Posted on 04/20/2005 9:18:27 AM PDT by ArmyBratproud
The woman whose testimony now threatens to derail John Bolton's nomination as U.N. ambassador claims he was "genuinely behaving like a madman" during a 1994 trip to Moscow.
But she's a self-described "liberal Democrat" who helped organize the Dallas chapter of "Mothers Opposing Bush" during last year's presidential campaign.
Story Continues Below
Melody Townsel first offered her bizarre allegation to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on April 8, in a letter claiming that during a trip ten years ago to Kyrgyzstan, Bolton chased her through the halls of a her hotel throwing objects and screaming threats.
In her unlikely account Ms. Townsel said the harassment was not sexual.
Still, her uncorroborated story appears to have prompted at least one key Republican on the committee to withdraw his support for Bolton, forcing a delay in the vote.
"I don't feel comfortable voting today," Ohio Republican George Voinovich told the committee on Tuesday. "I think we ought to get the information [and] get a chance to have [the allegations] rebutted," he added.
Ms. Townsel was a subcontractor for the U.S. Agency for International Development at the time she and Bolton worked together.
"For nearly two weeks, while I awaited fresh direction from my company and from USAID, John Bolton hounded me in such an appalling way that I eventually retreated to my hotel room and stayed there," Townsel claimed, in quotes first reported by the New York Sun on Monday.
"Mr. Bolton, of course, then routinely visited me there to pound on the door and shout threats," she continued.
The paper also uncovered the Bolton accuser's anti-Bush credentials.
Townsel's allegations which were touted by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's ranking Democrat, Joe Biden, who told his colleagues on Tuesday that the Bolton accuser was willing to sign a sworn affidavit to back her story.
Biden read from Townsel's letter:
"When I was dispatching a letter to AID, my hell began. Mr. Bolton proceeded to chase me through the halls of a Russian hotel, throwing things at me, shoving threatening letters under my door, and genuinely behaving like a madman."
But in an interview with the Sun, Townsel admitted that she has no witnesses to back her claims. "There were people aware of the harassment, but they are not willing to come forward because they have existing business with the government," she said.
Townsel also admitted she was a staunch Bush basher, explaining, "There is no question that I have been a vocal and outspoken critic of this administration and I am a very liberal Democrat."
Asked why she didn't go public with her complaint in 2001, when Bolton's nomination for undersecretary of state was being considered by the same committee, Townsel said that at the time she had retreated from politics and was raising young children.
She better hope that Bolton gets the job, because she has given no proof of her allegations. And if she affects Bolton's career path and financial well being, he could sic the legal dogs on her.
Biden probably put her up to it...so he should be nervous too.
I can't wait for that liberal punk Biden to run for Pres. He'll get ripped and exposed harder than Kerry.
(yawn) standard, generic, liberal tactic and class of individual -- liar, fraud, loser, radical activist, liberal. (yawn again)....but now the MSM has something to do with their complicit selves...
I am from Ohio and can not believe there are not more serious charges against Voinovich. Let's hear it.
No; he did himself in years ago in the Prez Sweepstakes by lying about plagiarizing a paper while at Syracuse.
He isn't a Liberal. He is a lpos.
OK, not to make light of this allegation, but...
Some of these hysterical liberal women are real drama queens, respond with such hyperbole, it's really hard to take them seriously about abuse, threats, etc.
Remember the one Harvard professor who became physically ill when Larry Summers was presenting research data?
I mean, all they have to do is feel uncomfortable, and that's abuse.
But she's a self-described "liberal Democrat" who helped organize the Dallas chapter of "Mothers Opposing Bush" during last year's presidential campaign...
Rush discussing the Bolton situation now...
Please FReepmail me if you want on or off my ‘miscellaneous’ ping list.
The only reason the vote is being held up is so the democrats can dig up the next accuser.
