ohmidog!

Barney, the Scottish terrier who was ”first dog” during President George W. Bush’s two terms in office, has passed away.

Bush broke the news on his Facebook page, where he also made public a recent oil painting he did of his dog.

“After twelve and a half years of life, his body could not fight off the illness,” Bush said in the post.

Barney had lymphoma.

Barney was born Sept. 30, 2000 — two months before Bush was elected to his first term.

In his Facebook post, Bush wrote, “Barney greeted Queens, Heads of State, and Prime Ministers. He was always polite and never jumped in their laps. Barney was by my side during our eight years in the White House. He never discussed politics and was always a faithful friend. Laura and I will miss our pal.”

Barney’s mother was Coors, a Scottish terrier owned by former Environmental Protection Agency Director Christine Todd Whitman, and his father was Kelly of Champion Motherwell Stormwarning.

Barney had his own section on the Bush administration’s official White House website, starred in numerous videos and was a fixture at the White House, the Bushes’ Crawford ranch and Camp David, where Barney’s favorite activity was chasing golf balls on the chipping green.

He was a “fierce armadillo hunter,” Bush wrote, who loved going along when he fished for bass at the ranch.

“Barney guarded the South Lawn entrance of the White House as if he were a Secret Service agent. He wandered the halls of the West Wing looking for treats from his many friends. He starred in Barney Cam and gave the American people Christmas tours of the White House.”

Barney also once bit a reporter who got too close.

The president, who has taken up painting since leaving the White House, also released a portrait he did of Barney. It is signed “43.”  Bush was the nation’s 43rd president.

Barney is survived by Miss Beazley, another Scottish terrier who lives with the ex-president, and Bob, a cat.

(Photo: Bush’s portrait of Barney, from Facebook)

The last time Barack Obama won a presidential election, he promised his daughters the family would get a dog.

This time, President Obama told Sasha and Malia how proud he was of them during his victory speech — but that they shouldn’t expect a second dog.

Looking at his word choice, though, he didn’t seem to totally rule it out:

“… And I am so proud of you guys. But I will say that, for now, one dog’s probably enough.”

Between the “probably” and the “for now,” he seems to leave the door open.

You can read the full transcript of his victory speech a lot of places — even on Fox News.

According to the latest numbers, Obama garnered 303 electoral votes, compared to 206 for Romney, the Republican candidate who, long ago on a family vacation, once transported his Irish setter, Seamus, in a crate on the roof of his car.

Last night’s victory means Bo, the Obama’s Portuguese water dog, gets four more years in the White House, whose lawn, we’d note, seems plenty big for another dog or two.

(Photos: Top photo, Associated Press; Bo photo, White House)

Seamus finally got a song.

DEVO’s Jerry Casale has released, “Don’t Roof Rack Me, Bro,” a song that mocks Mitt Romney for strapping his Irish setter, in a crate, to the roof of his car on a family vacation trip.

The  new single, subtitled “Seamus Unleashed,” was written by Casale and will be released in conjunction with a game app titled The Crate Escape: Seamus Unleashed.

The song and the game will launch August 26, which is both National Dog Day and the day before the Republican National Convention.

In releasing the single, DEVO joined forces with Dogs Against Romney, an online advocacy group with more than 70,000 members on Facebook, to help call attention to Mitt Romney’s “crate-gate” scandal.

Have a listen:

“I can’t overstate how excited we are to have DEVO’s Gerald Casale as a partner with us in making sure every voter in America knows Mitt Romney strapped his dog, Seamus, to the roof of his car for a 12-hour trip to Canada,” said Scott Crider, founder of Dogs Against Romney. “The new DEVO song Gerald created with his bandmates is awesome, and I believe it will be the soundtrack for Romney’s defeat in November.”

DEVO recorded the song as an anthem for pet lovers and as a message to others to never forget what happened to Seamus in 1983, when the Romneys drove from Boston to Ontario with the dog crated on the roof of their station wagon.

The single will be available at all digital music retailers; the game is initially being launched as an app on iTunes.

“We are delighted to have a new DEVO song as part of our game’s offering,” said Andy Berryman, chief marketing officer for Censault, LLC, the game’s developer. “It’s exciting to break new ground in the mobile/social gaming space – first as a game that is both fun to play and promotes a positive social message, and now as a new distribution medium for popular music.”

More info on the game can be found at www.facebook.com/CrateEscapeGame.

