was a suicide mission. My uncle, an arch conservative, saw
through the whole thing about what LBJ and all the
Democrats are doing at that time to get us in

(27:22):
a no win war, and he warned me, he warned everybody.

Speaker 4 (27:25):
He was furious about what LBJ. He's a World War
Two veteran.

Speaker 3 (27:28):
This guy was a war hero, but he knew Vietnam
was gonna He said this.

Speaker 4 (27:33):
This was in.

Speaker 3 (27:35):
Nineteen sixty four, the Golf of Tonkin incident, and I
remember him saying, they're gonna he's gonna disillusion and demoralize
the US military and the US population, and it's gonna
be a no win war. We're gonna be there and
get nothing. I got the low number. I thought, Okay,
I gotta go. What am I gonna do? I want

(27:56):
to go with the best. I'm gonna go with the Marines.
I love Marines. So I went down the Marine Corps
recruiter and as soon as I when I walked out
of that room, I was ready to kill man. I
wanted to kill like in the song Alice's Restaurant. Anyway,
but I really got gung ho and it's amazing how
it affected me being with Marines. So I got through

(28:18):
the whole thing that was gonna be a recon. I
went through the final thing. I passed my test with
flying calls, had really high scores, but I had to
do the last part of the medical is what sunk
my ship and because of hearing.

Speaker 4 (28:31):
And I didn't even know that.

Speaker 3 (28:33):
And back then, people were drinking a pound of sugar,
putting octagon soap under their armpits to give them, you know,
high blood pressure and high blood sugar and all that
kind of stuff, doing every trick they could think of
to acting like they were homosexuals.

Speaker 4 (28:46):
You name it.

Speaker 3 (28:47):
So they get kicked out and and it didn't work.
They knew what the game was. They take them out
back PTUM, the catured sergeants with PTM for twenty thirty minutes,
sweat it all out, bring them back in and they'd passed.
But I failed the hearing, and I didn't realize that.
I thought it was because I put it down. I
did have some football injuries, and I thought that's why.

(29:07):
And uh and and back then, everybody faked the hearing.
You just pushed the button at the wrong time. Who
who's to know? So you know, they did, they blanket
past everybody, but they failed me because I really did
have bad air. So anyway, I didn't go in long
story to let you know about my love for the military,
enthusiasm for it and everything, and so I didn't get

(29:29):
to go and it kind of became. Later on, it
became kind of a problem for me. I think I
was developing the survival syndrome because a lot of my
friends had gone and I didn't go.

Speaker 4 (29:41):
And and I had a good friend who kept saying,
you got to do this. You're perfect for this. He
was with.

Speaker 3 (29:45):
Sf US Army Special Force. He said, you'd fit right in.
Give it a try. And back then thirty five was
a cut off dates, so I was I couldn't believe it.
But at that age, I got this tremendous desire m
V to join the military. So I called him up.
He linked me up with some MESTERF guys and I

(30:07):
got in and I've turned out what was my problem
that I didn't know hearing? I went to the ear
doctor and they pulled out an inch worth of impacted
wax and then I have perfect hearing.

Speaker 4 (30:19):
So I had a great time with the military. I
loved it.

Speaker 3 (30:23):
One of my stories of all the many, you know,
you pick up a lot of stories and you get
to be really close with all your buddies in the military,
your brothers, and but one of them was they had
this guy that joined when I was fifty years old.
We were the same age he was a new oance cop,
but he'd also gone on to become a doctor, and
we need a doctor, so they will take doctors, nurses
and ministers. You could be sixty years old. They'll take

(30:46):
you because they're that short. They need them that badly.
If you can, you know, pass all the tests and whatnot,
and you can stay in till he's he's seventy five
years old, he's still going and he's had more deployments.
This guy's one of the most amazing people I've ever known.

Speaker 4 (30:59):
Late, but it's rare.

Speaker 3 (31:00):
But now they're moving and they shure because look, you know,
if they say the new the new sixty is now
seventy and all that were last and longer, we're having
higher health rates. So that military's realized and you don't
have to cut it off at thirty five. So that's right.
You can be forty two years old, Christopher.

Speaker 2 (31:18):
Well, and let me ask you just say so people
know this. You had a couple of deployments. You didn't
have a you weren't a remap as they call it.
You you wouldn't hear you were deployed. How old were
you when you completed your last deployment to Afghanistan where
let me point out, you were liaison to the tribes.
That's where your nickname. You explained that story comes from.

