RoadDave

Steve-O Bannon, ex-Breitbart reality stylist, is now the ex-fartcatcher for President Donny John the Fucktard.  According to Breitbart he resigned last week and according to the NYT, he was given his walking papers by Donny John today.  Who cares, as long as he’s out of the White House and go drag his knuckles along Pennsylvania Ave.

But wait there’s more!

This afternoon, the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities, 16 of 17 members resigned en masse to protest the President’s behavior post-Charlottesville and the unmixed messages he’s sent.  The resignation letter essential says, go fuck yourself, we’re not putting up with this shit and we be gone.  We are paraphrasing.

We would be remiss if we didn’t remind you that all it will take is one skeevy act by Kim Jong Un to crank up the Ugly Machine.  Bannon, in an interview said a few things that were not in keeping with Donny John’s worldview.  We quote:

Contrary to Trump’s threat of fire and fury, Bannon said: “There’s no military solution [to North Korea’s nuclear threats], forget it. Until somebody solves the part of the equation that shows me that ten million people in Seoul don’t die in the first 30 minutes from conventional weapons, I don’t know what you’re talking about, there’s no military solution here, they got us.” Bannon went on to describe his battle inside the administration to take a harder line on China trade, and not to fall into a trap of wishful thinking in which complaints against China’s trade practices now had to take a backseat to the hope that China, as honest broker, would help restrain Kim.

Keep an eye on two things:  One: Kim Von Haircut.  Two:  The Markets, which are now taking a massive dump, down to below 15,000 on the S&P and down 35 points on the Dow.  (as of 1544 hrs EDT today).  Money doesn’t like to have a jittery, isolated, megalomaniac in charge and Bannon was the last link with something resembling a coherent worldview.  A shitty worldview, but at least a worldview.

We would also be remiss if we didn’t remind John F. Kelly. Donny John’s Chief of Staff of a few things  from a RoadDave of July 31st.  The list is short, but comprehensive.   Please note, we haven’t heard jack from the Vice-President, Mike (I can’t be near women) Pence, so keep an eye out for him too.

And, if only to add insult in fiscal injury a number of charity and business events that were scheduled to hold various shindigs at Fucktard Central, known officially as the Mar-A-Lago Knob-Shine Palace have changed their minds.  That would include the International Rd Cross Ball (not on Feb 3 2018)  The Cleveland Clinic and the American Cancer Society have all said “Sorry, we’ve booked a Ramada in Tallahassee instead”

We remember when Sarah Palin was the biggest nutbar loose in politics.  Ahh, those were the days.

Following the Charlottesville, VA insanity, we did some thinking on the whole concept of Free Speech.

Free Speech isn’t free.  The ability to have your say comes with a responsibility, that you have to accept that other people might not agree with you, to the point of trolling you, calling you out or offering to bash you one over the head.  RoadDave is a blog and we exercise the right to Free Speech as enshrined in the Canadian Bill of Rights to express an opinion.  At the same time, we also accept that not everyone will agree with the opinion.  That is the concomitant responsibility of Free Speech.

The only caveat we place on Free Speech is that if you do disagree, then back up your opinion with facts, reproducible observations or other learned discourses that support your thesis.  This is called Intellectual Discourse.  Not agreeing means you’re thinking, considering and valuating evidence or observations made and communicated by someone else.

Some Intellectual Discourse can be binary:  If we were to say that the atomic number of molybdenum was not 42, one could easily disprove that assertion with a simple tag from Wikipedia that states that, yep, it is 42.  Our reaction would be a simple “Ooops, made a mistake, corrected it”.  We would own our mistake, then make, in this instance, modest amends for using the incorrect atomic number of molybdenum.

Other discourse can be more fraught with shades of vagueness on inconclusive evidence or analogies that stretch reality into directions that don’t necessarily exist.  Flat-Earthers, Moon-landing deniers, Elvis is alive in Kalamazoo, and other fringe groups seem to not care for evidence-based discourse.  We’ll add Chemtrails are making us all gay, JFK was an alien from another planet and you can cure all diseases with (state name of botanical or superfood) but it can’t happen because Big Pharma won’t let you.  Having the opinion that the Earth is flat is fine, but be prepared to back it up with facts and be prepared to have your facts questioned in a proper intellectual discourse.