"And as you know, that means I would lie, cheat and steal to make this administration look bad. I tell you, I would make up the most outrageous story just to hurt them"
I hope the GOP oppo researchers get to work on her. If the RATs are allowed to use RAT hacks to drag GOP nominees thru the mud, then it only seems fair that the hacks' backgrounds become fair game.
Has anyone looked at this url, can't get thru.
http://www.townsel-communications.com/
not sure if this is the correct person.
This is starting to make about as much sense as Anita Hill's "testimony."
Melody Townsel is a LUNATIC!
Melody Townsel:
Quote:
01/25/05 A Day in the Life in North Oak Cliff
I awake to find several urgent e-mails from neighbors alerting me to three separate, serious criminal incidents that occurred in the last couple of days here in North Oak Cliff. I read and quickly dispatch them to neighbors who share my concerns about our rising crime rate, then hop into the car to take my 5 year old to school. I back out of my driveway onto our street, Winnetka Avenue, the street where Oscar Sanchez was kidnapped last week.
I dodge three major potholes on the way to I-35, wait briefly at a malfunctioning red light, then head south to the private school in DeSoto where we enrolled at great financial sacrifice out of concerns about the quality of education on offer at our local DISD elementary. Along our last leg to school, we drive past an apartment complex at Old Hickory and Wheatland Road, the scene of the first quadruple murder of 2005.
My daughter safely in the classroom, I return to Oak Cliff and stop for coffee in the Bishop Arts District, meeting up with friends who relate details about yet another carjacking, this time about 500 yards around the corner from where we live. Coffee in hand, I head back to my office in my restored, 95-year-old home, driving past a mountain of trash bags laying in the street along the curbside of an empty house - bags the City agreed to collect as a "courtesy" more than three weeks ago.
Settling in, I call code compliance for a status update on our block's recent code complaints against my next-door neighbor's conversion of a single-family, historic home into a raucous apartment building. I learn that the officer who initially inspected the premises works for the wrong division of code enforcement - and, even though he's seen firsthand the two kitchens and apartment doors they've installed, the proper code department can't act on his inspection unless it, too, sees the violations firsthand. Not surprisingly, my neighbors refuse to cooperate. This, apparently, takes me back to square one - helping ensure that the overcrowding, 24/7 traffic, holiday gunfire and chest-thumping rap is here to stay.
On my lunch hour, I drop by a local merchant's shop to leave an item for repair and have a friendly mug of tea. As we sip, she tells me that she's taken to clutching a can of tear gas as she leaves her shop because the neighborhood is just too creepy at night these days. Taking her cue, I make a mental note to procure some mace for the car.
My daughter climbs into the car after school, asking to go to Kidd Springs Park to see the ducks. It's a beautiful day - sunny and bright - but we head home instead. (On our last visit to the park, we found used needles and condoms laying by the small kiddie playground, then witnessed what appeared to be a cash-for-drugs exchange in the cul de sac in front of the community center.)
Homework done, I take my kid to ballet - this time, two blocks from the Sanchez kidnapping site. I exchange greetings with her ballet teacher, who tells me that she's getting increasingly scared about keeping her studio open late into the evening - and reports two apparently related armed carjacking incidents that occurred two streets over in the other direction over the last week. As she moves to the barre, she tells me she's thinking of shifting some of her late-hour students to Sunday afternoon because her husband fears her leaving her studio after dark.
After ballet, I realize that I need gas before tomorrow's drive to school -- but it's after dark and I have my daughter with me in the car. Standing at the pump with keys in hand and my child in her booster seat leaves me too vulnerable, I calculate, so I elect to leave my home early tomorrow to fill up in broad daylight. Driving by the gas station, I'm again tempted to fill up and be done with it. While I wait to turn left into the gas station, four young men dripping gold chains climb out of a car at the closest pump, blaring obscenity-laden music so loud I can't hear my own radio and hassling a lone man at another pump. I decide my first instincts were correct and, again, point the car toward home.
