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The number of Nevadans filing initial claims for jobless benefits fell in September to the lowest level in five years. The state Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation says the 13,932 claims filed last month are the least since 2007.

September’s filings compare with 16,693 claims filed in the same month last year, with claims peaking in December 2008 at 34,414.

Nevada has had the nation’s highest jobless rate since May 2010.

Vice President Joe Biden is continuing his visit to Nevada with an appearance at a Democratic campaign rally at a union work training center in North Las Vegas. Campaign officials say about 600 people gathered for Biden’s appearance at the Culinary Academy of Las Vegas.

Senator Harry Reid introduced Biden before the speech which focused on the choice between President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney. The appearance is Biden’s third in Las Vegas in four months.

At the same time, the founder of Jimmy John’s sandwich shops hosted an event supporting Mitt Romney in Las Vegas. Romney has mentioned Jimmy John Liautaud on the campaign trail as an example of a successful entrepreneur.

The Champaign, Ill.-based Jimmy John’s Gourmet Sandwiches, founded in 1983, now has more than 1,200 locations. Food-industry consulting firm Technomic has listed the company as one of the fastest growing food chains in the country for the past several years.

Nevada is drawing yet another visit from a top Democratic campaign star.

Campaign officials say First Lady Michelle Obama will make an October 26th visit to Las Vegas. Last week Former President Bill Clinton visited Las Vegas campaigning for President Obama.

The President has made nine campaign appearances between Reno and Las Vegas. The First Lady also spoke earlier this month at the University of Nevada, Reno.

Finally, the Nevada Democratic Party has filed a complaint with the Federal Elections Commission against Republican congressional hopeful Danny Tarkanian. The complaint questions Tarkanian’s legal standing to forgive a $250,000 loan he made to his failed 2010 U.S. Senate campaign after a judge signed a $17 million judgment against him as well as a later $40,000 loan made to his U.S. House campaign.

Democrats allege the GOP nominee for Nevada’s 4th Congressional District lacked legal control over his personal funds after a federal judge in May signed the judgment against Tarkanian and other members of his family stemming from a failed real estate deal. Tarkanian is fighting that judgment.

Vice President Joe Biden kicked off a two-day campaign swing through Nevada on Wednesday by appealing to Nevadans to get to the polls as soon as early voting begins Saturday. He told a crowd of more than 300 in a ballroom at a Reno convention center, “If we win Nevada, we will win this election.”

Biden said Romney and his running mate, Congressman Paul Ryan, continue to spread doom and gloom about the economy despite signs of recovery. Biden noted that Nevada had recently seen an improvement in foreclosure and unemployment rates.

Biden heads to Las Vegas next.

Alo in Washoe County, officials say a record number of voters have registered to vote in the upcoming election. The 241,400 voters exceed the old record reached in the 2008 presidential election by 10,000.

Republicans hold a tiny lead in registration totals, having just 1,160 more registered voters than Democrats. Officials said a breakdown shows there are 91,937 Republicans and 90,777 Democrats in Washoe County. Nonpartisan and voters who align with minor political parties total 58,686.

Statewide, figures from the secretary of state’s office show Democrats hold about a 90,000 voter registration advantage statewide. In Nevada’s population hub of Clark County, the Democratic edge is nearly 127,000 as of Monday with one day to go to sign up voters.

Democrats have been far outpacing Republicans in this battleground state, with President Barack Obama and Republican Mitt Romney both hoping to take Nevada’s six electoral votes en route to the White House.  Voter registration is also a big reason in the tight U.S. Senate race between Republican Sen. Dean Heller and Democratic Congresswoman Shelley Berkley.

The victor in that race could decide control of the Senate.

As the senate battle continues, Nevada’s two competitive House races are drawing big bucks from outside groups trying to influence the election, though it’s a lopsided third-party money matchup in the state’s new congressional district.

In the 4th District race between Republican Danny Tarkanian and Democratic state Senate Majority Leader Steven Horsford, outside groups led by the National Republican Congressional Committee have spent nearly $2 million to oppose Horsford. Federal Election Commission reports show only $415,000 has come from outside to try to tarnish Tarkanian.

