@RyanNewYork
He sits on the Broad of Directors of The Ali Forney Center, where he is the founding producer of their annual Broadway Beauty Pageant fundraiser. He's also on the Board of Directors of The Deconstructive Theatre Project and the Board of Advisers of the startup TV Dinner.
He's also a director/producer, who lives in Brooklyn, NY and created the musical White Noise. Ryan writes about politics for The Huffington Post & The Hill. He has been a guest editor for Queerty and is the host of the podcast Gay History: Uncut.
Here Ryan blogs about politics, film, TV, history, religion, science, books, theater, digital media, LGBT issues, Bushwick & Williamsburg, New York City, and anything else he's interested in at the moment. Oh, and he'll probably talk a lot about himself.
This is a personal blog. Any opinions expressed here and on my Twitter represent my own and not those of my employer or clients.
Tagg Romney has only met people who desperately, desperately want to be President at all cost.
I just voted for President Barack Obama by absentee ballot in New York City. I was even more proud to vote for Obama’s reelection than in 2008, since now he’s had the chance to prove he’s a great president.
Here are my top 5 reasons for voting for Obama, there are many, so it wasn’t easy just picking 5.
- Obama saved the American economy from a certain depression. From the stimulus to the auto bailout, his policies created millions of jobs and set us on the road to fiscal sanity.
- Obama is the first president to embrace gay Americans as full citizens. Just two of his many, many accomplishments for the LGBT community,Obama repealed Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell to let all of American heros serve openly and has fully endorsed marriage equality.
- Obama ended the war in Iraq and will soon end the war in Afghanistan. Obama’s opposition to the war in Iraq was one of the reasons I supported him in the 2008 primaries and seeing this misguided war finally ended was another promise kept.
- Obama passed comprehensive health care reform against nearly impossible policial odds. Obamacare has already helped cover 7 million young Americans and tens of millions more will get access to insurance for the first time when it’s fully implemented.
- Obama has executed a remarkably pragmatic foreign policy that has restored America in the eyes of the world. The President is beloved around the world and has made it possible for American students to backpack in Europe without Canadian flag patches. Plus, he got Osama Bin Laden and has decimated many terrorist groups without starting a single war.
There are so many more reasons! Hell, the existence of The Supreme Court is reason enough for any thinking person to vote for Obama.
Please make sure you vote too. All the info you need here. Even if you live in a “blue state,” your contribution to the popular vote will make sure Obama beats Romney decisively. Yes, every single vote matters and we’re all counting on you.
My good friends Chase Whiteside and Erick Stoll at New Left Media have released an amazing new video, interviewing folks at Ohio Romney rally.
NEW VIDEO! - OHIO ROMNEY RALLY - Interviews with Supporters
Election observers believe that Ohio is the state most likely to decide who becomes our next President. These interviews were conducted with Ohio voters at a recent Romney rally in Defiance, OH.
Produced and edited by Chase Whiteside (interviewer) & Erick Stoll.
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Mitt Romney Debates Himself.
Feel bad for whoever had to edit this, so much footage of Mitt Romney on every side of every issue.
Above is the entire 1994 Senate debate between Ted Kennedy and Mitt Romney.
As you watch Romney debate tonight, try to find any similarities at all between ‘94 Romney and ‘12 Romney. My guess is you won’t have much luck.
Yes, it is.
A wonderfully edited, satirical Romney ad by Hugh Atkin, that shows Mitt at his most authentic.
Cory Booker’s bizarre take on Bain Capital on Sunday’s Meet The Press has been talked about lots over the last 48 hours. We now know that Cory took over $500,000 from the financial services industry during his campaign, including at least $40,000 from Bain partners. Not small change for a Newark mayor’s race.
My colleague Evan Moody performed sentiment analysis on Twitter to see what users of the social network thought about Booker’s statements. The results show that overwhelmingly, Twitter users thought Cory was wrong on Bain and support the President’s view that it’s fair game during the campaign. The big red spike is bad news.
I clearly agree with the vast majority of Twitter users and hope Mr. Booker comes around.
Mitt Romney being Mitt Romney.
Mitt Romney returned from a three-week spring break in 1965 to resume his studies as a high school senior at the prestigious Cranbrook School. Back on the handsome campus, studded with Tudor brick buildings and manicured fields, he spotted something he thought did not belong at a school where the boys wore ties and carried briefcases. John Lauber, a soft-spoken new student one year behind Romney, was perpetually teased for his nonconformity and presumed homosexuality. Now he was walking around the all-boys school with bleached-blond hair that draped over one eye, and Romney wasn’t having it.
“He can’t look like that. That’s wrong. Just look at him!” an incensed Romney told Matthew Friedemann, his close friend in the Stevens Hall dorm, according to Friedemann’s recollection. Mitt, the teenaged son of Michigan Gov. George Romney, kept complaining about Lauber’s look, Friedemann recalled.
A few days later, Friedemann entered Stevens Hall off the school’s collegiate quad to find Romney marching out of his own room ahead of a prep school posse shouting about their plan to cut Lauber’s hair. Friedemann followed them to a nearby room where they came upon Lauber, tackled him and pinned him to the ground. As Lauber, his eyes filling with tears, screamed for help, Romney repeatedly clipped his hair with a pair of scissors.
The incident was recalled similarly by five students, who gave their accounts independently of one another. Four of them — Friedemann, now a dentist; Phillip Maxwell, a lawyer; Thomas Buford, a retired prosecutor; and David Seed, a retired principal — spoke on the record. Another former student who witnessed the incident asked not to be named. The men have differing political affiliations, although they mostly lean Democratic. Buford volunteered for Barack Obama’s campaign in 2008. Seed, a registered independent, has served as a Republican county chairman in Michigan. All of them said that politics in no way colored their recollections.
“It happened very quickly, and to this day it troubles me,” said Buford, the school’s wrestling champion, who said he joined Romney in restraining Lauber. Buford subsequently apologized to Lauber, who was “terrified,” he said. “What a senseless, stupid, idiotic thing to do.”
“It was a hack job,” recalled Maxwell, a childhood friend of Romney who was in the dorm room when the incident occurred. “It was vicious.”
