Who We Are

Frequently Asked Question: ”Can I be a Puma if I’m a Republican?”

Answer: Who you vote for or how you like to think of yourself politically is up to you — this really IS a free country. I can’t say that a person who is registered as a Republican can’t be a Puma. Of course they can,

BUT — does it make any sense?

If you are a Republican who supports the Constitution and rejects the concept of classes of citizens; AND (not or) embraces the truth that the state has ABSOLUTELY ZERO legitimate stake in when, where, and how American citizens choose to bear or beget children (Supreme Court: Griswold, 1973); AND (not or) is fundamentally opposed to the tenets and belief systems of ANY religion being established in state or federal law or policy (including all flavors of Christianity),

then, hell yeah — you’re a Puma.

• You think there should be NO path to citizenship for illegal immigrants now in the country? Fair enough. That’s a valid, debatable position– expect to be disagreed with and to listen to opposing points of view that are equally valid.
• You think we are over-taxed and under-served by our government? Super. Me too — what do we DO about that is a legitimate, important debate for citizens to have with each other in a civil manner.
• You think the leadership of the Democratic party is lazy at best and corrupt at worst? Cool — so do we. But we also know that the Republican leadership is at least as bad.

So, it’s not so important what the letter is on your voter registration card. What really matters is how you respond to the above.

From Our Mission page: Our mission is to hold our elected officials accountable to the will of the voters, and to demand unbiased coverage from the media of all candidates, regardless of their gender.

Last year the Democratic Party leadership led us astray.

• Ignoring the Popular Vote in the Primaries
• Disenfranchising tens of millions of Democrats in Florida and Michigan
• Standing by idly as sexist attacks hobbled an accomplished and historic candidate for President
• Dismissing whole states and voting blocs as “irrelevant” to an imaginary “new” coalition

 From our Year of the Puma 2009 page: Puma PAC is in this for the long haul. Our Action Teams are working non-stop in six major areas:

• Passing the Equal Rights Amendment after 86 years of struggle
• Monitoring the 111th Congress and advocating for legislation that supports our mission
• Documenting and Protesting sexism in the mainstream media AND educating the public about its widespread and long term effects
• Developing a national women’s rights curriculum for all American children
• Researching and investigating voter fraud and campaign finance violations during the 2008 election
• Protecting women’s lives by strengthening anti-femicide laws and drawing attention to the crisis of woman-lynching in the United States

Our mission and goals haven’t changed much since Day One, June 3d 2008. Circumstances have changed; events have moved us and forced us to rethink and regroup on particular issues. Proposition Hate in California wasn’t really on our radar last summer, but now it is.  For all those wondering What We Stand For and Why, try this:

• Constitutional issues, like equal rights and individual freedoms, are not left or right issues.
• Each political party tries to own some subset of issues and use them as an arsenal to pull people to their side and attack the other side.
• You may believe the left is actually committed to lesbian rights, reproductive freedom, and peace. We don’t.
• And we KNOW the right is not committed to the above.
• Who cares what either of the parties claim to stand for anymore? It’s all utter hogwash. I’m interested in what individual people think about issues; about talking to and listening to how individual people are reacting to politics.
• Why always this push for ideology? How would ideology benefit us?
• Does anyone actually believe that someone is keeping score? That life is a macro-debate of issues and that one ideology will eventually emerge as the undisputed winner? That we somehow “owe it” to some amorphous set of values and beliefs to be “true” to them? To fight for the side of right?
• A very small set of men are competing with each other every hour of every day for dominance. ideology is nothing more than the color of the uniforms on the people fighting in each army.

Also, anyone who appears to really truly BELIEVE the talking points of either side is either

1. a cynical liar — a lieutenant whose job is to fire up the troops.
2. not too bright. The first should be ignored and disdained.

The second should be ignored and/or reasoned with to see if they can come to the light.

Also, I’m not so sure there are “major differences in the core values of those who would select one party over the other as the best reflections and hope to have those values reflected in policy,” as some say. Take out the homophobes and the sexists, as we (sometimes imperfectly) do, and I think we’re left with a (very) big group of people who are trying to sort out reality from talking points and ideology. And there are PRECIOUS little resources for people like us to do that. Where are we going to look? Fox News?? MSNBC?? the Blogger BOIZ?? So we look on the internet and stumble here or other places that are attempting to criticize and analyze politics and society as it is practiced by the homophobic, sexist, corrupt, corporatist, war-profiteering, insincere, lying jackasses who rule and the So Called Free Press that props them up.

• What DO we do about illegal immigration?
• The 40+ million uninsured Americans?
• Unjust, imperialist wars?
• Presidents who trample on the Constitution?
• A Congress bought and paid for by corporations?
• Maniac islamicists who terrorize women and anyone who gets in their way?
• A culture so inherently sexist that Hillary Clinton was not even allowed to run for President, never mind win?

The left AND the right have ready answers to all of the above. Pumas, and people like us who don’t yet know they are Pumas, do not. Because we’re honest and able to address complicated questions with complicated answers and ideas. And, for the record:

The FINAL results of the 2008 Democratic Primaries and Caucuses:

Hillary R. Clinton: 17,857,446 votes (48.04%)

Barack H. Obama: 17,584,649 (47.31%)

Hillary won the Democratic Primaries. And she would have knocked the socks of McCain in the general.

And she would have been a truly great president.

p.s., via mick, the number of voters not registered with either of the two major parties is at its highest level in 70 years.

If you’re a Puma too, JOIN US Today!