So to Charlottesville.  If the neo-Nazi groups in Charlottesville have an opinion that white pride is good and can back it up with evidence that it is good for all of America, we’re willing to listen.  Not with an open mind, but with a scientifically suspicious mind as befits proper intellectual discourse.  We won’t accept intellectual sloppiness or woolly unsubstantiated assertions and won’t let them get away with changing the subject to something parenthetical, or single-event ‘proof’ of whatever their particular opinion might be.

Does this make us racist?  We don’t believe so, as even complete assholes do have the right to free speech no matter how ugly, unacceptable, or vile it may be.  The responsibility of that right is to back up your idea with facts and let others judge your thesis on the facts.  If your facts don’t hold up, be prepared to have your thesis coated with molasses and ketchup, slow roasted at 225 degrees for 8 hours, and handed back to you on a plate.

There hangs the reason why we have no problem with free speech: Hate mongering doesn’t stand up to even the rudimentary basics of intellectual discourse.  They have no thesis, no form, no evidence and no coherent platform except hate.  It takes about nine seconds for someone listening to them to recognize that a neo-Nazi is a complete moron and what they are trying to sell is complete nonsense without form or substance, but with a semen-glazed veneer of their own masturbatory fantasies of power and potency under the flickering glare of a Wal-Mart tiki torch.

Stupid people can see through that.  Even the truly stupid can sense when the goods on offer are false.  Even with strongly held, objectionable opinions, you can disarm them with one simple, one-word question.  That magic question is the heart of all intellectual discourse and we’ll let you in on the secret, single, solitary, potent, powerful, penetrative question.

Why?

That one question forces, in fact, demands the explanation and rationale for the strongly held opinion.  It is the starting gun for intellectual discourse.  Ask Why enough times and you either get an answer, or they walk away, knowing they have failed miserably, not just in convincing you, but in convincing themselves, showing their flawed logic and misguided opinions based on rumours, fears and stupidity.  They’ll know they are assholes, deep down inside, by their own words and deeds.  That is the nastiest cut of all as it is self-inflicted.

If they don’t change their minds, then you can readily consign them to the dustheap as not worthy of your further engagement.

They will be blocked, not just on social media, but by society at large as the muttering nutter fringe who can’t express themselves in a coherent manner, offering noise and fury signifying nothing.

Perhaps that is the cruelest cut:  We.  Don’t.  Care.

Unless your address is under a rock, then you’re familiar with the madness in Charlottesville, VA.  A neo-Nazi group protesting the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee was counter-protested by an anti-fascist group.  Both groups went violent, fists, sticks and pepper spray abounded as both sides tried to stop the other.

Where things took a very bad turn was Saturday when one of the neo-Nazis decided to ram his car at a fair clip into the counter-protester group, killing one woman an injuring a dozen or so in a rather grisly video that you can find online.

Here’s our bias, up front and in the clear.  We’ve got no time for “White Nationalists” the new catchphrase for “Racists” “Bigots” and “Mental Cases”.

We also have no time for violent protest, regardless of which side you might be on. Stand your ground, yes, but no violence.  You have the right to protest, but you also have the obligation to protest peacefully.  Loudly, certainly, but not violently.  That’s the line we draw, like it or not.  As soon as you go violent, you’ve lost support.

Quiet determination to be heard was the hallmark of the Freedom Riders and those who fought segregated schools, lunch counters and buses.  Rosa Parks didn’t get on the bus wearing a helmet and carrying a shield: She carried her purse.  James Meredith carried his books into Ole Miss, yes he was surrounded by US Marshals and the National Guard, but he didn’t raise his hand to anyone.  That is the route to follow.

Here’s why:  You get more sympathy and support if you remain non-violent.  The common consensus is that Bull Connor lost it when he turned the firehoses on protesters in Birmingham.  The Republican Party lost it when they started roughing up reporters at the RNC Convention in Chicago in 1968, then outside in the street, with the Chicago police under Mayor Daley, taking the batons to anti-war protesters.  Kent State?  That horror show went on for five years after the shootings, eviscerating the whole state of Ohio.

The media will cover you from head to toe if you have been peaceful and attacked, (preferably with a few bloodied heads), as long as you don’t hit back.  When you hit back, no matter how deserving, you become another violent mob, not protesters, not voices wanting and deserving to be heard.  Let the media do your work for you.

