Have you seen all those news reports lately about how expensive fast food has gotten? Reporters don't have to look far to find someone whining about what it costs to eat at McDonald's and, hard left sycophants that they are, the amazing thing is they ARE looking.

You could have knocked me over with a feather last night, but even the CBS Evening News did a two-minute plus segment on people pissed off about the price of fast food.

Is this not an election year when their candidate needs this sort of stuff stuffed?

What the hell's going on?

It's like they're trying to tank him...and it's hilarious.

Yesterday, a Houston station tried to make the case you could still eat out. Do it less expensively at a dine-in restaurant vice a drive-through.

But it's still expensive either way and fewer people can afford to do any of it, which is having all sorts of economic ripples (witness my earlier post). This is without even considering the pressure pricing of the $20 hr wage state.

Points for trying, though.

Some of the ripples are the wakes caused by more cars turning into WalMart parking lots than through Wendy's or McDonald's drive-throughs. The company's earnings report and CFO's remarks reflected that today.

Forget the drive-thru. Walmart wants diners to find a value meal in its grocery aisles.

As fast food gets pricier, the nation’s largest grocer sees a sales opportunity.

On a call with CNBC on Thursday, Walmart Chief Financial Officer John David Rainey said some of the discounter’s sales growth in the recent quarter came from customers who turned to its grocery aisles for cheaper meals than they can get at quick-service restaurants.

“It’s roughly 4.3 times more expensive to eat out than it is to eat at home,” he said. “And that’s benefiting our business.”

As customers see some grocery items stay the same price or even become cheaper, the gap between buying menu items and cooking food at home has grown even wider, he said.

Now, as I'm not a fast-food fan who only rarely took our son for a Happy Meal, I see this as probably a healthier, good thing in the long run. Cooked food at home? 

Yes, please.

Although I know it has to suck so bad to have a kid - or worse, a carload of them - who are used to hitting the drive-though for whatever suits their fancy. That adjustment could be absolutely miserable for everyone concerned. 

I get it.

Not to mention the perpetual time crunch everyone is in. You have to wonder where do you find time to get it all done and not kill yourself doing it.

But you do. Been there, done that.

It might wind up being an adjustment that hopefully won't be necessary for long, but one that many families find is better for them all around.

...Walmart’s strong store traffic and quarterly results are at odds with those of restaurant companies, including McDonald’s, Starbucks and Yum Brands. Foot traffic to limited-service chains, which includes fast-food and fast-casual restaurants, fell 3.5% in the first quarter, according to Revenue Management Solutions. Restaurant executives blamed bad weather in January and February — and a consumer slowdown, particularly among lower-income diners.

Like many restaurants, McDonald’s has faced backlash to its prices. An $18 Big Mac combo sold at one of its franchised restaurants in Connecticut went viral on social media, prompting executives to defend the chain’s pricing on its conference call. The burger giant reported disappointing U.S. same-store sales growth of 2.5%, suggesting that its foot traffic fell during the quarter.

"Family dinners" around a table might come back into vogue. Parents might realize how much time kids spend on a phone because they're looking at them with their faces glued to a screen during dinner, and get tired of it.

I don't know. I'm trying to be positive here.

Even now, decades later, when Ebola* comes home from overseas, we have to eat at the table. That's what he wants because it's talk talk talk family time, just like when he was growing up.

If it has to be hard times for a while, maybe it's not such a bad thing to re-learn how to be together and focused on each other.

Families might be surprised.

* Our son was one of the earliest computer and gaming savants in the early 90s, winning tournaments and designing "skins" for games not long after AL Gore invented the innerwebs. Unfortunately, he also had a knack for catching the first viruses. One was so virulent that it wiped his computer and all of my work and required one of his father's computer geeks to come from the base with a DoD program to finally exterminate it. His uncle Bingley nicknamed him "Ebola," and it has been his nom-de-innerwebs ever since.