I read nothing of the sort into Ha Ha's post, so why are you inventing arguments for Ha Ha?
Current thinking on bird evolution begins with feathered dinosaurs, feathers intended, as in today's chicks, to keep the beasts warm.
Large feathers on a small critter in a windy day could help it jump further, avoiding a predator, or catching its lunch.
Once you have airborne dinos, then every small improvement in flying gives them an advantage, and hence more natural selection.
I think that's the point Ha Ha made, and don't "get" why you wish to distort it?
I have a question about what you wrote above. It would seem that there is some prime actor in that thinking. As if someone thought to give them feathers against the cold. What environmental pressure causes feathers?
Instead what would happen is a clutch of dinosaurs is born with one or some all suffering from the same genetic defect - feathers. This defect would be the cause of all kinds of problems without all the basic skills necessary to keep feathers clean. You could just imagine how messy feathers would be. So, the defect would have to include a secondary defect of knowing how to clean feathers. It might also need another third defect, some form of molting or shedding that worked in conjunction with the reptilian shedding of old skin, although I suppose that feathers with a strong quill and soft feathers might just allow skin to dry out and rub off. No matter what the defect of feathers would also be random. It would also be recessive.
By environmental chance this recessive trait comes during a time of reduced temperature. Allowing the few dinosaurs with featherlike defects (recessive) to survive at a marginally better rate than those with dominant traits. Over time the low temps increase the margin and a recessive trait becomes dominant in some subset of dinosaurs that are the forbears to modern birds. But, genetically how does that happen?
Recessive traits are largely debilitating or neutral, but the killer detail is that they are recessive. If I understand Mendelian genetics correctly, then it's really hard to randomly breed recessive genes, even with environmental pressure. Net, net, net extinction is the actual road when environmental pressures overwhelm a creatures ability to survive in that environment. It takes the mind of man to consciously breed in or out recessive traits and the results are most often a weakened domesticated creature/plant v. it's wild competitors. Dandelions v. domesticated roses comes to mind.
I just see this as a major flaw in the currently postulated Theory of Evolution. For the record I'm agnostic on the issue overall. I believe in God and the correct understanding of Genesis' Hebrew doesn't preclude very long times or activities between 'days'. Nor is methodology spelled out in creation, other than it is by God's power, which by definition is limitless or else he wouldn't be God.
I also accept as fundamental that science cannot rely on faith and that the scientific method is an effective means for discovering new physical truths. None of that threatens my belief system.