It’s a different story in Nevada’s 3rd District.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has spent $1.5 million opposing the re-election of Republican Congressman  Joe Heck. On the opposite side of this race, the National Republican Congressional Committee has doled out $1.3 million to bash Democratic Assembly Speaker John Oceguera.

Finally, the Federal Election Commission is looking at the findings of an audit showing financial irregularities with Sharron Angle’s 2010 senate campaign. The FEC says the group “Friends of Sharron Angle” failed to report nearly $250,000 in contributions in a timely manner.

The commission auditors say the campaign also failed to itemize $2 million in debts. Auditors recommended the group amend its filings.

Angle lost in a tight race against Senator Harry Reid.

Shuttered for a three-month period during the winter and vandalized, the boss decided to hire an extra person to help keep an eye on the place as Rob and I repaired fence lines and attended the cows we’d already drove up top. Our new roustabout, Jesus, arrived shortly afterwards.

Jesus’ was short on English-speaking ability and at first had a hard time communicating. To make it even harder for Jesus, Rob spoke with a heavy Australian brogue which I even found difficult to understand at times.

But after a month or so, we were getting along pretty good.

In fact, Jesus and I had traded out places a few times so he could get some saddle-time. It was during one of these times that I grew bored with myself and started looking for trouble.

When Rob and Jesus returned to camp that afternoon, I handed Jesus a rifle and told him he had to kill a cow we had in the yard, as we needed some fresh meat. Being 18 or 19-years old and inexperienced, he grimaced at the idea.

But not wanting to say no, he took the rifle over to the corral fence and using one of the timbers for support, he fire a shot into the cow. The animal jumped at the report of the rifle and ran panicking around the corral.

Jesus turned and looked at me; he had a quizzical look in his eye as he knew he’d shot the animal and it should have dropped over dead. I waved at him to shoot again.

Blam!

Again the terrorized beast raced around the corral. And again, Jesus looked back at where Rob and I were standing.

“Dammit, kid,” Rob yelled, “you can’t even hit the broadside of a barn, can you?”

In frustration, he walked over and took the rifle from Jesus, and pumped two rounds into the cow, and still, it didn’t go down. Then in rapid succession, Rob cocked and fired five more shots into the animal.

As the frightened cow continued to run around the corral, Rob turned and looked back at me. That when he knew he’d been had, falling for another one of my jokes.

Unknown to him or Jesus, I had loaded the 30-30 Winchester with blanks.

When I was a Senior in high school, I met a girl who was a Freshman. Every time I tried to pay her a compliment, she had some sort of snide comeback and eventually stopped talking to her.

It wasn’t until several years later, when I was managing a photo lab, that a man came in with her last name. Once I noticed his name, I asked if her was related to the girl I had once tried to be nice too.

He told me she was his daughter, only he wasn’t nice about it. The man called her vulgar names and was so vocal about his disgust for her that it was embarrassing.

After he left my shop, I understood why she was as negative as she had been. She either didn’t believe me when I complimented her and felt defensive or that was simply the way she had been brought up.

Either way, I shouldn’t have stopped trying to be her friend.

Despite going after and winning two convictions in 2008’s ACORN “Blackjacking” where canvassers were paid based on the number of voters registered, Nevada’s Secretary of State Ross Miller accepted funding from the SoS Project (SSP) two-years earlier.  The donation tainted Miller’s reputation.

The SSP was created by the Democracy Alliance in 2005, funded by George Soros and made itself known during the 2010 U.S. Senate race between Republican U.S. Senate candidate Sharron Angle and incumbent Democrat Harry Reid. Though leading in state polls,  Angle lost to Reid by nearly five-percentage points.

While Clark and Washoe Counties carried the majority of voters for Reid, the surprise was Mineral County, which polled less than two-percentage points in favor of the incumbent. Historically, Mineral County never carried Democrat during a national election, which left many Nevadan’s shaking their head.

