I continue to be awash with remorse for not coming up with a list of 2022’s “Dirty Dozen” to highlight the most unethical and unfit candidates for office. Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, a New York Democrat representing the state’s 17th Congressional District, might even deserve to nudge out a member of The Squad. Well, probably not, but still: asked by an interviewer, “Hudson Valley residents are feeling pain at the pump and at grocery stores, what have you done, and what do you plan to do to help solve our inflation problem?” Maloney replied,

Yeah, well, I grew up in a family where, you know, if the gas price went up, the food budget went down. So by this time of the week, we’d be eating Chef Boyardee if that budget wasn’t gonna change. So that’s what families have to do.

Or they could try library paste, dog food, and maybe just eat the dog. Yup, that’s what families have to do when Pat’s party restricts pipelines, drilling leases and energy production while spending billions on specious climate change solutions for uncertain conditions that can’t be solved by U.S. policies anyway and at best might benefit Americans a hundred years from now. Or not. Whatever.

The Congressman’s answer isn’t just callous and demonstrative of voids in responsibility and analysis. It’s signature significance for an asshole of epic proportions. Fortunately, it looks as if Maloney is going to lose his seat, but it’s close.  How in the Wide Wide World of Sports could any sentient voter cast a ballot for such a jerk? Oh, right: to save democracy to be run by clueless morons. See, even Maloney is preferable to a Republican because, as Rob Reiner told MSNBC’s Joy Reid last week to no resistance at all, the members of that evil party

…are only interested in power. They are only interested, and they will do anything to get the power. And they are willing to kill, literally kill, to get the power.

And they probably don’t even like Chef Boyardee!

UPDATE: Somehow, I missed the fact that Maloney was also the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chair….which tells you something about the party, and it isn’t good.