Centrist writer and commentator John Avlon has announced his latest Wingnuts of the Week: former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and Lyndon LaRouche. Here’s his lead in on the CNN blog:

It’s become the summer of the wingnut. Unhinged eruptions at town halls are becoming standard operating procedure, as forces from the right face off against forces deployed by the left. Politics, it turns out, follows the line of physics: every action creates an equal and opposite reaction.

This week’s wingnuts are stirring the crazy pot with accusations and associations – on the right, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin makes her debut appearance on the wingnut list with a fanatical Facebook rant and on the left all time wingnut Lyndon LaRouche resurfaces with an ugly new poster of the president as Adolph Hitler that is appearing at town halls.

Here’s the video of his CNN segment that goes into more detail and why Palin and LaRouche have earned this highly coveted award. Aside from what he says about these two verbal bomb-throwers, listen to his comments on the general over-the-top demonization now going on on both sides on healthcare reform:

A note on Avalon: He remains one of the most clear-headed thinkers and commentators on the scene today. He writes a column on The Daily Beast and his book “Independent Nation” is required reading for independents, centrists and moderates and for those who mistakenly think that those in the center don’t or aren’t supposed to be passionate. His book is a great read and is packed with research.

PERSONAL NOTE: In 1983, a year after I was hired as a staff reporter on the San Diego Union, I was “paying my dues” as a relatively new staffer by covering the city of Oceanside in one of the paper’s bureaus (Oceanside’s Mayor was a wonderful guy named Larry Bagley’s, whose son Pat Bagley is a Salt Lake City cartoonist whose excellent work we regularly run as part of Cagle Cartoons on TMV). A hotly contested local issue was boiling to the surface and a leader on one side called me to alerted me to the fact that that “the Democratic party” was sending in a speaker and organizer to hold a meeting on the subject with them and to help them out. When I talked to the person from the “Democratic party” something seemed at odds. After checking I informed the group that a)it was not the Democratic party as they assumed b)it was Lyndon LaRouche’s group which was not affiliated with the Democratic party.

I knew LaRouche since I’m a political junkie and in when he ran for President as a third party candidate I had watched a paid 30 minute TV show in which he gave a speech where he had to periodically push his slipping eyeglasses back to his face. Small details like that had stuck with me. And, as I always did since I was a kid, if something sparked my curiously I went to the library and would research it out to learn more.

The Oceanside group immediately canceled the the meeting. They were furious once they researched LaRouche themselves. There’s a lot on the web GO HERE.