To refresh people’s memories: allegations came out last week that NC Democratic party Executive Director Jay Parmley had sexually harassed a male staffer (the Daily Caller noted yesterday that local reports are saying that said staffer was also allegedly fired after making a complaint; if that’s true, then there’s a bigggggggggg problem going on in North Carolina right now for the Democratic party*). Anyway, Parmley has decided to leave his job – and is he bitter about it? Well, perhaps a little:

In his resignation letter, Parmley denied the sexual harassment allegations and blamed TheDC for tying the alleged incident to him.

“As you know last Friday, Tucker Carlson’s right-wing blog Daily Caller and Art Pope’s Civitas Institute began spreading a false and misleading story about a supposed incident of harassment at the NCDP,” Parmley wrote.

Hey, I’m not a lawyer, so I don’t know the answer: does a declarative sentence like that itself violate non-disclosure agreements?

Anyway, what makes this still actually of interest is, as usual, the stuff going on behind the scenes. This article makes it clear that the Democratic party of North Carolina is in disarray, what with all the turnover in their head offices and angry calls for people to be fired and general unpleasantness being spread around. Compounding the problem is that they have a fairly vicious gubernatorial primary set up: current incumbent Bev Perdue actually decided to live up to her rhetoric about canceling elections by canceling her participation in the next one. And just how bad is the election looking for the Democrats? Put it this way: Bob Etheridge is a front-runner.

Bob. Etheridge.

North Carolina went for the Democrats by a razor’s edge in 2008. I… do not think that this feat is going to be repeated in 2012.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*It’s probably too late for the Democrats to move their convention, but perhaps they should consider having their next one in, say, Vermont. Reliably Democratic, and virtually unpopulated anyway: less Democrats = less opportunities for local Democratic sex scandals. Just a thought…

PS: Don’t feel too bad for Parmley: after all, he’s originally from the South Carolina Democratic party, as this little incident about lying about an Republican’s criminal record would imply.

What do money markets, antiques, gold, corn, wheat, and stocks in companies like Google or Apple have in common? They?re bought by speculators.

And yet speculators, especially in oil, have become the bogeyman of economics. On tomorrow?s I Spy Radio Show (11-noon, kykn.com), we talk with Dr. Daniel Fine about America?s energy resources and energy policy. What role do speculators have in the price of oil?

And find out why those who think high gas prices might hurt Obama?s re-election may be in for a big surprise.

* Listen live on the radio, Saturdays 11-noon (Pacific time) via 1430-AM in the greater Salem Area
(Corvallis to Tigard, Lyons to Grand Ronde)
* Listen live from anywhere in the world via kykn.com (11-noon on Saturdays) via the “listen live” tab up
top of web page
* Download the show after it airs. Just go to the Current Show page. The download link becomes active
shortly after noon each Saturday.

Dr. Daniel I. Fine works with the New Mexico Center for Energy Policy. He is a longtime research associate at the Mining and Minerals Resources Institute, MIT. Fine is also a policy adviser on nonconventional oil and gas. He is co-editor of Resource War in 3-D: Dependence, Diplomacy and Defense, and has contributed to Business Week, the Engineering and Mining Journal and the Washington Times. Fine has testified on strategic natural resources before the U.S. Senate committees on Foreign Affairs and Energy and Natural Resources. In this speech, he discusses ?Shale Gas Wars: From Pennsylvania to North Carolina.?

For a given value of “his own.” Short version of this Jay Carney clip: Hilary who? Hilary Rosen? The White House has so many people coming through, after all…

Somewhere, Robert Gibbs is nodding to himself and thinking, Yes. The chrysalis has fallen away to reveal… well, a prime example of Dermatobia hominis (human bot fly).

Well, they can’t all be pretty, pretty butterflies.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: Yes, I am well aware that if bot flies actually cocooned they wouldn’t have made this list.  Then again, it’s the human bot fly reproductive cycle that otherwise makes that particular insect a nigh-perfect metaphor for your average Democratic White House Press Secretary.  Work with me here, people.

PPS: If you don’t know what the bot fly reproductive cycle is, you probably will be better off by not clicking the links.

Via Legal Insurrection comes this interesting story about DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz and her rather embarrassing Jewish liaison Dani Gilbert.  As you may remember, Ms. Gilbert had some unfortunate comments surface from her Facebook page – essentially, stuff from 2006 where she used admittedly self-derogatory religious/cultural epithets.  At the time, I wondered when exactly DWS had hired the young woman – just on the off chance that the DNC chair had knowingly hired an underaged drinker, which the DNC chair is certainly dumb enough to do.  It turns out that this was a new hire (for the DNC position, at least)… but, hey, that’s where this gets interesting!

Turns out that the DNC already had a Jewish liaison – Ira Forman.  Mr. Forman brings to the table a large amount of experience, as one would expect from a former executive director of the National Jewish Democratic Council.  But he’s just one person – and not the daughter of two Florida Democratic bundlers who put together 500K for the Obama campaign, which is apparently Ms. Gilbert’s primary qualification for the job.  Shockingly, it’s being reported that the Obama administration recognized that Ms. Gilbert may not have been the most suitable candidate for this position; even more shockingly, Debbie Wasserman Schultz defied them… actually, not shockingly.  The Gilberts are also very heavy donor’s to Wasserman Schultz’s own campaign coffers, and since it’s clear by now that Barack Obama plans to get himself elected first and worry about everybody else in the Democratic party when he feels like it, the DNC chair may be feeling the need for a little insurance.
And that’s where we’re at.  As LI’s William Jacobson put it, “The DNC Chair appears to have used DNC resources to reward two big donors with a job for their daughter.”  And… it’s a little depressing to contemplate how unsurprising that is, is it?  It also handily explains why the original comments didn’t prevent Ms. Gilbert from getting the job in the first place, too: they might have been too much if Gilbert hadn’t been Jewish herself, but as such said comments didn’t exactly stop the campaign cash from coming in, did they? – And that’s what it’s clearly all about for the Democratic party these days: keeping the campaign cash flowing.

Well, it’s not as if they have any ideals, principles, or coherent programs to run on at this point.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: It’s not that it’s illegal; it’s not illegal.  It’s not even that it’s legal, really.  It’s that the people – who carefully made sure that it was legal – then presume to lecture the rest of us on ethics.