In an interview with Rolling Stone, Casale, who has raised funds for Obama in Akron through a DEVO performance, said of Romney’s nearly 30-year-old mistake, ”It’s just a deal-breaker about the man … What you want in a leader is a guy with some humanity at his core … I think any animal lover that hears the story will learn so much about the character flaw of Romney.”

DEVO may include the song in its act when it tours America this fall with Blondie, he said.

While the song may or may not become the 1970′s-80′s-era band’s first hit in a long, long time, it has already gotten off to a better start than my suggestion for a Seamus song, a reworking of the Pink Floyd tune of the same name.

President Obama made his first public reference to Seamus — the dog his opponent once strapped to the roof of his car for a family trip — while on the campaign trail in Iowa.

Appearing in Oskaloosa, a town named after all those actors who were nominated but didn’t win Academy Awards — (that’s a joke) — Obama referred to Seamus, though not by name, while discussing energy policy, specifically windmills.

Appearing in front of the Nelson Pioneer Farm and Museum and touting the job-creating potential of wind energy in Iowa, Obama criticized Romney for saying, “You can’t drive a car with a windmill on it.”

“Now, I don’t know if he’s actually tried that,” Obama said. “I know he’s had other things on his car.”

Romney in 1983 toted his Irish setter on the roof of the family station wagon, in a crate, on a trip from Boston to Ontario, Canada, for a family vacation.

In response to Obama’s remark, reported by ABC News and many others, the Romney campaign said the president “continues to embarrass himself and diminish his office with his un-presidential behavior.”

“This election is about creating jobs, turning around our economy and helping the middle class. The President’s policies have failed on all counts and he will do anything to distract from his abysmal record,” Romney spokesman Ryan Williams said in a written statement.

Obama’s appearance in Iowa came as the GOP nominee campaigned in coal country.

“Gov. Romney said, let’s end the tax credits for wind energy production. Let’s get rid of them. He said that new sources of energy, like wind, are imaginary. His running mate calls them a fad,” Obama said

The president, who is pushing Congress to extend a production tax credit for wind energy companies, added,   “These jobs aren’t a fad. These are good jobs. And they’re a source of pride that we need to fight for.”

(Photo: Carolyn Kaster / AP)

Mitt Romney says, if he had a chance to do it all over again, he would not put the  family dog in a carrier on top of a station wagon for a 12-hour ride to Canada.

“Certainly not with the attention it’s received,” Romney said in an interview with ABC’s Diane Sawyer.

In other words, he regrets getting caught. But does he regret the act?

His comments sound a lot like those Michael Vick has uttered since serving his sentence for dogfighting-related offenses. Like saying he regrets how the public perceived his acts. Like saying he’d still be doing it, if not for getting caught. Like saying it was all part of urban culture.

Dogfighting is no more a part of urban culture than putting a dog on your roof is part of suburban culture.

The tale of Seamus, the Romney’s Irish setter, is an old one, from the 1980s, first disclosed when Tagg Romney told the story in 2007  — how Seamus got sick during the trip, how Seamus got hosed down during the trip, how the Romneys continued on, dog still on the roof.

The question posed by Sawyer was submitted by a Yahoo! reader: “Would you transport Seamus like that again?”

Though the presidential candidate said no, his wife, Ann Romney, again pointed out how much Seamus “loved it.”

“He would see that crate and would … go crazy because he was going with us on vacation,” she said. “It was to me a kinder thing to bring him along than to leave him in the kennel…”

(Photo: ABC)

Given that the story of  Mitt Romney’s dog, Seamus, refuses to disappear, some are suggesting “Seamus,” the old Pink Floyd song, should be revived as well, and perhaps played during his opponent’s campaign rallies.

The lyrics, what little there are of them, don’t exactly fit the tale of Romney’s dog and his 12-hour rooftop ride to Canada, but the 1971 song does have a sad and bluesy feel that seems just right.

Perhaps a slight reworking of the words could make it even more relevant to the 30-year-old story that David Letterman, Rick Santorum and others refuse to stop talking about – how the Romney family dog rode in a crate on the car roof to a family vacation, with a stop to hose him down after he soiled himself.

Here are the real lyrics of the Pink Floyd song, which already features haunting, dog-like howls:

I was in the kitchen,
Seamus, that’s the dog, was outside.
Well, I was in the kitchen,
Seamus, my old hound, was outside.
Well, you know the sun was sinkin’ slowly,
But my old hound dog sat right down and cried

Here are some suggested new ones (and yes, they are for sale), just in case Pink Floyd has any interest in redoing the song:

My dog was on the car roof
I was nice and comfy inside
Seamus, he didn’t mind it
A 12-hour trip, bonafide
Now, you know, I want to run the country
I hope that you don’t mind a bumpy ride

In a new campaign ad, Newt Gingrich has seized upon opponent Mitt Romney’s 25-year-old doggie debacle — the boneheaded transporting of his Irish setter Seamus on the roof of his car.

