KEN LAYNE

America's grand experiment in producing just about nothing while importing a never-ending flow of Chinese crap while financing the nation's expensive habits -- from imperial wars to the freighters full of lead-poisoned corporate-character toys -- on sketchy debt finally appears to be coming to a close. When even cheerleaders like Dow Jones' MarketWatch begin posting gloomy assessments like this one, the "rebalancing" is well underway:

Growth based on debt is giving way to growth based on producing. Spending is out, while making and selling things is in.

The weaker dollar is both the cause and a symptom of this transformation. The strong-dollar policy adopted by the Clinton administration in 1995 has run its course. The economy is having to relearn how to live within its means, without importing all the goods and capital it consumes.

The transformation is wrenching for American consumers, who are seeing their life savings erode as their home equity shrinks and the Dow falls. Higher gasoline prices are biting into their paychecks, leaving them with less disposable incomes for the holidays.

In other words, it's a fine time to stop the dumb drudgery of "full time employment." So after nearly three years of toil, I've finally quit writing weblogs for Nick Denton. I had planned to do a daily post on Wonkette until the end of the year, but the whole situation was so dully unpleasant that I couldn't drag it out beyond Halloween.

Thirty-one years ago, Warren Zevon identified certain problems in this weird, pretty, violent anthem. Oh, and that's Jackson Browne. (The "Stand In The Fire" version is even better, with the Jimmy Carter lyrics.)

Oh, who is that? Mama Cass! And she's introducing this guy, doing that cheesy Summer of Love cash-in pop hit "San Francisco," which is revealed here to be a creepy VU/Nico song performed, ineptly, by Pavement, at the Monterrey Pop Festival. Oh, and hi Brian Jones. Sorry you drowned in Winnie the Pooh's swimming pool.

It's almost Thanksgiving, again.

It is always Thanksgiving ... for the Crab Men and Tape Worms.

One day we will laugh at the idea of making a "blog post" consisting of video clips stolen from "You Tube." That day was March 7, 2003.

This new picture up on top of the website, it was taken during the terrible fires of Autumn 2007. We fled to Santa Barbara. Actually, my wife and kids and dog and I had rented the nice house over Hendry's Beach before the big terrible Southern California fires, and the first wave of soot and red sky was caused by the Santa Ana winds blowing all the charred remains of the forgotten Zaca blaze that had burned up the backcountry since the second of September. Then came the real fires.

By late October, the sunset beach skies were blood red and El Sol vanished in the dark haze a full 15 degrees above the ocean horizon.

Still, the breeze was good and the beach was almost empty and the people, dogs and children had a fine time hiking and wading and annoying the Sea Anemones.

(When this website inevitably changes design again, the picture in question can be found here.)

Some people are having a big laugh over the St. Joseph sell-your-house superstition. The idea, in case you're not from a Catholic town, is that you buy a $5 plastic figurine of St. Joseph -- the guy who got stuck supporting Baby Jesus even though the alleged real father skipped town, never to be seen again. Then you dunk this thing in the dirt outside your house, head first, facing the street (or the house).

And then, magically, your home sells ... even during a horrible Housing Bubble Collapse that is systemically taking down the entire world's economy.

How does it work? In my family's case, it worked because we simultaneously cut the price far beyond what the greedy real-estate bubble agents suggested. That was the true miracle: a house in Nevada selling for what it was worth. People should try it. Turns out that 2005 house prices were a much bigger fantasy than God impregnating some gal just so His Only Son could live in obscurity for 30-odd years before having a short, failed career as a street preacher and then getting executed by the Italians.

Anyway, after a month or three back in Los Angeles, it suddenly occurred to me that our loyal plastic St. Joseph was still head first in the frozen dirt of Northern Nevada. We forgot to dig him up and give him a "place of honor" in our new (rented) home. What to do?

It only took a few minutes on the Internet to find alternate rules about the Josephian Tradition. We should leave the old Joseph inaction figure and buy a new trinket to put in a place of honor.

Well, sure. In our dangerous economic times, it would be irresponsible to not buy another religious trinket. But this time, I could shop around for a truly handsome voodoo figurine. It would have a lofty position upon the living room bookcase.

I found a shop in Jerusalem that markets hand-carved olive-wood biblical figures, for the Christian Pilgrims who still show up to see the Gospel locations picked at random by the Roman Emperor Constantine's crazed mom three-hundred years after the reported crucifixion of Jesus and more than two centuries after Jerusalem had been leveled by her own Empire. The olive trees grow right there where Jesus supposedly gave his "Uhh .... " prayer to his deadbeat dad. Only forty bucks!

A few weeks later, a nice box arrived from Israel. The wooden idol was much bigger than I expected, and the carving style is (paradoxically) similar to the Eastern Church's famous icons.

We put the statue on the bookshelves. My two-year-old was fascinated by the "man made out of wood," and he is allowed to play with The Man now and then. But we remind our kid to be careful, because this creepy wooden character is the guy who helped us sell the Nevada house before the whole market completely collapsed.

When 17,000 starving U.S. veterans of World War I marched on Washington in 1932 to demand an early activation of their service bonus from Herbert Hoover, the vets' encampments on the Potomac were infamously and brutally busted up by General Douglas MacArthur -- on a white steed -- who led young American troops in bloody attacks on older American troops who were literally begging for sustenance from the government they had served in the horrible "War To End All Wars."

Here's a detail I just picked up from Studs Terkel's "Hard Times," which I'm reading for the first time this week: MacArthur was aided and abetted by two other rising stars of the U.S. Military: George Patton and Dwight Eisenhower.

"Thank god," said President Hoover, "we still have a government that knows how to deal with a mob."

I've got a new column thing on AOL's Political Machine. The first one is already live, right here. It is a precious celebration of Thanksgiving and our precious presidential candidates, who are a bunch of venal sleazesacks.

Every Friday (or Thanksgiving Eve), just look for this thing:

This is one of those damned things you look at and listen to and think "Ah jesus that's the last thing I care about," and three weeks later the weird song is still pounding your skull in the shower. Plus, who knew the Scandinavians had to deal with the same level of 1970s' Jesus Freak Leisure Suit Horror.

Reason's Matt Welch and Nick Gillespie did a WashingtonPost.com live chat thing today. Last night, at some point when the wine was running out, I submitted a question for this online discussion about Ron Paul. And it actually showed up on the site, which is the first time one of my goofy questions has appeared on a Washington Post chat thing despite three years of regularly submitting obnoxious questions.

Thanks, Nick & Matt:

Los Angeles: Hi, libertarians. What would actually happen if Dr. Congressman Ron Paul became the president? Would he lead a Reagan-style administration that dramatically would repeal whatever's left of the New Deal protections for the vast majority of working Americans, or would he just be a lonely man in the White House totally ignored by the D.C./K Street bureaucracy? Basically, I'm wondering if the Pentagon would figure out a semi-legal way to assassinate Dr. Paul, and how the nine or ten people in America who pay attention to such things might respond to such murder. Thanks.

Matt Welch: Hello L.A.! I think one key thing to remember with President Dr. Congressman Paul is that he would most likely be totally handcuffed from doing anything he really wants, because his agenda is deeply unpopular with both parties. I do not believe that he would ever be able to go back to the gold standard, for instance. He might even unify Congress to fight against the crazy Dr. No in the White House. That would be fun...