This is Gary and Shannon and you're listening to KFI AM six forty the Gary and Shannon Show on demand on the iHeartRadio app. Huge hockey game tonight is said to be one of the more important international hockey games in the last decade and a half, if not even more than that.
We know there's a bunch of stuff going on in DC.
We're going to be talking at the bottom of the hour about some of these FAA layoffs that the President has demanded. Department of Government Efficiency has come in and tried to cut some of the waste, and we're seeing plane crashes now, is there any connection? We'll talk about that coming up at the bottom of the hour. Also, do you have a favorite kid? And I say that because I have two kids, and I'm not going to
get into the well maybe I will. I was gonna say, I wouldn't ask you to answer a question that I wouldn't want to answer myself, But do you have a favorite kid? There's a new study out that suggests, no matter what what you say, yes you do have a favorite kid, and science can probably tell which kid it is.
So do you have a favorite kid?
Does your kid know that they are the favorite kid my sisters, and I have two older sisters, and I always used to joke that my parents would always tell me that I was their favorite, but they would never tell my sisters that I was their favorite. But anyway, we'll take your talkbacks about whether or not you have a favorite kid.
Coming up a little bit later.
One of the issues that's going on in DC is we do expect to see a vote to confirm Cash Patel as FBI Director in the Senate. Now we know that at least one Republican has said she would vote against the nomination of Cash Pattel, that is Susan Collins
of Maine. She noted the recent actions at the Justice Department and the FBI, from prosecutors resigning after facing pressure on how they handled certain cases to FBI agents facing firing over the work on the January sixth case, and she said in a statement, there is a compelling need for an FBI director who is decidedly a political you know,
without politics. While mister Patel has had sixteen years of dedicated public service, his time over the past four years has been characterized by high profile and aggressive political activity. So the expectation is that Susan Collins in fact will vote no, and if that's the case, he would still be on track to be confirmed in just a few hours to lead the FBI. So we'll talk about that internationally.
Hamas did something that I don't think a lot of people were expecting, and that is that they handed over the bodies today of Israeli babies. Kafir Bibass was ten months old, nine months old his four year old brother Ariel, the two youngest hostages taken by Hamas in that October seventh attack from twenty twenty three, among the most potent symbols,
according to Reuters, of the trauma from that day. Red Cross vehicles drove away from the handover site at the Gaza Strip with four little black coffins, two little black coffins and two normal size adult size that had been placed on a stage, and each of the caskets had a small picture of the hostages. Now a couple stories about what happened. First of all, they paraded these black cloth draped coffins amongst hundreds, if not a couple thousand
militants at the handover site. They were also, according to a couple of different reports, and we're not sure if This has been verified by Israeli officials. But Hamas locked the coffins and then turned over the wrong keys.
So when the Red.
Cross took custody of these boxes, they actually had to check them for bombs because Hamas had locked them. Like I said, now, in Goza, the militants were standing beside a poster of a man standing over the coffins, wrapped in Israeli flags, and instead of legs he had tree roots, suggesting the land belongs to the Palestinians, and the poster read the return of the war equals the return of
your prisoners in coffins. I do you remember the two little boys, their mother Shiri, and then a fourth hostage oded Liftshitz handed over under the ceasefire agreement that was reached last month. Hamas says that the boys and their mother had been killed in an Israeli air strike, but their deaths were never confirmed by Israeli authorities. That they said that they were killed back in late twenty twenty three.
This is one of the most egregious violations of whatever sort of deal there exists internationally.
In fact, the.
UN Human Rights Chief had said that Hamas parading the offense of these four hostages was abhorrent and cruel and flies in the face of international law, which is probably the most stern wording I've ever heard out of the UN specifically in the way that Hamas has been handling these hostage handovers, which has just been egregious. Four hostages today, I should say, four bodies of hostages today, and then
more are expected to be released over the weekend. So and whatever's going on between the United States and Ukraine is still confusing to me, even if you take into account the way that previous administrations had coddled of Vladimir's Alenski and Ukraine in general, there's no reason for us, the United States to be as complete a.
Holes as we are.
Appearing to be to a country that has been invaded by its much more powerful neighbor. But that's the way things are playing out right now. So this relationship between the United States Ukraine is deteriorating, perhaps one way to put it, at least that's the way that that's the way.
Where did it go? We'll stand by, I'm gonna pull this up real quick.