In Clark County, Reid’s son, Rory Reid, while a candidate for Nevada Governor, was in charge of the voting machines that were malfunctioning and being repaired by members of Service Employees International Union. The SEIU is one of the five major unions, forming “The Shadow Democratic Party,” also funded by Soros.

Critics charged the voting machines were rigged to place check marks next to Senator’s name before a person had even voted. In the end and after an investigation, Secretary of State Ross Miller’s office concluded no fraud occurred.

There is a little known character that helped shape Nevada’s history, which seems to have been lost in the Mob-land story of Las Vegas.  Nola Hahn established himself as a leading expert on designing gambling pits that could be hidden away by panels or other camouflaging contraptions in case of a bust.

This was during the days of the Volstead Act, prohibition, speakeasies and the Club Continental in Los Angeles was his crowning glory.  By 1938, Hahn ended his partnership in the club having bought the Trocadero from Billy Wilkerson, who was none other than the man who founded the Hollywood Reporter, the Flamingo Hotel and discovered actress Lana Turner.

Hahn’s timing for the purchase wasn’t very good as later that year Los Angeles Mayor Frank Shaw, whose administration is seen as one of the most corrupt in the city’s history, was recalled and Fletcher Bowron was voted in as his successor.  Bowron ran on the platform of a crackdown on vice, which was part of what he called the Los Angeles Urban Reform Revival.

Hahn kept the Trocadero for a couple of years, then sold it and headed for Las Vegas, where he opened the Colony Restaurant in 1942, preceding Bugsy Siegel, who didn’t seek legitimacy until 1946 with Wilkerson’s Flamingo. Originally, Siegel came to Southern Nevada in 1934, but he could imagine any potential for organized crime in the desert.

Within a few years Hahn became the guy to go to when it came to designing legal gambling clubs. Unfortunately, there’s little of anything about him after that, other than he committed suicide in 1957 at the age of 60.

2000

The Easterner in a praire schooner
Venturing overland America,
Living, luck and lonliness viewing
A field broken only by trees.

Winds creating waves in the grass,
Splashing against the waiting woods.
Seas upon a shoreline rock,
Venturing overland — America.

“There has to be something to it,” his mom said as she took a drag on her cigarette.

She sat silently waiting for Chad to reply, but he didn’t say a thing. He was too hurt.

This was not the first time this conversation had come up and from the looks of things, it probably wouldn’t be the last. Chad couldn’t figure out why his very own mother couldn’t see what was happening.

He figured that if anyone were intuitive enough to see that since all of his siblings were talking to the same counselor then there had to be some sort of brain washing going on.

Chad shook his head, “So you believe that shit, too?”

“Well, if all three of them claim the same thing,” his mother said.

“But that’s the point,” he responded, “their stories are all too pat. All the same…”

“It doesn’t matter,” she interrupted, “because it had to have happened!”

Chad sighed as he gave up, knowing it was hopeless.

His mother entrenched herself in the idea that he had molested Kurt, and his two sisters, April and Liz. And it was obvious Chad was going to be unable to change her position.

All this started after April’s operation to remove some tumors in her lower abdomen. When the doctors operated they discovered her hymen ruptured and somehow April came to point the finger at Chad.

It was a convenient accusation since their parents were in the middle of a nasty divorce and Chad had invited his old man to come live with him. He couldn’t stand seeing his dad living in his car in a parking lot.

Of course Chad had no way of knowing of the accusations against him, as he was busy with his own life. He had been out of the country when their mom took the kids and moved to Coos Bay, some one-hundred or more miles away.

By the time Chad heard the rumor he had molested any of his siblings, he was getting ready to get married. He had invited his brother to Brookings to spend the night before his fiancée Jenny, Kurt and he left on the long drive to Reno.

The two had been up late into the night drinking beer, when they decided to take a walk around the tiny town. It was a chilly January night and both of blew breath smoke into the darkness as they walked and talked.

“You know,” Kurt started, “I’ll never forgive you for molesting me.”

Stunned, Chad looked at him and asked, “What?!”

Kurt repeated himself, “I’ll never forgive you for molesting me.”

Chad didn’t know what to say, so he continued walking in silence. He tried desperately to think of anything to say, but nothing came to mind.