Line the sidewalks, link arms, don’t move, but don’t hit back.  Make them come to you and make the first violent move.

Well that escalated quickly.  The two people in the world with the worst possible haircuts and hands on their respective nuclear buttons (a small subset, we know) are going toe to toe with threats of violence.  Violence that would, essentially turn the world into an ashtray.

The last time North America was this close to losing it, was around 1947-1963 when the Godless Soviets fired off their own nukes and then had the audacity to launch a satellite into orbit called Sputnik.  Gosh darn it Buford, that could a been a Atomic missile and we’d all be under that there Soviet Commie system!  Stop, drop and roll anyone?  Air Raid sirens on your school?  We do have a Geiger Counter, complete with the Civil Defense logo and yes, it does work.  We might need it if the stupidity continues.

In discussing heinous acts, we went back over history for some of the falsities that have triggered calamitous events in the planet’s history.  A few came to mind that add some perspective to the madness we’re going through now.

The Reichstag Fire February 27th, 1933 was one of the first to float up.  Short form “Communists and Jews” burned the Reichstag and through an amazing coincidence the Reichstagsbrandverordnung was issued the very next day by German President Paul Hindenburg on advice of his Chancellor, Adolph Hitler.  The Reichstag Fire Decree did away with little things like courts, evidence and the German Constitution.  It took one day for the Decree to be law.  We think they had a first draft somewhere before the fire through an amazing coincidence.

Next up was the Gleiwitz Incident on August 31st 1939.  The story was Polish saboteurs attacked a radio station in Germany,  Sender Gleiwitz, broke in to the studios, called the Germans listening a bunch of cocksuckers and then shot up the place.  The German military responded and bodies were presented to the press the next day as the Polish saboteurs who were shot trying to incite an international incident.  All bullshit, from the top to the bottom.  A few days later, somebody invaded Poland, Gleiwitz being at least one of the reasons.

The Gulf of Tonkin and the USS Maddox went down in August 1964.  Lyndon Johnson needed a good reason to step up the war in Viet Nam.  The story went that a couple of North Vietnamese Navy PT Boats fired on the USS Maddox in international waters, twelve miles off the coast of North Viet Nam.  Let’s see.  A 70 foot MTB shooting a .50 cal at a 376 foot armed and armored US Destroyer.  Sounds like an even match.  The Central Intelligence Agency basically made the whole story up.  Johnson went on television that night to decry the attack in International waters and authorized retaliation.  By August 7th the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution gave LBJ the permission to kick ass and take names without Congressional approval.  He did and it took until 1972 for Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger shut down that slaughter.

The Iraq War (the 2003 Collectors Edition, Director’s Cut) and Weapons Of Mass Destruction.  This one had only smallish falsehoods under Dubya.  For some reason the promised chemical, biological and nuckerler weapons that were just laying in the streets everywhere in Baghdad seemed to have magically disappeared once the ground troops rolled in.

What this tells us is when leaders go off the rails, it takes very little to light off truly appalling events.  If Kim von Haircut decided to let off something even vaguely explosive in the direction of anyone except themselves, the US has the folks and gear to reduce North Korea to an asterix in the World Atlas of 2018.

With that one small, teensy-weesie problemette:  All of us will be affected.  Everyone on this planet.

Tune up your bullshit detector, this is going to go fast.

Earlier today, Tony the Mooch got his walking papers from the new Chief of Staff for Donny the Fucktard.  Pulling the trigger was John F. Kelly, a non-serving Marine General.  (Ask any Marine, you’re either serving or not serving.  The only time a Marine stops being a Marine is when they die)

Ten days for Tony the Mooch is all he lasted.  Now, the story in the New Yorker didn’t help, as it showed exactly what kind of knob he was and neither did his insistence of reporting directly to Donny.

