You can put away your cowboy boots and ten gallon hats. The fake southern drawl no longer has to strain your tongue. Forget the cattle show in Dallas/Fort Worth. You can stop attempting to line dance and two step. Kiss off the oil men of West Texas. Don't try to memorize "The Eyes of Texas Are Upon You". Instead, cue up "California Dreamin'." Why? Because as of this last election, the Lone Star State is out and the Golden State is in.

So don those Diesel jeans, sport those Armani sunglasses, bleach those teeth and head for the sands of Venice Beach. Learn where Stockton and Modesto are located. Dine at Cantor's Deli in the Fairfax District of Los Angeles. Beg for Oscar, Grammy and Emmy tickets and invite the agents and the moguls from the studios as your dates. LaLa Land is where it's at.

According to "Lexington" in the The Economist, the last election saw a decisive shift of power away from the South (especially Texas...) to California. The column says:

"The biggest winner from this internal revolution is America’s biggest state, California. Nancy Pelosi, who has been speaker of the House since 2007, is no longer restrained by a Republican president. Californians run two of the most powerful committees in the House: Energy and Commerce (Henry Waxman), Education and Labour (George Miller), plus an important subcommittee on intelligence (Jane Harman). Most of the Californians act as Mrs Pelosi’s praetorian guard in the House, not least because she sometimes gives them a lift home on her official jet.

Two of the most powerful voices in the Senate, Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, are also Californians. Mrs Boxer has already made it clear that, as chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, she will do her best to improve California’s crumbling roads. And Mrs Feinstein, who runs the Intelligence Committee, has already given Mr Obama a flea in his ear for not consulting her before nominating Leon Panetta to run the CIA. "

Lexington continues:

"This geographical shift has brought dramatic changes in style and substance. California’s Democratic House delegation is the most diverse on the Hill, with 10 white women, nine Hispanics, four black women and two Asian-Americans. It is also one of the most left-wing, according to the voting records. It is hard to imagine a bigger change from the southern-fried conservatives who once lorded it over Congress.

Equally striking is the social difference between the Californians and the southerners. Mrs Pelosi, Mrs Feinstein and Mrs Harman are all married to wealthy businessmen—extremely wealthy in Mrs Harman’s case. Mrs Pelosi’s district, San Francisco, is a combination of a playground for the ultra-rich and a sewer for the underclass, with the middle classes priced out of the market. Mr Waxman’s district, West Los Angeles, is the glitziest concentration of wealth on the planet. The southerners, by contrast, were mostly men of modest means who represented middle-class suburbs, a world away from Pacific Heights, where Mrs Pelosi lives, and Rodeo Drive, in the heart of Mr Waxman’s district.

The Californian Democrats’ agenda is the polar opposite of the southern Republicans’: pro-green and pro-union, anti-business and anti-war. Mr Waxman and Mrs Boxer have long outdone most of their party in supporting tougher environmental standards. As the architect of much of the anti-tobacco legislation of the 1990s, Mr Waxman is casting around for new monsters to slay. (High on his list are energy companies.) "

Excuse me, but can I borrow your map of the Hollywood Star homes?