A Different Drummer
An on-line journal of articles and musings forbidden by the mainstream media.
Saturday, February 18, 2012
Ten-Year-Old Gives Birth in Puebla, Mexico, the Home of 90 Percent of New York City’s Mexicans
I searched in vain for a follow-up to this story, to learn if the Puebla state Attorney General's Office had determined if the girl had been raped which, given that this is Mexico we’re talking about, is highly likely.
You know what they say: In Mexico today; in New York, California, Texas, and Arizona tomorrow. And Illinois, New Jersey, Utah, Florida…
10-year-old gives birth to baby boy Christina Boyle November 10, 2011 Daily News
A 10-year-old Mexican girl has given birth to a baby boy after a 31-week pregnancy, according to reports.
The premature infant, which weighed 3.3 pounds, was born by Caesarian section at the Women’s Hospital in the city of Puebla and is in the intensive care unit recovering from pneumonia.
The young mother, who is from the nearby San Francisco Totimehuacan community, has returned home after the procedure but visits the baby every day to breastfeed, officials said.
The Puebla state Attorney General's Office is now investigating whether the girl could have been raped and who the father is, the hospital’s director Rogelio Gonzalez said, according to UpFrontNewswire.
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Sex, Drugs, and Justice: The Richard Baumgartner Story The Fire Set by Knoxville Horror Jurist is Consuming Knox County Criminal Justice Agencies By David in TN and Nicholas Stix
[See previously: The Knoxville Horror: Crime, Race, the Media and “Anti-Racism.”
The redacted TBI report on Richard Baumgartner released by Special Judge Jon Kerry Blackwood.
KNS: Join staff writer Jamie Satterfield from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. on Monday for a moderated chat on knoxnews.com regarding this story. She covers courts for the News Sentinel and was first to report the TBI probe of Baumgartner. She'll try to answer any questions on topic that you may have.]
Here is the full, 6,200-word story of disgraced alcoholic, drug-addicted, ex-Judge Richard Baumgartner by Jamie Satterfield. In addition to using local small-time criminals to fetch him the painkillers to which he was addicted, and carrying on an affair with a prostitute/drug defendant/thief, Baumgartner was coercing court officers into surrendering to him for his personal use, pain medication they desperately needed for themselves or family members.
It turns out Baumgartner asked for the Christian-Newsom case. He wanted to preside over what Nicholas Stix dubbed the Knoxvillle Horror.
The Baumgartner Affair just keeps getting worse, the more you learn. Stix’ tag of “Judge Mischief” still is somewhat accurate, because he did want the case and picked Nashville as the jury pool twice.
By the way, comments for the Knoxville News Sentinel article have been disabled, with at least 95 posted comments sent down the memory hole by the KNS’ house censors. The censorship has pc KNS editor Jack McElroy’s fingerprints all over it.
Jamie Satterfield should finally get the Pulitzer Prize nomination that she should have gotten for her coverage of the Knoxville Horror case.
There was a time when it was possible to win a Pulitzer for a story on a racist black atrocity, but you had to find an irrelevant, non-racial hook to hang the award on. For instance, the Virgin Islands Daily News’ Melvin Claxton was given a Pulitzer in 1995 for a story on one of the bloodiest racially-motivated mass murders in U.S. history. That was the 1972 Fountain Valley Massacre, which was carried out in St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands, byIshmael Labeet and his gang of black supremacist terrorists, slaughtering eight people and wounding others, while screaming racist epithets. But the award was for writing on “gun control”! And Claxton cleansed everything racial from the story.
Not even cleansing the racial facts from a story about a black racial atrocity will do, nowadays. Blacks may not play the heavies, and in the Knoxville Horror, all of the heavies were black. But in Satterfield’s current report, the heavies are all heterosexual white men, especially the criminal mastermind of the piece.
The most important thing to keep in mind regarding Judge Baumgartner and the Knoxville Horror is that Special Judge Jon Kerry Blackwood has admitted that Baumgartner engaged in no misconduct in his running of the trials of the four suspects, yet Blackwood threw out all four convictions, and ordered retrials anyway.