This is what you call a White House Hard Reset.  More correctly, crashing the Donny shortbus into a bridge abutment at 70 miles per hour:  Whoever gets out of the wreckage alive, gets to keep their job for another day.  General Kelly is not someone to be trifled with and emphatically has the brass balls to do what needs to be done.  But since he’s new in the gig, we have a few suggestions:

1.  Take away Donny’s phone.  Now.  Break his goddamn thumbs if you have to, but get that phone out of that idiot’s tiny hands before he starts a nuclear war.
2. Tell Donny to start acting like a President, not a spoiled toddler.  Even Dubya was more Presidential than Donny will ever be.
3. Tell Donny to stop lying.  Treat him like a grabasstic piece of wasted jizzum like you would treat a raw recruit on the Island.
4. Prepare your resignation letter now.  Donny won’t do #1, #2 or #3 and you will be forced to either totally trash your service record (a very good one by the way) or be required be a party to violating your Oath.
5. Watch your back.  Your Commander in Chief hasn’t got you covered.  He’d sell his kids before he admits to so much as being wrong.
6. Speaking tours pay well.  Good luck!

Mister Art Of The Deal, President Donny “Fucktard” Trump, managed to do nothing again this week, except outrage the Military, the LGBTQ community, most of the Senate and about two-thirds of the White House.  Not bad for a five-day week, but actual work on Making America Great Again?  Not so much.

The first off the boat were some of the last of the Republican National Committee employees at the White House.  Sean Spicer, ex-RNC fart-catcher jumped when Anthony Scaramucci was appointed Communications Director.  Reince Priebus, WH Chief of Staff jumped yesterday, leaving nobody with actual political experience in the White House, including Donny.  The Republican Party has essentially been shut out of their own ballpark by a Trump-led, Tea-party backed mutiny.  The RNC has a long memory and woe betide those who do not tug the forelock in the direction of the party and the piles of money and expertise they bring to the electoral process.

Citing the expense of transgendered soldiers getting the US Military to pay for their surgeries, Donny the Fucktard decided that trans soldiers will not be allowed to serve in the US Military.  The estimated savings?  About $8 million, or what it costs for a spare set of nose gear on one F-35 fighter, tires and installation not included. $8 mil to the Pentagon is a rounding error.  The Pentagon replied that they’re ‘studying’‘ the recommendations from Donny the Fucktard’s tweet, which is the Pentagon’s way of saying “Eat Shit and Die”.

Aside from Scaramucci’s very revealing interview with the New Yorker in which Scaramucci carved everyone in the White House a spare orifice, we also learned that Tony Mooch’s wife has decided she’d rather watch a propane tanker crash into a Down’s Syndrome Orphanage than put up with Tony’s grasping ambition and filed for divorce. Those in the know agree, yes,  Tony is a douchebag, with all of the political savvy of Sarah Palin on Xanax and the communications skills of a toddler with an intestinal parasite infection.  About right for Donny the Fucktard’s White House.

Then there is the death of the third replacement for the Affordable Care Act (ACA) or as they call it Obamacare.  Sen, John McCain got even with Donny by breaking ranks, along with two other Republican Senators, to vote it down.  Not that there was anything to vote down, as there was no real repeal and replace legislation to pass.  All the bill said was “We don’t want anything passed by that Negro President we had, but we haven’t got anything else to fix it with”  One Democrat Senator, Mazie Hirono, being treated for Stage 4 kidney cancer, showed up to vote down the legislation.

Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski from Alaska also sided with McCain and was duly rewarded.  We’ll quote here from a Washington Post article

McCain was joined in his ‘no’ vote by Republican Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who earlier in the week had received a call from the Interior secretary warning that the administration would drop its support for expanded energy drilling and road construction in Alaska if she dared to defy the president and Republican leadership on the crucial vote. Murkowski did not take well to being muscled in that ham-handed fashion. As chair of the two relevant committees, she announced that she was indefinitely postponing sessions to consider nominations to Interior’s top positions and to mark up its 2018 appropriations.

The only way someone could be that politically stupid is if they had no political expertise and for that we nominate Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke.  An ex-SEAL (kudos for that service) but a SEAL knows enough to not leave fingerprints or traces of their presence on something.  Next time, have an intern do the call to twist some arms.  Rookie mistake there Commander.

Barely seven months into his term and Donny the Fucktard has already gone lame-duck, now changing up the seating arrangements in the hopes that he can actually do something, aside from naming the federal building in Nashville after Fred Thompson.

We await Robert Mueller’s revelations in the next few weeks.  The Unreality TV season is just getting started and we’re getting in a shipment of popcorn so we can  “Watch America Implode!”

