The kitchen is no place for this woman

Continuing in the grand tradition of pet causes, the wife of the Smoker-in-Chief, Michelle Obama, has chosen childhood obesity and healthy eating as her particular cause.

A few days ago she addressed the National Restaurant Association regarding the virtues of offering healthy alternatives on the menu and disclosure with respect to providing calorie data for individual menu items.

Look, we've really no problem with the First Lady using her bully pulpit to "encourage" restaurants to offer more healthy options but as can be expected from members of the regime, even those not technically on the payroll, they go seamlessly from simple and harmless nagging to codifying menu changes by fiat.

After playing nice for the first three-quarters of her speech employing words as "asking", "challenge" and "encourage" implying voluntary cooperation, she gets down to brass knuckles.

That’s why we’re committed to helping increase that demand and making it easier for you to do what’s right. And we’ve started by requiring chain restaurants to provide calorie counts on their menus and menu boards. And I am grateful for the support we’ve received from the NRA to get this done. And I want to encourage restaurants that aren’t providing calorie counts to join us in this effort.

How much awfulness can be packed into one paragraph?

Translation:

Americans are too damn stupid to make these decisions on their own so we'll "help" by forcing you to do what we think is right and we've begun this dictatorial process, thank you, by telling you what is required to be on your menus, menu boards and any thing else bearing the name of your establishment. And we're grateful that you've pretty much allowed us to steamroll you on this (not that you had any choice in the matter) and let's just say we know who all those other restaurants are out there that escaped our clutches and which we will be strong-arming into compliance at a later date.

These people are simply drunk with power.

We had almost forgot about this whole menu thing. We believe the cut off for compliance with this ridiculous regulation is 20 or more restaurants. So, imagine if you own 21 or 22 restaurants: you will be faced with making a decision to comply with a needless and expensive regulation (how exactly does one go about getting a calorie count for every single item on their menu and however it is done, do you think the going rate for CalCount Inc.'s services just went up a tad as a result of this regulatory capture?) or cutting back on your restaurant locations and putting a few dozen more people out on the street. And conversely, factor in yet another reason to not expand and not add more jobs in the private sector for that restaurant owner of 18 or 19 locations.

This probably is no big deal for massive chains like Denny's or McDonald's who have the resources to comply but as we've seen with ObamaCare and how it hoses the smaller insurance providers, these menu regs will be another unwanted expense on the small and medium-sized chains.

How to fight back? Patronize these Mom and Pop shops or medium-sized chains that may be on the cusp of this regulation. We're open to other suggestion and, as always...