AOL HuffPo staffer Jason Linkins would like you deadbeat AOL HuffPo bloggers to know he actually works for a living:

Being a paid employee comes with many expectations and responsibilities. Let’s run some of them down, shall we? First of all, there’s this expectation that on a daily basis, you will show up and do work. In an office and everything! There you are subject to things like deadlines — you actually have to produce writing on a regular basis…

Is the State of the Union tonight? You’ll be working during that time. Is there a debate? Got a night of election returns coming? Plan on staying late. Did some madman just put several people in Tucson, Arizona in the hospital on a Saturday? Cancel your plans, because you’ve got to call in and get to work. You are, theoretically, on call, 24-7, to get the work done.

Those are the sorts of responsibilities, that, when they are fulfilled, entitle one to a “salary.”

Obviously, we’re doing it wrong.

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It’s no secret that the Huffington Post is really a celebrity-gossip site that dabbles in politics on the side. As Nick Denton didn’t say when he cut Wonkette loose, link-baiting political stories don’t pay the rent.

But we didn’t realize how insidious professional HuffPo editors were at their craft until this morning, when we read this breaking story about a pending Major Sporting Event:

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Honestly, we don’t know what it is about billboards. They’re not seen by many people live, compared to the traffic they get when they’re plastered all over the Interwebs. And yet, they’re a part of Americana. Ugly Americana, mind you, but still.

Anti-Obama billboard raises eyebrows [Daily Sentinel, Florida]

Spoiler alert! The culprit is, as always, Americans: “By 47 to 45 percent, Americans say Obama is a better president than George W. Bush. But that two point margin is down from a 23 point advantage one year ago.” [CNN]

Somebody posted in a sign in our neighborhood the other day, warning residents to be on the lookout for thieves. While various stereotypes ran through our head, we’re pretty sure none of our Fantasy Perps were wearing suits:

When Jason Grodensky bought his modest Fort Lauderdale home last December, he paid cash. But seven months later, he was surprised to learn that Bank of America had foreclosed on the house, even though Grodensky did not have a mortgage.

Grodensky knew nothing about the foreclosure until July, when he learned that the title to his home had been transferred to a government-backed lender. “I feel like I’m hanging in the wind and I’m scared to death,” said Grodensky. “How did some attorney put through a foreclosure illegally?”

Although you can thank BofA for that one, GMAC Mortgage gets credit for others. The banks are on such a foreclosure spree right now — a Chase Home Finance executive tallied 18,000 a month in her purview — it’s easier to just skip the details and dump all the paperwork on the courts.

Man’s home sold out from under him in foreclosure mistake [South Florida Sun-Sentinel, via Tom Tomorrow]

“The number of people living in poverty has climbed to 14.3 percent of Americans, with the ranks of working-age poor reaching the highest level since at least 1965. The Census Bureau says that about 43.6 million people, or 1 in 7, were in poverty last year. That’s up from 39.8 million, or 13.2 percent, in 2008.” [AP/Raw Story]

Yesterday as families were sitting down to dinner in San Bruno, California, a 30-inch wide, 60 year old natural gas transmission pipeline owned by Pacific Gas & Electric exploded, creating an apocalyptic inferno of flames shooting hundreds of feet in the air, something that fire department officials said they had never before seen, and the fire was not extinguished until this morning.

Aircraft normally used to fight forest fires had to be called in to drop water and chemicals over the suburban neighborhood.  The explosion created a 30 foot deep crater, and the fires destroyed at least 30 homes, injured more than 50 people (many of them critically burned), killed at least four people, and left more than a dozen family pets reported to the Humane Society as missing.  Hundreds of people were evacuated, including from a nursing home.

Officials say that the death toll will undoubtedly go up as the rescue crews survey the area with cadaver dogs.  The fireball and smoke plume was so high in the sky that your San Francisco correspondent was able to see the smoke plume from twelve miles to the north.  The morning after images are akin to those of Dresden in the ’40s.

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