The web ad released yesterday by the Gingrich campaign revives the story of a Romney family road trip during which Romney put a crate holding his dog on the roof of his station wagon for a 12-hour drive from Boston to Ontario, according to ABC News.

It’s the same story — and a true one — that came up during Romney’s  2008 White House bid. Four years later, it infuriates animal lovers no less. At a campaign event in South Carolina last week, a protester with a “Dogs Against Romney” sign greeted Romney supporters while standing next to a car with a stuffed animal dog strapped to the roof.

Romney has continued to defend his actions: “This is a completely air-tight kennel, mounted on the top of our car,” he said in a Fox News interview, part of which is used in Gingrich’s ad. “He was in a kennel at home a great deal of time as well. It was where he was comfortable.”

The Gingrich video, which includes six clips of other “Romney gaffes,” then shows white words flashing across a black screen: “Imagine what Obama would do with a candidate like that.”

Gingrich had a vaguely dog-related gaffe of his own a few years back — one which led to him receiving a VIP membership in a Dallas strip club.

Here’s the short version (a longer one is here):

In 2009, Dawn Rizos, the operator of The Lodge, a gentlemen’s club that does business under the name DCG, Inc., was informed she’d been selected to receive an “Entrepeneur of the Year” award from Gingrich’s organization, American Solutions.

Gingrich invited Rizos to a private dinner in Washington to receive the award, provided she made the requested $5,000 donation, which she did.

The week before the event, though, American Solutions realized they had accidentally bestowed the award on a strip club, and rescinded the invitation. The organization refunded the $5,000 to Rizos, who donated it to an animal rescue organization — specifically to create a shelter for pit bulls, which was dubbed “Newt’s Nook.”

The next year, Rizos got another letter, under Gingrich’s signature, containing a membership card to American Solutions and requesting a donation. This time around, in light of the previous snub, Rizos didn’t take him up on the offer.

But she did send him a Lodge VIP card, entitling him to preferred seating, free auto detailing, steak and lobster dinners and access to the the club’s “intimate members-only lounge.”

We rarely meet a New Yorker cover we don’t like (New Yorkers themselves; that’s another story) — and we especially like this one of little Bo in the White House front yard.

It’s by author and illustrator Bob Staake, who has also put together a new book on the family’s quest for a dog, ”The First Pup: The Unofficial Story Of How Sasha and Malia’s Dad Got the Presidency — And How They Got a Dog.” Somewhat surprisingly, Media Bistro reports, it hasn’t found a publisher yet.

On the New Yorker‘s book blog, Staake explained how he wrote his book as the First Family debated breeds and prepared for their new puppy, the now famous Portuguese water dog Bo. He also explains the thinking behind the New Yorker cover.

“You put any dog on the cover and everyone goes crazy,” Staake wrote. “This cover is good at being cute, but it also works as a metaphor for Obama. The best New Yorker covers are the ones where the reader looks and brings their own interpretation, which brings the image to a new dimension.”

This has got to be some kind of record — the day after the dog arrived at the White House, the first “Bo book” is already on the market.

“Bo, America’s Commander in Leash,” published by Mascot Books in Herndon, Va., is the first children’s book “starring the most famous dog in the world,” according to the publisher’s website.

“Join Bo on an exciting adventure as he learns all about the White House and experiences the traditions that make it such a special place. Bo’s adventures include time-honored White House traditions, including the Easter egg roll, Fourth of July fireworks on the National Mall, the pardoning of the Thanksgiving turkey, and all the festivities associated with holiday time at the White House.”

In other words, it’s a book about the White House into which Bo is being quickly inserted in hopes of capitalizing on the bad case of Bo fever we all seem to have.

Mascot is small independent publisher in Herndon, Va., that specializes in producing titles based on university and school mascots. The book is written from Bo’s point of view. Here’s an excerpt:

One day I was feeling a little mischevious and decided to swipe the Presidential letter opener from the President’s desk. Always a good sport, President Obama played along with my antics and chased me around the room, calling “Give me that back, Bo!” I was afraid that I might end up in the Presidential doghouse after this stunt.