Toby Harnden starts a delightful blog post this way:

The joke had been dropped from Barack Obama’s repertoire but where better to bring it back than Las Vegas, where strippers and brothels are part of everyday life (if you doubt this, check out this lovely piece from the Las Vegas Review-Journal about Rufus Harry Herrington of Mina, NV, who was touched that his son treated him to a night out at the town’s whorehouse for his 72nd birthday)?

It certainly got a big laugh last night at Rancho High School here in Vegas. “A lot of what they call Research and Development money is actually for TV advertising, you know advertisements that show people running in fields all happy and you don’t know what the drug’s for,” he said. “Except for that one. You know what that’s for.” Boom Boom. But it seems that the joke’s old – like other stump speech jokes being aired at the moment.

Always smooth to work Obama and whorehouse into the same sentence.  Now there’s a master blogger!

By the way, is this the happiest Rufus Harry Herrington has ever been, or what?  Clearly they got the dates wrong — it’s not whorehouse night in Mina at all, it’s the town’s annual poetry slam.  And to think he got all dressed up.