According to the Wall Street Journal, "...two years ago the U.S. Chamber of Commerce publicly warned members to stay out of Mississippi.  Doctors have fled the state or quit practicing, 71 insurance companies have pulled out, and a recent study by a local business group predicted the loss of 10,000 more jobs by 2009.

Now there's the Toyota plant that got away...." 

Why?  Because the state flag has a Confederate battle flag in the canton?

This is precisely what the flag-changers in Mississippi said would happen, remember, if the state did not get rid of that evil Confederate symbol in its flag.  The state would be hurt as business and industry moved out or didn't come to Mississippi.

There's just one thing wrong with blaming it on the flag.... It's not true. 

The WSJ reports, "Mississippi lost a bid for an $800 million assembly plant because -- as Dennis Cuneo, senior vice president of Toyota Motor North America, wrote Governor Barbour in April with sarariman-like understatement -- "the litigation climate in Mississippi is unfavorable." 

Litigation climate?  What's that got to do with the flag?

Right.  Nuthin'.

When Sam's Club and Wal-Mart took it upon themselves to ruin Maurice Bessinger on trumped up charges, they got lots of calls, letters and emails from angry Southrons.  They sent out form letters just chock full of phony-baloney sanctimoniousness, including this choice tidbit:

"Wal-Mart and SAM'S Club found that Mr. Bessinger's company is distributing materials that are contrary to one of our core principles, respect for the individual."

Respect for the INDIVIDUAL, huh?  Unless they happen to be WOMEN????

Sez a report in USA Today on a class action lawsuit against WalMart by women employees: "One woman claims she was taken to a strip club. Others say they were told to "doll up," called a "worthless broad" or asked to wear lower-cut shirts, and female employees were paid 5% to 15% less than men in similar jobs, according to the lawsuit. 

Knowledge of the discrimination stretched all the way to the top executives at Wal-Mart's corporate headquarters in Bentonville, Ark., lawyers say."

This might be a good time to tell these sorry, low-down hypocrites to put Maurice's sauce back on their shelves -- and pay him some apology money. 

What is it with these antiSouthern, antiflag companies and their utterly rotten treatment of women? 

Home Depot (whose chairman, nonGeorgian Authur Blank, paid huge bucks to influence legislators to change the real Georgia flag against the will of the people) also seems to have something against women -- something that cost it quite a bit of money....

"In recent years, major employers have paid millions of dollars to settle similar claims from smaller numbers of plaintiffs. Most have been settled before trial. In 1997, Home Depot settled a sex-bias lawsuit for $104 million for a class of more than 25,000 women."

The AP headline reads, "Busing scars sting after 30 years"  Where?  In Little Rock, Arkansas?  Jackson, Mississippi?  Birmingham, Alabama? 

Why, no. 

"BOSTON, Massachusetts (AP) -- Thirty years to the day after a federal judge issued Boston's landmark school desegregation ruling, city officials continued to grapple with the negative images created in its aftermath, when white residents threw rocks at buses carrying black children."