And he has gone even beyond Baumgartner, in ruling that he will bus in a jury from out of the county (meaning one with blacker demographics than a Knox County panel would have) for the Lemaricus Davidson trial. In Davidson’s original trial, he insisted on being tried by a Knox County jury. That caused the trial to end not only with a guilty verdict, but with a death sentence. The chances of Davidson being sentenced to death this time ‘round are nil.
Having verdicts thrown out when judges or prosecutors engage in trial misconduct is understandable, but if their private lives also become fodder for appeals and reversals, then trials are a complete waste of taxpayers’ money and destructive of all justice. Defense attorneys will need merely to invade the privacy of various officers of the court (judges, prosecutors, even court officers), and either use their private peccadilloes to get convictions thrown out on appeal, or blackmail judges and prosecutors into giving them the results they seek.
Judge Blackwood’s decision was a blunder of historic proportions, in placing an impossible burden on the criminal justice system.
It ain’t over, ‘til the black felon wins.
* * *
Court of secrecy: How Richard Baumgartner, a drug-addicted judge, stayed on the bench despite warnings By Jamie Satterfield February 12, 2012 at 4 a.m. Knoxville News Sentinel
It was a Thursday night in January 2010 when the phone rang at the Andersonville home of then-Knox County Sheriff's Office courtroom security officer Meredith Driskell.
"He said, 'I'm coming to get those pills.' He told me to put them in a brown paper bag. I told him no ... but he told me I was going to," she recalled when contacted by the News Sentinel. "So, I put them in a brown paper bag and handed it to him, my husband, who hadn't been in the room. I said, ‘Don't look inside. The judge is coming to get this.' "
"The judge" was former Knox County Criminal Court Judge Richard Baumgartner. He wasn't officially her boss. Sheriff Jimmy "J.J." Jones was, but Baumgartner still held the power to have her fired. Driskell, a former state probation officer, worked in his courtroom. Jones was a regular visitor to the judge's chambers, and Driskell had missed work lately.
Her dad was in the hospital. She had undergone a hysterectomy - for which she had been prescribed the powerful prescription painkiller OxyContin. Baumgartner, she knew, was keenly attuned to the medications prescribed to those who worked in his court and, she said, made no bones about demanding a share.
It would have done no good, she said, to seek help from the Knox County Sheriff's Office. She had reached out to her supervisors a few years before when, she said, Baumgartner was coming to work smelling of alcohol and displaying a nasty temper. They refused to transfer her.
Since then, Knoxville's most horrific murder case – the torture slayings of a young Knox County couple - had been assigned to Baumgartner's court, and, Driskell said, the shield around Baumgartner had grown even stronger.
"Judge Baumgartner compromised the sheriff's department," she said. "Everybody was trying to contain him at that point. (Sheriff Jones) knew. He just wanted those criminals put away. Law enforcement, all they wanted was those people fried."
A News Sentinel investigation showed that, despite ongoing warning signs and sounded alarms about Baumgartner's sobriety, he continued for at least three years to draw some of Knox County's most high-profile cases and made legal decisions still lauded by many to this day. Now, hundreds of cases could be at risk, and Knox County's judicial system is in a state of turmoil as a result….
Monday, February 13, 2012
Whitney Houston: A Life in Pictures
 "Whitney Houston with Clive Davis Circa 1970" (Mistake by ABC News February 13, 2012; pic was more likely, circa 1980)
 As a high school senior, 1981
Singing with Jermaine Jackson during a rhearsal for the CBS soap opera As the World Turns in New York, July 25, 1984
 Whitney Houston album cover photo, 1985
By Nicholas Stix
Whitney Houston once had a golden set of pipes, but they left her years ago, and now she’s left us.
 At the 1986 Grammy Awards 1986
Creative talent is always scarce, and it breaks my heart to see people squander talent that could make the world a less ugly place, even when the talent belongs to a vicious racist like Whitney Houston.
 Liberty Weekend American Concert at Liberty State Park, Jersey City, N.J., Independence Day, 1986
Most readers below a certain age will have no idea what I’m talking about, and even many readers who are old enough to know will suffer from self-imposed ignorance.
 July 10, 1986
Of course, she got a pass from what she called “the white media” for that exhibition.
 March 1, 1987
And for everything else.
