The classiest, non-alcoholic way to remember Boris Yeltsin?  These buttons from his early 1990’s Kansas visit, posted by NPR political editor Ken Rudin at his Political Junkie column:

Prepping for the Colts-Bears Super Bowl, Ken Rudin shares this button in the new Political Junkie:

A history-making Senate campaign in Maryland indeed.  Kevin Zeese sends this note to Ken Rudin’s “Political Junkie” column:

It’s a three-candidate race. I’m the third candidate, and I’ve been nominated by the Green, Libertarian and Populist Parties. This is the first time that even two of those parties nominated the same candidate anywhere in the U.S. A historic first.

Yes, a real Maryland three-way.  Not including Cindy Sheehan:

Ken Rudin’s “Political Junkie” column presents this button of a Congressional candidate.

Perhaps if that button is combined with the below classic, we’d get everyone’s favorite ninth grade science toy, the Bentsen Burner?

Ken Rudin’s Political Junkie reminds us:

This day in campaign history: The America First Party endorses Gerald L.K. Smith, a strong isolationist and anti-Semite, as its presidential candidate at its convention in Detroit (Aug. 30, 1944).

High fives throughout the glass-enclosed nerve center of Extreme Mortman today.

Why? We eagerly read the new “Political Junkie” column by Ken Rudin, which we always do, and saw that he listed incumbent senators who have been defeated for renomination — an Extreme Trivia question we asked, what, AGES AGO!

But Ken does have something we didn’t: this button from the last time an incumbent Senator lost a primary — Illinois’ Alan Dixon 1992 to Carol Moseley Braun.

Meanwhile, we’ve still got the latest Extreme Trivia question — name the last incumbent Republican to lose a Senate primary — unsolved. To those who keep saying Jacob Javits: STOP ALREADY. He’s not the most recent.

But I do want to recognize Herb Wachs, the great wise scholar from Reading, Pennsylvania who doubles as my father-in-law, for sending this note:

There are very many Republican Senators in the PA Senate who lost
reelection bids this year. The PA legislature voted themselves big pay raises in a middle of the night budget session last year. The voters were outraged. Many Republican incumbents were defeated in primaries in PA. So if you expand your question to PA politics, there are a lot of Republican Senators who were defeated in PA in 2006.

How true.

I hate Ken Rudin for coming up with a soccer line funnier than mine.

From his “Political Junkie” column:

The World Cup seems to be the only thing people care about lately; for all I know, these people could become the latest voting bloc. I know that’s already the case in Japan; there, they are called Osaka Moms.

That jokes makes it a soccer-style blow out, 1-0.

Ken Rudin has done it again. The NPR political editor’s latest “Political Junkie” column recalls that Anne Armstrong, matriarch of the Armstrong Ranch — where Vice President Cheney had his hunting accident — was mentioned as a possible vice presidential running mate for Gerald Ford in 1976. Rudin notes that a Gallup Poll question at the time asked, “Which of the following men would you like to see as Ford’s running mate,” and the list included Armstrong.

What Extreme Mortman is hearing and what Extreme Mortman is plugging these days:

I’ve learned that marvelous, mischievous media maven Marvin Kalb is working on his next book, something special on the 2004 presidential race that has direct bearing on the 2008 race. Stay tuned in this space for more details.

And while I’m plugging books, two more book-spine-tingling treats for politics lovers come to mind. Eric Dezenhall, America’s top crisis manager/funnyman has yet another book out: “Turnpike Flameout”. It’s Insightful, funny, another brilliant master-stroke. I call it a must-read. In fact, I must read it some day. And what a great book party at his swanky downtown Connecticut Avenue digs above the DC Improv. If anyone can pull off fine Jersey cuisine – featuring strolling mini-cheese steaks – it’s Eric Dezenhall. Oh, the cholesterol.

And you’ve got to purchase Potomac Beach by Eron Shosteck.

Surely you remember Eron from such hits as “Pencilneck” at The Hotline, Elvis
impersonations at weddings, like his own, and “The President’s Neck Is Missing.” Well “Potomac Beach” tops them all, sporting the Federated Association of Taters (FAT) and the Coalition Representing American Plumbers (CRAP).
And speaking of the Hotline, former Hotline pit boss turned NPR political editor Ken Rudin writes in his Political Junkie column about “Eugene McCarthy’s multiple running mates in 1976.”

Which got me thinking back to simpler, happier times, the Seventies. Lots of folks had multiple running mates in 1976 – we were so innocent then! And penicillin still worked.