(31:40):
But you were you were so, you were talking to
Chistian tribes, you were in the middle of firefights, you
were in this. How old were you when you did that.

Speaker 3 (31:48):
I was fifty nine years old when I returned. I
returned a month before my sixtieth birthday. And I did fine.
I mean, I didn't have any problems.

Speaker 4 (31:56):
I kept up with the young, these young tough marines,
kept up with them throughout the whole time.

Speaker 3 (32:03):
God just gave me the strength and the energy to
be able to do that. And very few people believe
that I actually went, you know, at the tenor age
of fifty nine, went into combat. And this was intense combat.
This is the most intense, intensive combat area in the
entire country. They call it kinetics. We had the highest kinetics.
Every day we walked out of our patrol base. Every

(32:25):
day on a patrol, there was never a day where
we didn't hear small arms fire and id's going off.
That meant not everybody who's coming back alive or at
least in one piece. It happened every day so you
can imagine the intensity of what we were going through,
and maybe now you can understand how people get PTSD

(32:45):
because when you're going through that every day, it has
an effect on you. It's like playing Russian Roulette every day.
Believe me, it'll whack you out well.

Speaker 2 (32:55):
And one of the things that the militaries used in
surveys is they found out something that people had never
thought about until the Ukraine War. One of the problems
they had in the Ukraine War was that they needed
young people to keep their economy going. So once the
war was on it they start preferentially drafting those over

(33:17):
the age of thirty, particularly over thirty five. So you
can get drafted in Ukraine if you're Ukrainian until you're
forty five. But here's what they found, and it was
it was that by bringing quote the dads in, still
you're not quite it is, but by bringing that generation in,
it saved they're young people, they've got major demographic problems,
and usually the guys who were around forty were more

(33:40):
committed because they're more mature and were more able to
handle the stress of combat than the eighteen year olds.
And you're right, we're living longer. There is a question
as to whether or not the military has going to
keep the physical and high level standards of the largest
military in the world. But actually what worries me high
is not the military having older people. I think you're

(34:03):
living proof that if you're in good shape, you can
keep going. Now it's come back to haunt you a
little bit in the last couple of years. I think
at all the jumps and all the painties I deals with.
Because he's jumped out of so many planes, and this
time with a parachute, you know, he's one of the
part of the smart people. But what I think about, though,
is the number one of your kids that you work
with at Lamb Nola and sometimes for them, the military

(34:26):
is their only way out of endemic poverty and up
and most of them right now because of criminal conviction,
but also in some cases because they simply don't have
a high school degree that they are not waving they
can't get into the army and that and for some
of these kids, that is their only way out.

Speaker 4 (34:44):
I know that, Christopher.

Speaker 3 (34:46):
It's one of my challenges I've for years. I've always
pushed my kids, encouraged them to think about the military
as a career.

Speaker 4 (34:53):
It can be the greatest career. We've had a few
kids that have done it and they love it.

Speaker 3 (34:58):
You know, it's it's been one of the greatest opportunities
that Look, my kids are what they call short termers.
That means in their mid twenties, they're either going to
be dead in jailful life or living at the homeless mission. Folks,
that's so tragic. And this is the worst part about
it is they believe that's a normal life. I have
heard them talking about this, you know, with me like

(35:22):
over hearing what they're saying. I'm not really part of
the coming. I hear them talking and they talk about
it like, well, that's just normal. They don't realize there's
another world out there. They don't realize they can actually
have a good life. They're cluos to that. They think
that's what everybody does, that's just normal. By your mid twenties,
you're going to be dead in jailful life or living
at the homeless mission.

Speaker 4 (35:40):
Because that's all they see. It is so tragic.

Speaker 3 (35:43):
One of the hard things about getting them in the
military is they're afraid of challenges that they won't measure
up because they're used to failing. It's one of the
most tragic things you've ever seen in your life. These
kids basically don't have families. They hardly have a chance
in life, and so that's what we do. We try
to become their families, give them a leg up, show
them how they can make it and really be successful.

