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Governor Cruelty – Mitt Romney Straps Dog To Car Roof For 12 Hour Drive

Posted by on Aug 9, 2011 in Oh Hell No! | 10 comments

Towleroad has us reminiscing about the time the Republic Presidential Candidate Frontrunner, Mitt Romney went all “family values” in a Boston Globe. The Governor of Massachusetts described in detail the 1983 Romney family vacation. Snooze.

He and his wife dressed the kids, packed up the car, and got everyone safely buckled in. Finally, seeing no more room inside the car’s cabin, Romney tied the family dog, Seamus, to the roof of the car and proceeded on a twelve hour drive.

“What happens to a dog in this situation is precisely what would happen to any of us in the same situation: Trapped in a box for 12 hours would be no one’s idea of comfortable,” said Llope.

Dr. Russell Cumming, a professor of aerospace engineering at California Polytechnic State University, got a little more technical.

“At that speed, assuming sea level conditions, the poor little dog would have about 10 pounds per square foot pressing against his head,” said Cumming.

Nobel Prize-winning physicist Douglas Osheroff of physics at Stanford University said the dog crate on top of the car would change the air flow around the vehicle.

“Beyond a certain velocity, the air flow becomes turbulent,” said Osheroff. “The airflow isn’t going to be laminar,” which means it won’t have a uniform distribution.

Cumming said that’s bad news for Seamus.

“Chances are the windshield would only protect the front of the dog, but the air flowing around the windshield would buffet the side of the dog — that would be tiring,” said Cummings. “My wife’s a vet, and she would be more worried by the dehydration of the dog’s eyes under those conditions.”

That ten pounds of pressure buffeting poor Seamus was strong enough and stressful enough to literally squeeze the shit out of the dog.

“A brown liquid was dripping down the back window, payback from an Irish setter who’d been riding on the roof in the wind for hours,” the article said.

After his son noticed the liquid, Romney pulled the car over and hosed down Seamus at a gas station before putting him back into the crate on top of the car and continuing on with the drive.

It is illegal in Massachusetts (and the rest of the country) to tie an animal “in or upon a vehicle, or otherwise, in an unnecessarily cruel or inhuman manner or in a way and manner which might endanger the animal carried thereon.” Of course you already knew that. Because, you know, DUH.

Over 10,ooo complaints were left with the New York Times, after the paper published a follow-up to the Boston Globe’s original story. The general tone of the complaints suggest that Americans do not trust a man who not only tortured his dog, but bragged about it to a newspaper, to run the United States government.

We agree.

(via ABC & Boston.com)