One of our longtime followers, Tom, occasionally posts that we overlook the things that aren’t all unicorns and Skittles in Canada.  Ergo, some details on one of our shittier sides and it’s happening in Thunder Bay.

To help our American readers, Thunder Bay is up at the top of Lake Superior, past Duluth and Grand Marais.  It used to be Fort William and Port Arthur but was amalgamated into Thunder Bay decades ago.  It is simply gorgeous up there, but there are problems.

The Thunder Bay Police and the Civilian Police board are under separate provincial investigations for all kinds of badness.  The police chief was charged in May for obstruction of justice.  TBay as a city has the highest rate of hate crimes in Canada, at least according to Statistics Canada.

A further band of shit-mist fell on Friday as the mayor, Keith Hobbs (an ex-cop) was charged with two others, including his wife, with extortion and obstruction of justice and a reminder that charged does not mean convicted.  But if it smells like shit, looks like shit and tastes like shit, it’s probably shit.

Being a ‘northern’ community, there is a racial tone to things with a large and deservedly vocal First Nations community.  Seven young First Nations kids have lost their lives between 2000 and 2011, three accidental according to the Coroner, but four were of “undetermined” causes, the linkage being the cops have dismissed a missing First Nations teen as just another missing Indian kid.  Ontario’s Office of the Independent Review Director – is already investigating the charges of systemic racism within the department.

We’ll add to that the Special Investigations Unit is looking into the death of another First Nations man, a couple of days ago, who died in a Thunder Bay Police cell.

So, Tom, yes, things are not rosy up here.

However, this where Canada differs:  We talk about it.  We acknowledge it.  Then we work to fix it.  It might not be fast, it might not be complete in every way, but we do it, no matter how much it hurts all of us.

President Donny is in his One Hundred and some-odd day as Leader of the Free World and it’s time to look back at his accomplishments:

Trump legislation passed:  None.  Yes, he’s signed about 40 bills with HR and SR numbers including HR 375 “An Act to designate the Federal building and United States courthouse located at 719 Church Street in Nashville, Tennessee, as the ‘Fred D. Thompson Federal Building and United States Courthouse'”  and his greatest achievement to date, HR 353 “Weather Research and Forecasting Innovation Act of 2017”  Or this model of managing the legislative agenda: H.R.1362 – “An Act to name the Department of Veterans Affairs community-based outpatient clinic in Pago Pago, American Samoa, the Faleomavaega Eni Fa’aua’a Hunkin VA Clinic”  Truly stunning use the of the Office and the Executive powers to guide important legislation to Make America Great Again.

The brightest highlight were these three: S.J.Res. 36 – “Joint Resolution providing for the appointment of Roger W. Ferguson as a citizen regent of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution;” S.J.Res. 35 – “Joint Resolution providing for the appointment of Michael Govan as a citizen regent of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution;” S.J.Res. 30 – “Joint Resolution providing for the reappointment of Steve Case as a citizen regent of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution”

But actual legislation from Donny’s mouth to the House and the Senate?  Jack-Squat.

The Mexico-funded Wall to keep out the bad hombres, rapists and drug dealers?  Not a whisper.  Not even a finger-bang tryin’ to find the hole.  Except the logic bomb that the wall has to be transparent because drug dealers are lobbing 60 pound bags of drugs over the fence and you might get hit in the head, so you have to be able to see through the wall.

Infrastructure restoration?  Never heard of it.

Manufacturing jobs are a juicy one.  That Carrier HVAC plant in Indy where Donny personally saved 700 jobs last year, announced that they’re still relocating the production from Indiana to Mexico, laying off the folks in December 2017, not December 2016 as originally planned.  Donny bought a year.

To be fair, there was a coal mine opened that will employ 70 people in Buttcrack W Va. However, everyone there won’t be covered by any semblance of health care, so one had best not have an accident on the job.

The Big Three car makers, who were supposed to bask in the American Manufacturing Renaissance under Donny?  GM is planning on a 10 week shutdown of most plants, instead of the usual two or three week summer shutdown for retooling.