The album cover for Whitney, 1987
Almost 20 years ago, I saw Houston appear as a guest on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Now, as a late night talk show host, Jay Leno is as friendly and easy-going as they come, in stark contrast to David Letterman, who can sometimes make for a difficult interview—just ask Shirley MacLaine. But Houston was the worst interview guest I ever saw. She kept staring daggers at Leno, making it impossible for him to engage even in the smallest of small talk with her. (The Internet Movie Database incorrectly dates that appearance as May 22, 1992, which was the date of Johnny Carson’s on-air farewell.)
1988
She had the he [sic] perfect voice, and the perfect image: a gorgeous singer who had sex appeal but was never overtly sexual, who maintained perfect poise….
But by the end of her career, Houston became a stunning cautionary tale of the toll of drug use [sic]. Her album sales plummeted and the hits stopped coming; her once serene image was shattered by a wild demeanor and bizarre public appearances. She confessed to abusing cocaine, marijuana and pills, and her once pristine voice became raspy and hoarse, unable to hit the high notes as she had during her prime.
The Divas: Houston with Elizabeth Taylor, Liza Minelli, Michael Jackson, and an unidentified black man, possibly at a United Negro College Fund benefit, March 10, 1988
Early in Houston’s career, the New York Times wrote that she “possesses one of her generation's most powerful gospel-trained voices, but she eschews many of the churchier mannerisms of her forerunners. She uses ornamental gospel phrasing only sparingly, and instead of projecting an earthy, tearful vulnerability, communicates cool self-assurance and strength, building pop ballads to majestic, sustained peaks of intensity.” (Quoted in her Associated Press obit.)
 In Copenhagen, 1988
Her AP obit replayed the typical MSM sycophancy, even changing drug abuse to “drug use”:
 I'm Your Baby Tonight album cover photo, 1990
Album cover for All the Man I Need, 1990
Singing the National Anthem at the Super Bowl in 1991
She had only had a serene image, because the MSM covered for her. There was never anything serene about Whitney Houston.
"I'm Every Woman," 1992
She got a pass from the law, too.
The Bodyguard poster, 1992 (soft focus?)
On January 11, 2000, airport security guards found half an ounce (14 grams) of marijuana Houston and husband Bobby Brown’s luggage at an airport in Hawaii.
 "I Will Always Love You," 1992
 Exhale album cover, 1995
MSM reports later spun this incident in wildly divergent terms. One obit claimed, implausibly, that the couple were able to escape to their plane and fly away, before the authorities caught up with them. More credibly, in 2001, following one of several mistaken reports of Houston’s death, ABC News reported that Houston had been charged with possession of marijuana, but that the charges were later dismissed.
1996
She was in an abusive relationship and then marriage (1992-2007) with alleged singer Bobby Brown, himself a racist who was in the habit of acting out in public, baiting white policemen, and then committing charming acts such as urinating on the back seat of police cars.
The Preacher's Wife Original Soundtrack Album CD Cover, 1996
He was also capable of great charm and poignancy, when it served his purposes, such as when his wife was leaving him. The hated white media gave him airtime, during which he publicly pleaded with Houston to stay with him. I was very moved by Brown’s plea, but then, I’m a romantic fool from way back.
My Love is Your Love CD cover photo, 1998
Romance and urine aside, it has long been widely believed that it was Brown who got Houston into the drugs that would prove her undoing. But that story only goes so far, especially in the context of fans and MSM apologists who have an excuse for every one of her missteps. She did drugs because of Bobby Brown. She did drugs because her voice was shot on her 2009 comeback album, and the critics were mean to her. (And how did she lose her voice? From doing drugs!) She did drugs because of the pressure of being in the limelight, due to her movie being due in the summer. (But for someone like Houston, being in the limelight was normal; it was being out of the limelight that was unnatural. Well, that sets up yet another excuse: She stayed at home in her bedroom using drugs all of those years due to her loneliness. Yeah, that’s the ticket!)
The Greatest Hits album cover, 2000
For many years, prior to leaving Brown, Houston spread racist blood libels, whereby “the white media” were conspiring to destroy her marriage. And how do I know this? She would announce said charges in interviews with the white media! And the “racist” white media would never challenge her ugly, paranoid racism.
