A Time for Change

She is among the most hateful and partisan of the washed up Republicans left on the hill and, if you remember the first cast of Saturday Night Live, she sounds just like Roseanne Rosanna Danna.  See this blog post from “Eye on Miami”  (a/k/a one of her terrorized constituents) to see just how nuts she is:

I like to learn lessons from my politicians. After all, they are bright(?) people that we want to emulate. Right? They represent us and are “Our Face” to the rest of the world. Well, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen said, in a documentary video clip: “I welcome the opportunity of having anyone assassinate Fidel Castro and ANY OTHER LEADER WHO IS OPPRESSING THE PEOPLE.”

And there was an interview that she had with Wolf Blitzer from CNN when she drooled over the virtues of Donald Rumsfeld’s handling of the war while the war was tanking big time, with more and more Americans killed daily due to Rumsfeld’s inept handling of it.

BLITZER: Congresswoman Ros-Lehtinen. What do you think about what John Boehner just said? And I’ll repeat that quote: “I think Donald Rumsfeld is the best thing that has happened to the Pentagon in 25 years.” You agree with him? 

REP. ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN (R), FLORIDA: Well, I think it’s a shame to take this complex issue of winning the international war on terror and putting it at the level of whether you like or not like Donald Rumsfeld, and whether you like or don’t like President Bush’s personalities and the statements that he’s made. We’ve got to win this battle in Iraq. It’s not just whether you’re for the war or against the war. It’s whether you want to win or are you going to lose.

BLITZER: But do you have confidence, Congresswoman, do you have confidence in Donald Rumsfeld? 

ROS-LEHTINEN: I do. And I think that we need to do everything we can to support the troops and be victorious in Iraq. If we’re not, we’re going to be looking at a radical Islamic jihadist entity taking over the entire Middle East. Do we want to make sure that we have the sacrifice to prop up a democracy, to train the Iraqis, to stop the sectarian violence and to make sure that we get the job done? 

The only policy that we could have is one of victory. My stepson served in Iraq. My daughter-in-law served there. We know that it’s tough. But it’s necessary and it’s just. 

I thought it was “Mission accomplished” already? Anyway, I digress. Today our soon to be President was trying to call her (ugh, I hope not to ask her to actually do anything), but she actually hung up on him! Two times. CNN reports the incident as follows:

Florida Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen was told by an aide that Obama wanted to speak with her. According to a statement released by her office, the Republican congresswoman cut off the caller, telling him she thought “this is a joke from one of the South Florida radio stations known for these pranks.” She then hung up.

Obama’s future White House chief of staff, Rahm Emmanuel – a fellow congressman – then called her to let her know she’d actually been speaking with the future commander-in-chief. Ros-Lehtinen, convinced the call was another hoax, hung up on him, too.

Finally, an aide told Ros-Lehtinen she had an urgent call from Chairman Howard Berman, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee. Still suspicious, Ros-Lehtinen urged the California Democrat to recount a story only both of them would know.

Berman passed the test — and told her she had, in fact, hung up on President-elect Obama.

When an amused Obama called again, Ros-Lehtinen he was either “very gracious” to reach across the aisle by contacting her, or “had run out of folks to call, if you are truly calling me.” Otherwise, she said, Saturday Night Live “could use a good Obama impersonator like you.” The Obama transition team declined comment on the incident.

On Tuesday, Secretary of State nominee Hillary Clinton also spoke with Ros-Lehtinen by phone, relatively uneventfully.

Sooooo having learned from the Sarah Palin prank phone call, Roseanne, I mean Congresswoman Roseanna Danna, I mean Ros-Lehtinen, was so paranoid that she hung up on the acting  Commander in Chief (because Bush is more interested in ruminating about his legacy and reinventing history so that he can be in denial about his failures as a President than in trying to run the country).    Oh, what a fine group of people they have in the Republican party!

When she realized that she had hung up on Barack Obama twice, then she put out a half-baked press release misspelling Obama’s name. Brain trust she is not.  Maybe someone  could tell me why being vacuous is so admired in that party.

(A clip of Gilda Radner playing Roseanne Roseanna Danna can be seen below.  Shut your eyes and it will be just like listening to the crazy Congresswoman from Miami)