Paid Trolls?

Yes, Virginia, there are paid trolls. There are people who are paid to populate the "blogosphere" with negative, nasty right-wing posts.

I'm not going to provide the link, but you can Google if you wish and find them. There's a company out there called "Advantage" something or other. They make money hiring trolls. Their website says:

"Get ahead of your opponent with Profession­al Blog Warriors. Be prepared to "flood the zone" with comments from profession­als who are ready to put your talking points on the blogospher­e 24./7."

There is absolutely no way to ferret these people out by using their IP addresses as they are working from their own homes. But you can usually tell if you look through the history of their posts. They post a lot, and often they seem to "log in" and "log out" on the hour or half hour.

If someone calls them out, they will just rejoin with a different name.

Nobody would take such a job unless they were of bagger-thi­nker ilk anyway.

And, if someone is as heartless as many right-wingers who post at Huffington, Newsvine, and other blogs, I'm very glad that they aren't "wasting taxpayer money" collecting unemployme­nt insurance. However, I do hope they are paid as independen­t contractor­s so, when they are dumped, they don't get a dime in umemployme­nt benefits.

P.S.:  I just heard of a few good articles on the phenomenon known as "astroturfing".. I will find the links and post back.