Daughter asleep in bed and dishes done, I turn on the nightly news. As I settle into my chair, I hear a couple of shots go off a block or two away. I call 911, exactly as my neighbors and I did repeatedly to no effect on New Year's Eve when tenants of the newly minted apartments next door shot into the air for hours on end.
I return to my chair just in time to catch the latest punches being thrown in the WWF wrestling match the strong mayor proposal has become. Both sides posture, both sides dig in their heels, both sides predict gloom and doom if the other guys win.
As I turn off the set and head for bed, I wonder for the thousandth time how much worse it has to get before the shouting stops and we see real progress on the problems facing us here in North Oak Cliff. Just how many car jackings, burglaries, rapes or shootings will we endure before either side actually does something that results in measurable change?
How many potholes will I have to plunge into before the roads get fixed? How many fresh multiple-homicide sites will we drive past? How low will DISD standards eventually sink before changes are made that would allow us to visit local school campuses without walking through metal detectors or finding teacher misspellings on the board?
How much trash has to pile up before the city actually does make a real-time courtesy collection? How long before the two sides of code compliance can communicate to address basic zoning and code violations? How much time has to pass before I can again take my daughter to our public park without witnessing a drug deal or finding used hypodermics? When will my friends and I again be able to leave our homes and businesses after dark without fear?
As my head hits the pillow, I realize with crystal clarity that our city officials are too busy burning their political capital over their various positions on the Blackwood proposal to attend to actual city business here south of the Trinity. Drifting to sleep, I'm certain that I'm in for a lot more days like today.
******
Finnish Santa escorts woman home after overseas injury
By Veronica Puente Staff Writer of The Dallas Morning News
Published December 25, 1994
Without the personal escort of "Santa" himself, Melody Townsel may never have made it to her parents' DeSoto home for Christmas.
He may not have looked exactly like Santa. But take away the beard, subtract a few years and add a Finnish accent, he's Santa all right - Santapakka, that is. Juha Santapakka.
The 27-year-old Finnish nurse accompanied Ms. Townsel home after she broke her left leg in three places while working in Kazakhstan, formerly part of the Soviet Union.
A doctor ordered Ms. Townsel to return to the United States to obtain adequate medical attention. Mr. Santapakka was hired to accompany Ms. Townsel and administer medication to her following an operation to install a metal rod and four screws in her leg. He works for Emergency Medical Assistance Group Ltd., an independent doctors and nursing group in Helsinki, Finland.
Ms. Townsel and Mr. Santapakka arrived at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport late Friday following a 14-hour flight.
"There's no good medical care in Kazakhstan," Ms. Townsel, 31, said Saturday. "They called me on Thursday and told me Santapakka was taking me home for Christmas. I just started laughing - I was going home on Santa's pack, how appropriate."
Mr. Santapakka, who lives in Espoon, Finland, visited New York and California in 1991, so he is not a stranger to America. His only complaint was that the plane trip was too long.
"It's very tiring, but I think everything went well," he said. "It's my first trip to Dallas. I came because she (Ms. Townsel) needs help, good medicine and good care."
With his delivery completed, Mr. Santapakka was scheduled to take a return flight to Finland late Saturday to spend Christmas Day with his family.
Ms. Townsel said the broken leg was a painful blessing. She works for Burson-Marsteller, a New York-based public relations firm involved in public education of privatization in Kazakhstan. Had it not been for the accident, she would not have made it home for Christmas.
"I thought everybody was going to be at home for Christmas except me, and now I'm here," she said with a smile. "I couldn't have made it on the flight on my own. Santa's the best."
Her mother, Carol Townsel, said she has mixed feelings about the circumstances of the surprise visit and plans to take over Mr. Santapakka's job as nurse after he departs.
"I'm glad she's here for Christmas," said Mrs. Townsel, "but not under these circumstances."
But for now, Mr. Santapakka said he's still in charge and warned his patient to keep her leg up.
