It probably doesn't help that, while "Socal" is associated with LA in our consciousness, "socialism" is also associated with California, in the sense that California is a leftish, high-tax state. I certainly didn't agree with the appraisal of CA as socialist, but I've heard it so often that the confusion of parsing neologisms like "Socalistan" led me fairly readily to the assumption that this guy was making a political statement.