Tomorrow's News Today Feb.23, 2014

Tomorrow's News Today

February 23, 2014

Explosion Injures 66 Pupils and Destroys New School Building

Des Moines -- A boiler explosion at the George W. Bush Elementary School in the hitherto sleepy town of Amestown, Iowa, yesterday morning injured 66 pupils and totally destroyed the recently constructed building that had cost a record-breaking 14 million dollars.

While running for office in November, 2011, in a speech at Harvard University, President Newt Gingrich suggested a plan to modernize child labor laws. Included in the plan was a strong recommendation that janitorial work at the nation's schools could and should be performed by children as young as nine. They would perform their both money-saving and character-building assignments under the supervision of an adult custodian.

Yesterday morning, on his way to work on the coldest day of the year, with the temperature not expected to rise above 8 degrees, Custodian Chuck Welles, 54, suffered a stroke and then an auto accident on Hoover Avenue and was taken to Lincoln Hospital where he remains unconscious and in critical condition.

Under the circumstances, Bobby Vinter, 10, volunteered to start up the furnace, which had been shut down for the weekend in accordance with the order of popular Mayor Al Horlogger, who was fulfilling his solemn pledge to balance the municipal budget when he ran for office as a candidate of the Tea Party. Though Bobby had received an A for character and cooperation on his last four report cards, he was apparently less than proficient with the school's digitalized and state-of-the-art boiler, which proved far more complicated than the rudimentary model in his parents' single-family home at 144 Spruce Lane.

Fortunately, due to the bad weather and poor road conditions, only 66 pupils and eight teachers were as yet in the school at the time of the explosion, which was heard for miles and mistaken at first as a terrorist attack on Amestown, recently voted number 7 in USA Today's list of heartland towns and cities. The 39 children whose parents could afford to enroll in GingrichCare, the new national network of private-sector medical centers, are expected to recover eventually. President Gingrich and First Lady Callista Gingrich expressed sympathy for all the victims, regardless of the immigration status of their parents, and they also promised to pray for their swift and complete recovery. Said Vice President Michele Bachmann: "God tells me that He's watching out for the folks in Amestown, just as He did for General Benedict Arnold and his brave fighting men at Valley Forge during the war for freedom from the Russians in 1790."

Meanwhile, Mayor Horlogger has vowed to use his clout with the Tea Party and its leaders, all the way up to President Gingrich, to overrule penny-pinching Democrats and obtain a special grant of at least fifteen million dollars for the replacement of the devastated school.