One tell-tale sign of a Wingnut: they always confuse partisanship with patriotism.

It's important to remember that Bush Derangement Syndrome on the left - comparing him to Hitler, calling him a terrorist and a tyrant - preceded Obama Derangement Syndrome on the right.

Godwin's law states that the longer any online debate goes on, the likelier it is that someone will play the Nazi card. It's the rhetorical equivalent of going nuclear and stupid at the same time.

Whats different now is that while political leaders used to give talking points to talk radio, now talk-radio hosts are giving talking points to political leaders. Its all part of the suffocating spin cycle were in. In media, politics and publishing, the conventional wisdom is to play to this base.

A wingnut is someone on the far-right wing or far-left wing of the political spectrum - the professional partisans, the unhinged activists and the paranoid conspiracy theorists. They're the people who always try to divide rather than unite us.

But in his Farewell Address, George Washington made it clear that he perceived no greater threat to the American experiment than a partisan demagogue who 'agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against the other'

One tell-tale sign of a Wingnut: they always confuse partisanship with patriotism.