Wonder why she didn't save the letters shoved under her door? Any sane person would have, so I doubt her story.
I think this might actually be a good idea ... make Townsel swear to her bizzare story in an affidavit and I bet it changes substantially. And, after rebuttal I'll bet the story is shown to be fraudulent. I agree with Voinovich in the sense that I view with suspicion anything Biden is involved with and would like nothing better than to expose him for the liar that he is. IMO a delay in the vote is worth it.
My favorite example of the effective dismantling of a hack witness was something I observed in Prairie du Chien Wisconsin nearly 20 years ago. A fellow was applying for the required environmental permits to set up an offloading facility where barge cargo on the Mississippi River at Prairie du Chien could be put on rail cars for distribution across Wisconsin. It involved getting a permit to place rip-rap (coarse stone) along the shoreline to prevent erosion and taking precautions that coal and other commodities being offloaded would not pollute the river. A local environmental activist who was known up and down the river as the "Clam Lady" who professed expertise in clams and mussels that inhabited the river bottom was a witness at the hearing run by the Department of Natural Resources. When she walked up to the witness stand she carried an enormous pickle jar full of river water, sediment and the specific type of rare mussel that she claimed would be harmed if and when the permit were granted. You started to get the idea she as a fraud and nut case from the first words out of her mouth.. The attorney for the applicant cross examined her with great skill. When he started to examine her credentials as an environmental and biological expert he did it ever so slowly. It went something like this:
Attorney: And where did you get your Ph.D.?
Witness: I don't have a Ph.D.
Attorney: Well then - where did you get your Master's degree?
Witness: I don't have a master's degree.
Attorney: Well then, where did you get your bachelor's degree?
Witness:....I don't have a bachelor's degree.
It went on and on and the Administrative Hearing Officer finally stepped in after the witness had been skewered and seared to the point where I couldn't even look as she left the witness stand. Utter destruction. Hiroshima and Nagasaki magnitude impeachment of a witness!
This is exactly what needs to happen here. Biden is an idiot - but even he knows that an Affidavit is meaningless - and that testimony before the committee, under oath and the threat of penalties for perjury - which Bolton testified under - is necessary. And the Republicans better have the testicular fortitude to subpoena her over the objections of the 8 Democratic members of the committee.
One of the major problems with Republicans is that they do not go all the way to the mat - they typically do not force votes. I say - get these bastards on the record. Get Biden, Dodd, et. al, to vote against brining this witness before the committee while using her unverified, uncorroborated information as a justification for stopping Bolton. Put it on the record. One of the best things about the Bork confirmation was the moment when he appeared at the White House press room, at a point when it become clear he wasn't going to get the votes on the floor for confirmation. The press expected hem to bow out and he simply said - give me a vote - force these Senators to go on the record. he got it, he failed to gain confirmation - but we had then names of those who betrayed his nomination.
Halloween candy changes over years
By Kenyon, Laura
Published: Thursday, October 28, 2004
snip
"Despite what you might think, the majority of candy corn is consumed by adults who learned to love candy corn when they were kids," says Melody Townsel, spokesperson for Brach's Confections, Inc., in a press release.
******
Candy, classic Halloween treats
By Heather Bryant
Published: Friday, October 29, 2004
Melody Townsel, spokesperson for Brach's, said this year is the company's 100th anniversary, and it is the nation's No. 1 maker of candy corn. She said Brach's sold 2 billion kernels of candy corn this Halloween holiday.
"Candy corn is such a nostalgic candy, and anything that brings back memories to a better, simpler time is popular," she said. "This is a banner sales year and our candy corn sales have gone up 22 percent."
She said candy corn was first introduced in the 1800s, and at that time it was considered a novelty. She said the reason candy corn is still a classic Halloween candy is because of its colors and the feelings it evokes.
"The colors are harvest colors and the connotation of colors provides a harvest feel," she said. "The very people who say they don't like (candy corn), our studies show they really do eat it."
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