That's the way it was described by Andrew Dimbert, who is a reporter for ABC news.
Relations between Trump and Ukrainian President Zelensky deteriorates interiart Trump accusing Zelensky of being a dictator. President Trump Zelinsky says with Ukraine under martial law because of the war, he's unable to hold elections. Supporters say the president's recent statements criticizing Ukraine are all aimed at negotiating a deal to finally end the war.
It's a weird negotiating tactic, to be honest, It's a it's a weird negotiating tactic that I think makes the United States look weak in the face of what's going on in our relationship with Russia, because if if it's a tactic, if the tactic is for us to cozy up to Russia to get them to stop the aggression in Ukraine, it makes us look as opposed to I mean the picture of an old Western right where the sheriff, Where the sheriff we come into this small town, where
the bad guys all dressed in black, black hats, all
that sort of thing. They had come in and marauded through this town and sort of set up camp and taking a mafia style approach to claiming properties and businesses that weren't theirs in this case, territories, especially in the eastern part of Ukraine, and the feckless mayor, the unable to protect the townspeople, is looking for us, the sheriff, to come in and restore some amount of order and kick these guys out of the properties that they had taken.
And what we're doing, it appears, is walking up to the bad guys and going, listen, I know that this is a pretty small town and it ain't no big deal for you guys. So let's cool it on the shooting piece bull and we'll let you keep the old laundry matt down at the end of the at the end of the block, or something like that. John Kennedy is a senator out of Louisiana, little homespun guy who likes to talk in funny little euphemisms.
Uh.
He completely disagrees with the way that Trump has been handling the negotiations with you.
Here's where I disagree with the White House to an extent that the White House said that Ukraine started the war. I disagree. I think Vladim Repute shirk for I also believe, through bitter experience that Vladim Repute is a gangster. H he's a gangster with the black heart. I don't he makes He makes Jeffrey Domo.
Look like Mother Kisi.
He has Stalin's taste for blood. I don't want to get between the presidents Lensky and President of Trump. I never get between the dog and a fire hidrit. Man. That's where I live in my life. I think they're both good man. I think they both want the same time. And I think when you get there.
Did you hear that I don't want to get between Zelensky and Trump. I never get between a dog and a fire hydrant. I guess that's a fun thing that they say in Louisiana. But he is one of the few Republicans in Congress that has come out and disagreed with the way that the President has been handling this. John Thun, the Senate majority leader, has said, I'm in support. What I'm in support of is a peaceful outcome and
result in Ukraine. I said, I think right now the administration, the president and his team are working to achieve that. Of what Trump said, labeling Zelensky a dictator, John Thune said the president speaks for himself. On Air Force One, President Trump said, Hey, we still need to find all of the money that the United States has given Ukraine.
Also time to find out what happened with all the money, because he made the statement that half of it isn't know where it is or something like that, and I'd like to find out all the money that we've been sending to Ukraine, where is it.
Well, it will continue, We'll definitely talk more about it as the days go by. Right now in downtown La, Sean Duffy, the new Secretary of Transportation, is making an announcement about high speed rail. Our own Michael Monks is there. We're going to talk more about that later in the show about what this big announcement is, what it is
and how it's going to impact high speed rail. I remember that yesterday we told you about that poll that was taken that said that fifty four percent of people in California with half a brain believe that it is still
a good use of taxpayer money. So the big announcement, it appears from Sean Duffy, the Secretary of Transportation, who's down at Union Station downtown LA, is that there will be an investigation and audit basically of the billions of dollars federally that have been spent on California's high speed
rail project. This comes after a letter from state Republican legislators that asked it that asked for an examination of the viability of the project going forward and to hold High Speed Rail Authority accountable for what they said was mismanagement and broken promises. That letter was dated February thirteenth, and basically Secretary Duffy said, there is no timeline for this high speed rail project to go from LA to
San Francisco. It doesn't exist. And the part that does exist, the plan that is there is merceaid to Bakersfield, and that is already three times over the original price tag and no specific date of operation. Somewhere in early twenty thirty two, something like that, just in time for the asteroid to come and hit us. Speaking of the Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, he did an interview with CBS News and he said, of course it is safe to fly.
We've seen a string of airplane incidents.