(36:05):
We've seen wonderful results from it. It's been a great experience.
But folks, we're just a small group. I mean, it's
just my wife and I. We're a mom and pop operation.
I have many times wished to hope if we had
groups like living all over the city doing this, it
would radically change New Orleans because the population group that's

(36:29):
going to give us the most criminals, cause the most problem,
cause the most money or is my group. Now, let
me tell you, we get some good kids in my
group too who actually have families. That's pretty rare, but
we get them, and that meaning they have a mother
and a father living with the kids, raising the kids,
and you know, doing what families should be doing. We
have a few exceptions with kids like that, but most

(36:50):
for our kids, they don't. It's just so heartbreaking and
so the reason that it's hard to get them. They're
afraid of failure. They're afraid that they measure up. And
not only that they can say the discipline. They don't
know what discipline is. They don't know that they can
handle that.

Speaker 4 (37:08):
Kind of life.

Speaker 3 (37:09):
So it's been hard getting my kids in the military,
But I wish I could get every one of them
in because it would be their lifeline.

Speaker 4 (37:17):
And you don't have to stay in the military. You
going and you get the experience. You can leave in
a few years.

Speaker 3 (37:21):
And now you've got that skill and all the advances
that the military can give you go out in a
civilian world, do great. You might become a plumber, are
an electrician folks, you know plumbers and electricians. Now I
make it between a hundred and fifty thousand and two
hundred and fifty thousand a year.

Speaker 2 (37:35):
You know, a guy comes over and fix my toilet
the other day, and you know, he was like he
was actually was my father in law's toilet, And so
he goes in and he needs to fix it, and
he sort of reaches around the toilet and it's been
running all night, and he presses one button and the
toilet's working fine. And he turns it and he says
to my father in law, mister Rafferty, that'll be three
hundred and fifty dollars. He says, what three hundred fifty dollars?

(37:58):
I don't make three hundred and fifty dollars for fifty
minutes work. And he looks at him and said, yeah,
mister Rafferty, he said, I'm a lawyer. He said, mister Rafferty,
when I was a lawyer, I didn't make three hundred
and fifteen dollars there after dollars fifteen minutes work. Hey, look, folks, electricians, plumbers,
tech possessions. Right now, we started this conversation talking about jobs.
We talked about arts economy. Let me say the flip

(38:18):
side of that. One of the things we do badly
in Louisiana is we don't have technical education. And by
doing technical education, if we did that for most kids,
they would come out at twenty one be making fifty
sixty thousand dollars a year in a good job. And
we know, Look, I want to say, we have the
leads on legislative session going on, forty five million dollars
is found paid unspent in our best capital budgets. We

(38:40):
wonder where our money is going. But I need to
conclude with a compliment to one of our favorite legislators,
state Representative Mike Baham, who has a twofold bill. It
is a House Bill forty seven, and it would institute
a two hundred and fifty dollars fine if you go
on the on the passing lane like the turning lane
on a road and then passing front of the people.
Have you ever had anybody do that kai in a

(39:02):
car where they get in the passing lane and they
come in and almost cause an accident. It's a five
thousand dollars fine if they cause an accident. But here's
the other part of the bill. It will allow for
an American eagle to be put on Louisiana driver's license
if you have a show proof of citizenship. And the
reason for this is actually counter intuitive. One of the

(39:24):
big problems with the ice raids down here was the
number of Hispanic people. I know this not hypothetically, but
this happened to the uncle of a friend of mine
who was from originally from Brazil, but who got picked
up and actually detained for two weeks. And he was
an American citizen, but because his English was kind of
light they put an end and he didn't have papers

(39:45):
on him. He had his driver's license, but he'd have
papers on him showing that this would allow to us
to basically certify American citizenship with the Louisiana driver's license.
And I think that's voluntarily, it's not required, and so
I think that's a good thing.

Speaker 4 (39:59):
Great idea. Well, folks, we got to go, but we'll
be back. We're back at just.

Speaker 3 (40:02):
A little minute with a chopping babbab patriotic moment and
gospel moment.

Speaker 4 (40:08):
See you just a bit.