He was in shock, then Chad thought, “Perhaps it the beer talking.”

That was the beginning of the rumors and stories that he had misused his brother and sisters. Chad tried not to think of it, but every time he visited his mom, the subject either came up or one of his siblings would show up and make certain to ignore him.

Chad’s youngest sister Liz even went so far as to name him as the person the Coos County Sheriffs Department wanted for suspicion of child molestation. It was a Friday morning when they knocked on the front door of his mobile home.

When Chad answered, three officers rushed in and pushed him to the ground. As one hand cuffed him and another read to him his Miranda warning, another informed him that he was under arrest for child molestation on a warrant out of San Francisco.

When they rolled him over, the three realized they had the wrong man, who was unfortunate enough to have the same name as the bad guy they were looking for. It took nearly 48-hours to clear the mess up.

The three officers, thoroughly admonished by Judge Gillespie, apologized before heading back to California. In the meantime, the judge told Chad he ought to cut all ties with Liz, as painful as it might be.

Then a year before moving into a new home, Kurt and Chad stopped talking after a fist fight erupted in their mother’s home. The brother’s didn’t speak to each other even when their step-father died two-months later or as their mom lay dying in the hospital almost six-years afterwards.

It wasn’t until a late evening in November nearly seven-years since their fight that Kurt called the house looking for Chad. Intoxicated, he wanted to talk.

Again the subject of molestation came up; only this time Kurt wanted an apology from Chad.  However, he refused to say sorry for something he did not do.

Chad responded, “I don’t know the name of that shrink you kids were seeing, but if I ever find out…”

He was abruptly cut off, “Then let’s just forget about it, but I won’t forgive you.”

All Chad could do was shake his head and say, “Okay — fine, whatever.”

Eventually, he knew though he’d have to let all three of his siblings go.

“There is just no way I can continue to let them do this to me,” Chad told himself as he hung up the telephone.

A state judge in Carson City says he’ll rule quickly on whether a Nevada tax initiative pushed by the teachers union and other labor groups is legally sound. Either way, lawyers say the case is likely headed to the state Supreme Court.

The Committee to Protect Nevada Jobs argues that the Education Initiative is misleading, despite being rewritten once, and is therefore invalid. District Judge James Wilson earlier this year ruled the initial measure violated the state’s single subject rule for petitions. Organizers then rewrote it.

The margins tax proposal seeks to impose a 2 percent tax on businesses grossing more than $1 million. Backers say they’ve already gathered 55,000 to 60,000 signatures needed to send the measure to the 2012 Legislature but need a total of 72,000 signatures by November 13th.

And with early voting set to start next weekend, the voter registrar of Nevada’s second most populous county has been placed on temporary medical leave. Washoe County Registrar Dan Burk is off the job after undergoing intestinal surgery earlier this week.

Officials say he’s doing well and is expected to return to his job in about two weeks by the November 6th general election.

During Burk’s absence, his assistant, Luanne Cutler, will be filling in for him and says the registrar’s office is well prepared for the election. Early voting begins October 20th.

Lastly, environmental groups are applauding the federal government’s new plan setting aside 445 square miles of public land in the West for the development of large-scale solar power plants. The 17 new “solar energy zones” will be established in six states icluding Nevada.

The Interior Department will direct solar power development to land it has identified as having fewer wildlife and natural-resource obstacles and that is near power lines. The plan replaces the department’s previous first-come, first-served system of approving solar projects. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu said the effort will help the U.S. stay competitive.

The other day my wife, Mary and I were discussing the professional painter we had out to the house to give us an estimate on slapping some new color on the exterior. And somehow I got tossed under the bus.

Mary told me that the person who recommended him said “He’s not the best painter in the world, but he’ll get the job done.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“Well, it means he’ll not the best – but he’ll do a good job,” she responded.

“I don’t get that,” I shot back.

“Let me put it this way,” she returned, “You’re not the best radio announcer but you get the job done, right?

“Oh,” was all that I could say.

At first I wanted to be mad, then I wanted to pout, then I thought about it. Damn it, I hate it when she’s right.