Lodi is just south of Sacramento. The Jawa Report and California Mafia has the latest on the terrorist cell broken up at a Lodi mosque.

Update: Here's a little information about Lodi, to put the strangeness of a sleeper cell in that town within some context.

Lodi was incorporated in 1906. Its current population is about 59,000. From 1992 to 1994, population remained steady at 53,000, but it began to grow slowly after 1995. The city sits on 12.2 square miles in San Joaquin County, and U.S. Highway 99 runs through the town, connecting it with Stockton, six miles to the south, and Sacramento, 35 miles to the north.

San Joaquin County voted for Bush in 2004, by 54% to 46%, although i would guess that the margin was much wider in Lodi than in the more urban and union friendly Stockton.

Crime in Lodi was higher than the U.S. average in 2002. Still, there were only 4 murders, 6 rapes, 75 robberies, 203 assaults, 436 burglaries and 486 auto thefts that year. By contrast, my hometown of Oakland had 108 murders, 249 rapes, 2,452 robberies, 2,852 assaults, 4,252 burglaries and 6,259 auto thefts in 2002.

Lodi's unemployment rate in 2000 was 6.5%, somewhat higher than California's average, which was 4.9% that year. The biggest employer in Lodi by far is the school district, followed by Blue Shield, the one hospital in town, General Mills Foods and a cannery. The local Wal-Mart and Target employ about 200 each.

Median household income in 2000 was $35,391. The median housing price today is $148,500.

Lodi's racial breakdown includes 63.5% White Non-Hispanic, 27.1% Hispanic, 1.3% Indian (from India), and 0.6% African-American. i would guess that Pakistanis would fall under the category of Other Asian, which comes in at 1.2%. Of the 18.8% foreign born citizens of Lodi, 12.7% are from Latin America and 3.9% are from Asia.

And of course, according to Lodi historian John Fogerty, those persons intending to pass through Lodi end up staying an average of seven months or more. And they'll be walking out, if they go.

Update: The late local news on at least two of the tv stations here in Sacramento was very irritating. They seem much more concerned about the possibility of anti-muslim "hate-crimes" than they are about the possibility that some terrorists might have been PLANNING TO BLOW UP HOSPITALS AND SUPERMARKETS!

The media are on the side of the enemy. (That means you KCRA and News 10.)

Update 2: Some excellent commentary is at Varifrank.

Posted by: annika at 08:11 AM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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