Making America Great Again?  Not so much.  At the G20 a couple of weeks ago Donny had his kid sit in when the other leaders started to use big words.  At the G7 about a month ago he couldn’t walk two blocks and had to take a golf cart.  At international photo ops, world leaders would rather stand with the sign-language interpreter than be in a photo with Donny.  America has become a laughingstock with about as much diplomatic gravitas as Chad or Sierra Leone.

Unless you count his great international cyber security breakthrough of getting Vladimir Putin to cooperate on some fuzzy concept of cyber-security cooperation between the US and Russia.  Why not use that nifty Russian phone Putin gave you Donny?  It’s shiny and will let you tweet faster.

Even the repeal of Obamacare Mark II hasn’t got the support of enough of his own majority party to get anywhere near his desk and has duly died.  Donny can’t get enough of his own majority to vote for it, leaving Mitch McConnell to stoop and scoop.  This is Mister Art Of The Deal in action.  Or should that be inaction.  President Donny can’t close the deal.

But President Donny (“I’m President and you’re not”) sure can slam Hillary Clinton and the media.  Note to Donny:  Hilary lost, she’s not in office and holds no powers other than that of a regular citizen.  The horse is dead, but you keep flogging it?  Why?  Nobody likes a sore winner.

We’ll tell you why.  You know that hammering Hillary and doing an all caps #FAKENEWS during your morning dump distracts people.  That’s your long game.  More correctly, Steve Bannon’s long game:  Make the media run after air biscuits and brain farts while you go golfing and America rots away.

Even if Robert Mueller were to find a Russian wristwatch up President Donny’s ass and Putin’s pubic hairs between Jared’s teeth, there will always be apologists for this international punch line to a joke.

Except that once this all grinds through the courts and the investigations and the media shitstorm, it will be time for the mid-terms.  In fact, the Republican reptiles are lining up the PACs now for the mid-terms.

The House and Senate will likely flop back to a Democrat and Republican split, paralyzed with inaction and relentless bickering.  The base for Trump, working-class Republicans who bought into Make America Great Again will see it as nothing more than a logo, a red hat with no substance, no help and based on the stinkin rich folks in Cabinet, no hope for them.  They’ll stay home in droves once they see exactly what has been done in their name for them.  The rich got richer and the poor had their belongings sold off at auction to pay for medical coverage or food.

America is eating itself, fighting the Civil War again, except this time it’s not North versus South.  It’s class war.  Rich versus Poor and even more appalling is that the less-than privileged, Trump’s base, are the ones who will suffer the most for it.

Yes, America sure is great again.

Canada Day is tomorrow.  We’ve seen the 100, the 125 and now the 150th anniversary of our country.  From our naive innocence of 1967, to our more grizzled 2017, we’ve seen the bumps and bruises of being a country in this world of ours.

Canada is not perfect, nor is everything here wonderful with unicorns and rainbows for all.  We’ve had and continue to have problems.  We’ll have more going to 175, 200 and beyond, but there is something down deep in our collective Canadian souls that make us resilient, quietly proud and distinctly Canadian.

As an example, on Parliament Hill tomorrow, there will be 500,000 to 750,000 people coming together on the front lawn of our federal legislative seat.  There will be drinking, face painting, singing, dancing and of course, shenanigans.  A group of First Nations folks sneaked into the area last night and set up a teepee to protest and to celebrate their role in Canada, completely without permission from the authorities.  The authorities reacted as only Canadians would:  They encouraged the First Nations folks to move the teepee up closer to the stage.  Permit?  Um, we’ll get that next week, don’t sweat it.

My family came to Canada during the American Revolutionary War, having been prosperous textile merchants near Boston.  One night a group of the lads invited the family to either die in the fire that was going to happen in a half-hour, or get the hell out of Massachusetts.  Ontario looked promising and off they went that night:  United Empire Loyalists who left everything behind and started over in a new country.

There are millions of other stories like it.  Leaving Ireland, Scotland, France, or Syria.  Hungary, Poland, Croatia, Finland, China, Ukraine, Russia, Lebanon, Ethiopia, the US, or any other country you can name.  Starting over, working hard, keeping the old roots and growing new ones in this new land.

That perhaps is our secret.  We recognize we’re all from Away and at the same time recognize we’re also all Here determined to make it work.

To sum up, here’s a song that many, many Canadians recognize as being, if not the most quintessential one, certainly in the top three.  If you know the words, sing along.

Happy birthday to us.