The Morning After

After an incredible Super Bowl and the New York Giants coming out victorious, I thought the happy buzz would hang on longer.  The news this morning made me so distraught and sad.  Do you remember the story of missing mother, Susan Powell?  Supposedly, her husband took their two little boys camping at midnight in freezing temperatures and when they got back, Susan was missing.  Of course, no one believed his story, but proof was hard to come by to get a conviction.  The story took bizarre twists and turns with the husband's father being arrested for child pornography and voyerism. Josh Powell was fighting to keep his kids.  He was only allowed supervised visits.  Most recently, he lost custody completely and was ordered to undergo a psychosexual evaluation.  The social worker brought the kids for a supervised visit.  When they arrived at Josh's home, he pushed her away and locked and barred the door from entry.  He poured gas all over the house and with his little boys (now 5 and 7 years old) inside, lit the house up in flames.  Suicide and double murder.  Don't give a rat's ass if Josh Powell killed himself, but the fact that he killed his own is the ultimate narcissistic act.  It's painful and I can't imagine what the surviving family of Susan Powell can do to pick themselves up again.  First they lose their daughter/sister and now their grandsons/nephews???????  

In hindsight, we can all second guess the court's decision.  Could anyone have seen this coming?  Clearly, I have to believe that the court had no clue and yet....They did order a psychosexual evaluation, so they saw something not right with Josh Powell.  They saw something because they granted custody to the maternal grandparents.  Could they have had the foresight that he would kill his own children?  Okay, as I said, Monday morning quarterbacking makes it easy, but if they didn't grant him custody and the court had an inkling that he might be a sick *&%$, maybe the supervised visits should have occurred in the office of the court or in a public location. The children were beginning to speak about the night of the camping trip. They are older now and they were remembering or they were just able to verbalize what happened that night. They remembered that Mommy was in the trunk. The grandparents were worried that something like this could happen.  Why didn't the courts?  The pain and loss is unbearable.  My heart goes out to Susan's family.  Can the court system learn something from this tragedy?  Josh Powell was a narcissistic sociopath. I didn't even have to meet him to come to that conclusion. He never should have been allowed home visits until the evaluation was complete!

Sidebars: Madonna was the star of the Super Bowl halftime show. I admire that she is older than I and is an international star for over 25 years.  It was a great spectacle, but the tweets and FB comments ranged from amazing to time to retire to fantastic to she has zero talent.  Go figure.  The Voice re-appeared after the Super Bowl and I think it is one of the great inventions.  It may kill American Idol and the X Factor.  I love Adam Levine, Cee Lo Green, Christina Aguilera, and Blake Shelton. I love the "blind" judging.  It's a great hook. It works.  On a serious note, how proud I am that the outrage of Americans over the Susan G. Komen organization cutting Planned Parenthood, made SGK reverse their decision!  That's a true victory!!!

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