Over the course of the last couple couple of weeks, obviously starting with the tragedy of the Regional Jet and the Army Blackhawk helicopter that crashed into each other just over the Potomac River near Rega National when sixty seven people died. A few days after that, seven people died when that small medical jet crashed in a neighborhood in Philadelphia. On Monday, of course, the Delta Airlines flight from Minneapolis
flipped upside down while landing in a Toronto. He had a couple of smaller incidents with Vince Neil's private jet that crashed on landing in Scottsdale, Arizona. And then another crash just yesterday where two small planes collided in a very small regional airport, also in Arizona. And the question that has come up is does any of this have to do with cuts to air safety personnel by the FAA by the Department of Government Efficiency looking to save money in the federal government.
This is New York Center Chuck Schumer.
Just weeks after the deadliest plane crash in a long time, and just as we see more incidents around the country, President Trump has fired hundreds of FAA workers, including air safety personnel. Firing people whose very job it is to keep air travel safe is nothing short of reckless.
Now, the White House.
Accused us of linking the crash of the Minneapolis flight directly with FAA cuts and staffing. Nothing could be further from the truth. I simply said that when there are fewer FAA personnel, the skies are less safe.
Now there is a concern about who is being fired at the FAA, And to be clear, even the head of the Professional Aviation Safety Specialists' Union, President Dave Sparrow, he said that the layoffs do not include any air traffic controllers or aviation safety inspectors.
Those who were let go were farther down on the latter.
He called them a support and administrative staff who, yes, they do assist safety personnel, but they're not the aviation safety inspectors and they're not the air traffic controllers. I had a beer last night with a buddy of mine. He's a friend, he's also a pilot, and he's a pilot for an airline, and I was asking him when whenever you see a crash of any kind anywhere in
the world, there is a recency bias. We see this in all kinds of different news stories of different types, but airplane crashes are of particular interest because they do happen a lot. Right We just don't pay attention to them a lot. Think of the small Think of the regional crashes. Think of the lear je that's owned by Vince Neil crashes on landing and kills a pilot. That's not that uncommon for a plane to have an incident
on landing. Or the smaller Sesson one seventy two that crashed into another plane in Arizona, also not that unusual for a small plane to go down. But because we're seeing it in the light of everybody suggesting that the FAA is now crippled by these cuts, that's why there is some concern. Caroline Levitt, she's the White House Press secretary.
It's incredibly irresponsible for Chuck Schumer to say such a thing when the investigation is still underway. And as you rightfully pointed out, John, this crash unfortunately took place in Canadian airspace with Canadian air traffic controllers overseeing it.
And the facts about.
The FAA are that no air traffic controllers have been let go by Secretary Duffy or this new administration.
In fact, Secretary she goes on, sorry, I cut her off.
The point to remember is we don't know the exact cause of any of these crashes. The reports are not done. The NTSB takes its time when it comes to piecing together the details of these crashes, but the at first blush even the investigators have said, these appear to be equipment problems. I mean, the lear jet that crashes in Scottsdale may have had other landing gear problems in the past. The flight in Canada, it's in Toronto, for God's sake,
it was under Canadian air traffic control. That may have been pilot error. Coming down too fast on that runway and collapsing the landing gear may have been pilot error. The most deadly of the incidents that we're talking about, the crash between the American Airlines regional jet and the Blackhawk helicopter over the Potomac, may have been pilot error, or the new version of it is equipment error on the Blackhawk helicopter that was telling the pilot it was
at a different altitude than it actually was. So there, listen you, I understand the idea that you want to jump to the conclusion that the FAA cuts are causing these planes to fall out of the sky. And then Chuck Schumer's allegation that The reason that the Trump administration is cutting the FAA is because they want to uh, they want to cut taxes for billionaires. So the suggestion is they're willing to crash airplanes in order to cut
taxes for billionaires. It's a pretty strong allegation. When we come back, do you have a favorite kid? Do you ever look at your kids and go, I like that one. I don't like that one.
I like that one.
Good morning, Gary, not Shannon. As for a favorite kid, I have two boys, they're eight years apart, and I don't have a favorite one of them I have. They each have their own unique traits that I prefer over the others, different ways of dealing when hand, just whatever. But I can tell you one thing. I do have a favorite talk radio host. And she's not here right now. Oh I love you, Gary, But hope Jamin's okay.
