Debate Tactics

Roger Cohen, who spent more than 25 years with ExxonMobil Corp said:

As for a peak and then abrupt decline in world oil production, Cohen called such predictions "an incoherent set of anecdotes." The peak theory is based on a model developed in 1956 by Marion King Hubbert, a Shell Oil Co. geophysicist who predicted that U.S. oil production would peak in 1970.

I long figured that the local right-wing blogosphere, consisting of such pseudo-luminaries as the Powerline lawyers and Lileks, act and write more like former (perhaps frustrated) high-school debaters or college-bowl quizzters than genuinely concerned citizenry. They all seem to display a competitive urge to argue a side, in which they don't actually have to believe in, in hopes that they continue to "win". What exactly they want to win I haven't a clue, but it seems like a good theory. So I knew that the NoDak educational system crowned Jim Lileks state debate champion long ago, but now I find out that 2/3 of the Powerline team have decided to share their master debating years with their readers:

That does it. If now everyone would just realize that all these right-wing ramblings constitute nothing more than reliving past faded glories, we could all go on and basically let them argue amongst themselves.

And the talking point about referring to a Democrat as belonging to the Democrat Party? It really amounts to nothing more than right-wing encoding of a swear word. The naughty wingnuts remain too civil to engage in curse words so basically use the secretly encrypted code to vent and whine to the other kids in the clubhouse, the student council, and their now adult debate team-mates.