Somebody please explain to me …

who are the happy pranksters who keep electing Michele Bachmann from Minnesota?

Gail Collins clues us in on the new Sarah Palin show airing on TLC. In the first episode, the Palin family is seen sitting in a boat, watching a family of haggard looking bears ambling along the shore. Collins notes that the mother bear is on her way to Planned Parenthood.

TLC used to be the acronym for "The Learning Channel," but now it simply stands for "making money with the least effort possible."

Bachmann claimed on CNN recently that the president's upcoming trip to India would cost the taxpayers $200 million a day, which is more than the taxpayers pay per day for the war in Afghanistan. Is Bachmann that stupid or does she just think the people who elected her to office are? (Answer: Well, they did elect her!)

NOTE: Newt Gingrich is what passes for an intellectual in the Republican party. He is a sometimes lecturer in a history department at a college in Georgia. We won't name it here, they already suffer terribly from the embarrassment. Have you read Lies My Teacher Told Me?