Speaker 2 (40:13):
Easter Week is upon us, and you know, hi, I
got a call from the Easter Bunny, and the Easter
Bunny was telling me. He says, you know, he's very
busy this year. But so everybody could actually get if
they need an Easter basket, they can get him from
Villary's Floorest. They have the perfect Easter baskets, not just
for kids but for adults with sweetmeats and all these
different choices and flowers for Easter table, all available at
Villary's Florist at one eight hundred vill Eery or Villariesflowers

(40:36):
dot Com in the web. You can walk into their
two locations in Highway one ninety in Covington and on
Martin Berman in Metaie, right off Veterans Boulevard, right near
the fresh Market, right across near the Orleans Parish Line.
For all your Easter needs and all your flower needs
Villary's Florist. Get one of their baskets, get one of
their floral arrangements perfect for this time of year. Easters

(40:57):
upon us. Do not pass up Easter Sunday with not
only baskets for the kids, but baskets for your loved one.
Make sure she has flowers and all treats. And the
Easter Bunny says he approves this message and.

Speaker 4 (41:09):
It's just great in it.

Speaker 3 (41:10):
Well, folks, at a time like this, it's important to
think about the children of New Orleans and that's what
I do. This is Chaplin, Hi mac henry. I want
to tell you about our ministry, lamb Ministries. We're in
inner city ministry with an inner city farmland and focus
for inner city folks. Just go to our website lambnola
dot com and find out all about it.

Speaker 4 (41:29):
You can also call me the best ways.

Speaker 3 (41:31):
Just call me at Chaplain Hi mcinnry at area code
five zero four seven two three nine three six nine folks,
is very challenge in ministry.

Speaker 4 (41:41):
We have tough, tough situations.

Speaker 3 (41:42):
We're dealing with the urban poor, inner city kids with
lots and lots of problems. But you know what, we
love it. It's a great challenge and we've seen God
do great things. We've seen close to five thousand kids
come to Christ and some adults. We've also seen hundreds
go on to live very productive in good lives, something
they probably never would add. We thank God for that.

(42:03):
We need all the help we can get. We need volunteers,
we need fire support, and we need prayer warriors. So, folks,
if you have any interest, please get in touch with
us again. Just call me Chaplin, I McHenry, Eric going
five zero four seven two three nine three six nine
and thank you so very very much.

Speaker 2 (42:25):
In this Easter week, it's a great time to take
one of those days off and go to a local museum.
And what better collection to see than the New Illinois
exhibit at the Louisiana Presbyteri Museum. It has got this
fantastic exhibit of Easter of costumes from Carnival's past of
the Old Men Illinois, the Old Illinois, and the Young

(42:46):
Men Illinois. Organizations, beautiful costumes, beautiful sets of the old
French opera house and others of all of their performances
through all the balls in the last century. And while
you're at visiting the presbyter make sure you take a
look at the Cabildo's two hundred and fiftieth anniversary exhibit
of Galvez in the American Revolution. It's exquisite, it's fantastic,

(43:07):
and it is going on throughout this year both until
March makes till next March. Make sure that you use
this Easter week to get a little history. Bring your kids,
remind them of the specialists of America in this two
hundred and fiftieth year and the specialist of Carnival in
New Orleans by visiting the presbytery in the Cabillos.

Speaker 3 (43:27):
Folks, we're back and you are listening to the founders
show the voice of the funding Fathers. And this is
none other than your spend Gary Baby, all the republic
chaplain hig mcgenry, and it's now time for us to
go into our chaplain by by patriotic moment. We just
take a brief moment to remind you of the biblical
foundations of our country, our Judeo Christian jurisprudence. And today
we're going to talk about none other than the man

(43:49):
who wrote the Star Spangled banner our national anthem, Francis
Scott Key. He was a prominent attorney. He was the
district attorney from Maryland, I mean for Washington. He was
from Maryland. And you know, he's the guy who was
on the ship, the British ship, doing a prisoner exchange,
and he was waiting for the bombardment, the siege of

(44:11):
Fort McHenry to conclude, and nobody knew where it was
going to go, because I mean, the British had this
huge armada and they were just lobbing just billions of
tons of ordnance into the fort and it didn't it
was no one knew how it could stand. And they
had a big, giant American flag the Patriots had planned.
It was a huge flag on a big flagpole. And
and you know, the idea was that if they if

(44:32):
the flag goes down, that must prove that they won.
That would have been a big moral plus for the
British and very demoralizing for the American side. So, uh,
he watched it and he saw the bombs blowing up
you know, in mid air, and all the rockets and
all that lighting up the sky. It's all on the song,
and rockets red, glare and lo and behold. By the

(44:55):
time the sun had risen and the bridige had expended
all their efforts, the fort bill stood and the flag
still stood. It shocked everybody, and that was the inspiration
for his song. Let me tell you a little something
about him, fran Scott Key, and about that flag.