She's fine, everything's fine. Delta Airlines says it's going to offer thirty grand to passengers who were on board that flight from Minneapolis that crashed and then flipped over while it was landing in Toronto on Monday. All eighty people on board that flight survived and only one is still in the hospital. I pose this question because I think it's pretty It's a perennial question, especially if you have more than one kid, and I don't know how you do it if you have more than even two or three.
But do you have a favorite child?
Good morning Gary, Christina from Los Angeles calling to say, yes, I do have a favorite child. I have a favorite oldest child and I have a favorite youngest child. My dad has always told me, out of the four children, that I'm a favorite child, and my siblings definitely know it, and I know sometimes, so that's why I always tell my daughters I have a favorite oldest and I have a favorite yet favorite oldest, favorite yet I just take care of that.
It's kind of a cop out, but I get it.
Alex Jensen is a professor in the School of Family Life at Brigham Young University and published a study in the American Psychological Association and asked parents and kids. Instead of asking them do you have a favorite parent, they ask questions of the parents like does a parent experience more conflict with one particular child than the other or others?
Which child does a parent spend more time with?
Is there a child who typically receives more affection or more financial investment or more help with homework. And then they'd ask the kids, also, compared to your sibling, who does your parents spend more time with And they found a few things across the board that tended to be consistent. Daughters tend to be favored by parents, at least according to the parents themselves. Kids don't see it that way,
but the parents see it that way. There are a couple older studies that suggest that that fathers are going to favor sons, mothers are going to favor the daughter. So that's what they were expecting to find, but again this professor says, it turns out that fathers favored daughters as well. There are some benefits to being an older child. For example, older siblings were given more freedom and more autonomy.
But they're also looking to see if there's a change between childhood between teen years between adulthood, and found that it doesn't matter. They said, even as adults, parents still give more freedom to their older kids. I would add to that, not just the freedom, but they also a lot of times add more responsibility to the older kid. They did say, obviously there were some personality traits that
are linked to being the favorite kid. A kid who's agreeable, the kid who's compliant, the parent ask them to do something, they're more likely to do it. That's obviously scores high marks for the parents, and you tend to be a more favored kid if they're conscientious. Kids who are more aware,
more responsible tend to be favored by their parents. They took a whole bunch of studies together, included thirty studies as well as fourteen unpublished data sets about parental differential treatment that was about nineteen thousand different individuals from North America and Western Europe, and he said it's important because there are decades of research that show that the kids who tend to get less favored treatment tend to have poor outcomes. And if you have more than one kid,
it's hard not to have a favorite. The thing that I think exists, or the thing that's probably important to remember as a parent, is that changes or could change.
And as much as you enjoy time with a kid, at one point, that kid's going to grow out of that time, or maybe the other sibling is going to change their characteristics that you don't like, or maybe even be influenced by the amount of time or the affection that you give to the other kid and realize that they could get that same attention if they acted.
In the same way.
They said it might be of particular value to therapists and social workers. Parental differential treatment not only shapes the bond between the parent and child, but between those siblings as well.
And how many times that play out.
If you have a daughter who thinks that the son is the favorite because the parents never punish him, or the son who thinks the daughter is the favorite because she gets all of the money or the financial assistance,
that's going to create conflict between the siblings. And I don't know how you avoid that necessarily, but they said that that sibling relationship is especially salient and absence in adolescents, and research has shown that those childhood dynamics kind of set the stage for the rest of their lives.
For your kids' lives.
So that's the question, do you have a favorite kid and does it follow that pattern? I mean, it would suggest that if you have an older daughter, then that older daughter is likely the favorite child, not the case in my family. I'm the youngest son and my parents told me repeatedly that I was their favorite, but they only did it when my sisters were not around, so they may have said the same exact thing to my sisters. I do not know, but leave us a talkback message
we'd love to hear from you. Hit that little button on the iHeart app when you're listening on the app. Just hit the little red button with a white microphone in it, and it'll leave us a message. Up next, Karen Bass continues to tread water, but not very well when it comes to trying to keep her job as
mayor of La. She has now talked to Fox eleven about the night that she was not in La January seventh, when the Palisades fire and the Eaton fire broke out, and tried to explain why she was not in La. I mean, she was on a diplomatic mission to Ghana. We know that part, But how did she not know that there was an extremely dangerous fire situation that was happening. We'll hear her explanation coming up. If you miss any part of the show, always go back and get the podcast.
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