2000
Her racism endeared her all the more to most of her black fans. Typical of their delusional attitude towards Houston was Huffington Post reader Marie Brandon, who got 10 “fan” votes in the first 48 minutes after the HuffPo censors permitted her comment.
2001
She was beautiful, aged gracefully¬, and had come into her own. A celebrity who led a tough road but made us dance and feel good with her voice and song. God Bless you, Whitney, sleep well.
During Michael Jackson's 30th Anniversary Celebration Show at Madison Square Garden, September, 2001 (the caption where I found this said "September 11," but that was obviously wrong)
Love, Whitney album cover, 2001
However, not all blacks were fans of her. As vicious as Houston was towards whites, a certain part of the black community considered her insufficiently racist, and even booed her at times for it.
Just Whitney album cover, 2002
The more viciously she behaved towards the mainstream media, the more sycophantic the latter were to her. But then, the dynamic between her and the media was no different than that between the MSM and ordinary blacks: The more the media suck up to them, the more blacks accuse them of “racism.”
Sticking her tongue out at her husband during a November 25, 2002 court hearing
Back with husband Bobby Brown in 2003
Whitney Houston was a mediocre actress. She was ridiculous in The Bodyguard with Kevin Costner. Then again, that was a ridiculous movie. She was passable in Waiting to Exhale, a movie that was badly directed by Forrest Whittaker, which had some good (Gregory Hines, Loretta Devine, Wesley Snipes) and some atrocious performances (Lela Rochon). She was much better in The Preacher’s Wife, a blackface remake of The Bishop’s Wife.
 One Wish: The Holiday Album cover, 2003
Whitney Houston could have been a great singer. She was hampered by a generation of terrible songwriters and, even more, by her own character. With the exception of her grand performance of “I Will Always Love You,” in The Bodyguard, she belted out songs, as opposed to singing them.
 Houston "had to delay 24 hours a concert in Barcelona because of gastroenteritis," February 2005. I never heard of anyone getting gastroenteritis from a crack pipe.
Houston reportedly sold over 55 million albums in America alone, and made at least $100 million, and as much as $200 million. However, she only cut ten albums, including three movie soundtracks and one best hits collection, and 45 percent of her sales were from her first, eponymous 1985 album. She could easily have cut two albums per year, with all of them going platinum.
Same period in 2005, maybe even the same day, at about 41, but looking more like 60
Last month, Houston was rumored to be flat broke, with music industry friends supporting her. Over $100 million went up her nose.
 Bathroom of a crackhead: Houston's bathroom in 2006
Police have been barred from announcing a cause of death, but if reports that Houston was binging on drugs and alcohol in the last two days are true, she probably died of an overdose of the two, much the way Judy Garland did in 1969 at age 47.
With late mentor Clive Davis at a Childhood Diabetes fundraiser in Beverly Hills, October 28, 2006
Like Garland, Houston spent her last years boomeranging between anorexia and ballooning up to 50 pounds overweight, mixing drugs and alcohol, and working less and less. And like Houston, the press Garland, who was not a nice person, a free ride. However, Garland was the more talented of the two, and unlike Houston, put together a grand career.
2007
 The Ultimate Collection album cover, 2007
Blacks like to say “God don’t like ugly,” but pretty as Whitney Houston’s face may have once been, she was an ugly person.
2009
Performing at the 37th American Music Awards in L.A., on November 22, 2009
 With her cousin, Dionne Warwick, in an undated photo
 I Look to You album cover, 2009
 The hefty Whitney of 2010, and a more svelte earlier picture
Bloated, singing during her failed, "Nothing but Love" comeback tour in early 2010
Circa 2010
A surreally fixed pic from 2010
Attending the 2010 Keep a Child Alive's Black Ball at NYC's Hammerstein Ballroom on September 30, 2010
An undated picture that appeared in print during 2011 (It is now clear that publicity shots of Houston were so heavily retouched and airbrushed, and in some cases shot in soft focus, on top of her getting hours of hair and cosmetic work, that it gets harder and harder to figure out what she really looked like.)
Circa 2011

At a salute to industry Don David Geffen, Grammy weekend, February 12, 2011
Houston on February 9, 2012, at a pre-Grammy party for R&B
 Singing a duet with Kelly Price less than 48 hours before her death, February 9, 2012
By Nicholas Stix
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