Speaker 4 (45:11):
As the British ships.

Speaker 3 (45:12):
Were leaving had given up on Fort McHenry, you could
see the flag in the flag pole. The smoke had cleared,
and all that in which you saw at the bottom
of it were about one hundred great American soldiers, all dead,
who had rushed up to the flag as it was
keeling over to push it back up and hold it

(45:33):
straight up, and in the process were shot themselves. It
was being held up by great dead American patriots. Folks,
We had real patriots back then, men who were willing
to give their lives for the country. What an amazing story,
What an amazing story behind our national anthem. It's very deep,
it's very powerful, it's very passionate, and we are to

(45:55):
thank God every day for all the many amazing things
God's done for our country. This is the war of
eighteen twelve. And as far as Frank scott Key goes,
he believed that he wrote in the song at the
end of the Last Stands, he said, in God is
our trust. And what happened from that, well, guess what?
Not too many years later, but fifty years later, Abraham
Lincoln had that put on what the American dollar bill,

(46:19):
in God we trust and on our coinage. And it's
been repeated again, over and over again in our various themes.
This is all just to demonstrate to you, folks what
a country we have so gloriously founded on the Bible
and on God.

Speaker 4 (46:34):
Folks.

Speaker 3 (46:35):
By the way, franc Scott Key was a very aggressive
man who fought slavery, and he even set his own
slaves free. And he took on several cases like if
you saw the movie I'm Astead to set the slaves
free from those ships. He was really a remarkable and
amazing man, a great man of God and also a

(46:56):
great patriot. What inspirations we have, folks, for America. You know,
we want to make America great again. I'll tell you what.
What made America great? In the beginning was God, and
no matter hard we work on the MAGA movement, it's
gonna be a flash in the pan if we also
don't make God great in America again.

Speaker 4 (47:16):
And that means you, folks. It has to start with you,
not the leadership. You, we the people.

Speaker 3 (47:20):
We the people, the ones who basically are supposed to
control the leadership. So it's up incumbent upon us to
put God back in ourselves so that we can really
make America great again. Because God is great against He's
got to be great again in your heart.

Speaker 4 (47:37):
If you don't know how to do that, I'm.

Speaker 3 (47:38):
Gonna show you how right now as we go and
talk our chaplain by by our gospel moment, well, I'm
just gonna take a brief moment to show you how
you can know that.

Speaker 4 (47:47):
You know that you know your God's child. You're going
to heaven. You know.

Speaker 3 (47:50):
Mama said, right, remember the song Mama said. Mama said
two things.

Speaker 4 (47:55):
She told me.

Speaker 3 (47:56):
She said, Hi, there are two things he says. She says,
it's health and illness. If you're healthy, no words. If
you're sick, you got two things. You either can get
well or you're gonna get worse. If you're gonna get well,
no worse. If you're gonna get worse, two things. You're

(48:16):
either gonna die, Are you gonna be healed and come back?

Speaker 4 (48:21):
No worse.

Speaker 3 (48:22):
But if you die, you got two things, Heaven or hell.
If you end up in heaven, no worse. If you
end up in hell, you got two things, mild or chrispy.
Hell is a lake of Firefolks, you don't want to
go there, And I'm gonna show you how you don't
have to go there if you just hear this simple
little message that was designed for children, because Jesus said,

(48:42):
unless she come as a little child, you show them
no eyes anywording. God knew you will hopeless and help us.
Without him, you could never do enough to please God
to deal with your sin. See, he came up with
a plan on how to deal with it himself, and
it was himself. That's when God the Sun became a man.
He's perfect God, perfect man, all the way, God, all
the way man. His name is Jesus. He became a

(49:05):
man to pay for all your sins. From the day
you're born to the day you die. You tini ins
to your greatest sins. They all went on Jesus, and
he paid for them all The Bible says his blood
washed them all the way, and that was half the job.
The rest of the job was to rise from the dead,
which he did on resurrection Sunday, we call it Easter
to win for you his precious free gift of resurrection,

(49:27):
everlasting life.

Speaker 4 (49:28):
Folks.

