[Nevada] has a 14.3 percent unemployment rate, the highest in the country, and it has so far received $561.55 per person in stimulus funds. That’s a little more than half of the average stimulus per person received by the state with the lowest unemployment rate in the country: North Dakota has an unemployment rate of 3.6 percent, but it has received $1,059.95 per person in stimulus money. The District of Columbia has an unemployment rate of 9.8 percent, and has received $5,748.61 per person. That’s more than ten times the per person amount received by Nevada, which has higher unemployment.

As I have written before, the unemployment crisis is in part a regional one, though the response has largely been national. If I had my druthers, I would push for more specific stimulus for the places worst-hit by the recession: the real outliers, Michigan, California, Rhode Island, Florida and Nevada.

Strolling off his plane with cell phone in hand, the Democratic presidential nominee looked calm as he arrived in Nevada today, walking around the tarmac in deep conversation for several minutes.

Obama arrived in Reno, NV on Monday evening.

Aides did not say who was on the line when Obama touched down, though they had been quick to announce his calls with Treasury Sec. Henry Paulson Jr. and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi earlier in the day.

When the call ended, Obama walked toward an SUV with his press aide Robert Gibbs, and stopped briefly to take a question from the press.

Jeff Zeleny, a reporter for The New York Times, crouched near the motorcade and asked for a response to McCain’s latest attack — that Obama was “injecting politics” into the fight over the bailout.

Obama said he had already addressed the issue in his speech on Monday, and he pledged that he would have more to say tomorrow. This is a campaign, so that promise is pretty safe.

Obama also yelled back that he’d learned not to take the bait — though that’s not an exact quote, and I’m not sure what it means anyway. (McCain’s bait? Zeleny’s?)

The exchange ended there.

It was not enlightening, obviously. Except for perhaps reinforcing Obama’s uber-deliberate approach to every step and message during this period of economic anxiety. Then the motorcade whisked everyone off Reno’s Grand Sierra Resort and Casino, which promises guests “80,000 square feet of heart-pounding casino action 24 hours a day.”

It’s just the spot to make up for those 401(k) losses.