Speaker 3 (49:29):
All it takes is to believe you can't save yourself.
You're hopeless and helpless without God, your total loser before
your creator. That's called repentance. It's a state of mind,
it's a belief system inside of you. And then the
next belief system is to believe that only He can,
that he did, and they will save you from a
burning hell, guarantee you everlasting life in heaven because with

(49:50):
childlike faith you put faith alone in Christ alone, that
He died for all your sins and rose.

Speaker 4 (49:54):
Of the dead.

Speaker 3 (49:54):
If you've never ever done this before, please, folks, do
it now. It takes place in your mind your heart
right now. You can choose God. You can choose the Gospel.
The Gospels is the Scripture says, it's the power of
God in the salvation, and the Gospel is very clearly
explained it's a death barrel and resurrection fro Us corintheens
fifteen for your eternal life. If you've never believed before,

(50:15):
please do it now. Don't wait till it's too late,
like the old country preacher said, and like the Word
of God says.

Speaker 4 (50:20):
And now today is a day of salvation.

Speaker 3 (50:23):
Well focus is not time for us to do our
one last thing, and that is our testimony time where
we bring before you someone man, woman from ancient times
all the way up until even current times. But I'm
gonna take us back to the nineteenth century. We just
had talked about his friend Scott Keith from the nineteenth century.
Now we talk a little bit later in the nineteenth century.

(50:43):
And this man's name is doctor David Livingston, from the
famous phrase when I was in young we just to
always say it doctor Livingstone, I presume. And that was
given to him by a famous journalist from New York
who grew up in New Orleans.

Speaker 4 (50:59):
His name was Stanley.

Speaker 3 (51:05):
In fact, we had the Stanley House here he got
he jumped ship as a cabin boy, and a man
named Stanley took him in. He adopted that man's name.
He ended up in New York as a journalist and
then he went chasing after Livingston, who had disappeared. Livingston
had become a very big name in international affairs because
he had done so much in Africa, and he was
searching for the Nile, a great mystery. No one had

(51:26):
ever found the origin of the Nile, and he was
searching for it.

Speaker 4 (51:29):
Well.

Speaker 3 (51:30):
One day Sydney found him and it was quite an experience.
And when he first saw him, he said, oh, doctor Livingstone,
I presume, and we used to say that when we
were kids all the time. I don't think he heard
it anymore, but for my generation we knew that phrase
very well. Let me tell you what he did in
his lifetime. He charted and traveled over more area probably

(51:54):
than any other explorer in the history of Africa.

Speaker 4 (51:57):
He opened up Africa.

Speaker 3 (51:59):
He brought freedom to Africa because he was very anti slavery,
and he did a major work in ending slavery. Now
you know Africa, I'm sorry to say, was this land
of slavery. It had been for time immemorial. And everywhere
you went you found slavery and found slave markets. Even
to this day, there's twenty som countries in Africa. We
can still go buy a slave folks. He hated slavery

(52:20):
and if he saw the horrors of it, and so
he fought really hard, and he did a amazing work
ending most of the slavery, along with a lot of
other missionaries that walked in his footprints.

Speaker 4 (52:30):
But he didn't do it all by himself anyway.

Speaker 3 (52:33):
He finally died in Africa even though, and it was
a big thing when they find They thought he was dead,
but when they found him it was like major earth
shattering news all.

Speaker 4 (52:40):
Around the world. Livingston Lives. Livingston Lives.

Speaker 3 (52:44):
He was buried in England, but before he left, one
of his closest friends in Africa cut his heart out
and buried it under a special tree in Africa, and
never left that tree because he loved instance so much
he wanted to be near his heart for the rest
of his life. The body was taken back to England.

(53:05):
He was buried in England or maybe it's Westminster. On
What a story, what a testimony that man had. You
could have the same kind of testimony too, because you
know what, You can change the world in your way
if you just.

Speaker 4 (53:16):
Let God work through you.

Speaker 3 (53:17):
But first you have to know Jesus and believe that
he died for all your sins, was buried in Rosa's dead.

Speaker 4 (53:22):
So it's not time for us to go.

Speaker 3 (53:24):
As we close to the Mount Saint Martin, singing a
creole goodbye, and God bless all.

Speaker 1 (53:32):
To call him cREL goodbye, they think we're just wasted
the time. In all three Simon, there's time for

Speaker 4 (53:53):
A creole good bye,