Why is the GOP so furious at Ben Bernanke?

What a complete misread. Wall Street loves quantitative Easing. It inflates their profits without a commiserate rise in costs. The stock goes up in value but with high unemployment the costs don’t follow. The rising stock market gives the appearance of a rising economy even though there is little or no real growth. It’s an illusion that will benefit Obama (which is why he likes it) but not the economy. I would think that somebody so vehemently anti-Wall Street, would see the conflict here.

The TARP is what saved the financial crisis. Stimulus was just a waste of money.

@Jaxk I don’t entirely disagree with your obvious displeasure of Bernanke, but your understanding of the situation seems to be pretty false. The stock market has been improving quite healthily under Obama, there is no need for the Fed to take any action to further improve it to “give an illusion” that will benefit Obama.

The thought behind the quantitative easing is that it will increase confidence in the market, and get large firms or companies or brokers to start spending their money and boost the economy in all fields (jobs, stock market, etc, etc).

The reason many conservatives don’t like the idea is that in order to do quantitative easing we are basically making money out of thin air, in the long run doing this can have a very bad effect on inflation. At the moment though, inflation has been steady for a few years, so all things considered this isn’t the worst option on the table… and I have to agree with Bernanke’s rebuttle to congress…. if they did their jobs he wouldn’t be in a position to have to make some kind of move from his much more limited/controversial playbook.

It’s hard not to feel that they will hate anything that might make it easier for Obama to win in November.

AND the unemployment rate, which sky rocketed during the end of Bush’s administration, has been steadily dropping since the 3rd quarter of 2009.

Here is what one of the Republicans, Sen. Bob Corker, who was mentioned in the piece, said is the reason he are opposed to QE3.

” ‘I truly believe Chairman [Ben] Bernanke is beginning to do serious damage to the Fed as an institution,’ Corker said. ‘Open-ended purchases of mortgage-backed securities will politicize the Fed and add substantially to its balance sheet risks, but will not help our economy’s long-term growth prospects.’

“Corker, a member of the Senate Banking Committee, referred to the Fed’s plan to buy $40 billion in additional agency mortgage-backed securities per month for an open-ended amount of time. The central bank also decided to continue its bond selling and buying program known as Operation Twist, bringing the total monthly amount of longer-term securities being purchased by the Fed to $85 billion.

“The Fed also indicated maintaining interest rates at low levels of between 0 and ¼ percent would be warranted until at least mid-2015.

“Corker, who has not been quiet in expressing concerns over the possibility of Fed action, reiterated his opinion that changes in monetary policy would not be a vehicle for long-term stabilization of the nation’s economic issues. The senator added that economic uncertainty was more the result of inability on the part of policymakers to offer realistic solutions to fiscal problems, rather than the Fed’s managing of the money supply.

” ‘Business leaders all over the country tell me that economic growth is being impaired by public-policy uncertainty—mostly driven by the implications of our massive debt—not by a lack of cheap money,’ he said. ‘To get this economy really moving we need true fiscal reform that includes pro-growth tax reform, a long-term plan to restore solvency to Social Security and Medicare, and dramatically lowers the deficit.’

“Corker has repeatedly hinted at working on a bipartisan, long-term fiscal reform package to address the nation’s economic situation, but recently said he would not be ready to introduce it publicly until after November’s election. That timing would place the legislation directly in the line of the anticipated ‘fiscal cliff’ facing Congress at year’s end—a mix of tax increases and spending cuts set to be go into effect and potentially send the economy back into a recession unless an agreement is reached.”

Also, here is what another republican- who was mentioned in the story you posted, @ETpro – said about Bernanke’s QE3.

Senator David Vitter’s press release: (Washington, D.C.) – U.S. Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) expressed concern with the Federal Reserve’s decision to implement another round of quantitative easing – this time with no announced end in sight. Quantitative easing is a fiscal maneuver used by the central bank that seeks to provide a form of stimulus to the economy. The Fed purchases certain assets to increase their reserves and lower interest rates. Critics of this practice, such as Vitter, believe this printing of excess money to provide stimulus to big banks will prolong inflation and make it more severe.

“Chairman Bernanke and the Federal Open Market Committee are clearly feeling tremendous pressure to bailout the economy because of President Obama’s struggle to turn around the jobless numbers,” Vitter said. “The cost of this open ended easy money policy dramatically outweighs the short term benefits. The Fed’s move today puts us on the fast track to rampant inflation and potentially a return to a world with twenty percent interest rates. Chairman Bernanke needs to show some restraint and allow this economy to develop based on the fundamentals rather than the sugar high this action provides the stock market.”

Vitter had previously blocked the nominations of Jeremy Stein and Jerome Powell because they clearly support the current unprecedented activist monetary policies of the Fed. One of his expressed reasons for delaying their approval to the Federal Reserve was their support of this very practice of quantitative easing. Both Stein and Powell voted to support the measure today.

@tedd

@bkcunningham‘s post above is a fair picture of my position. Neither QE1 nor QE2 had much impact on economic growth but helped to bolster the stock market. Bernanke is feeling pressure to do something and he has few bullets left in his gun. I suppose we could look at this as coincidental that he is doing this in the last two months of the election cycle but I admit I’m suspicious by nature. I don’t think anything is a coincidence in an election year.

Interesting that Bernanke was appointed by George W. Bush and held over by President Obama. That hasn’t been mentioned a lot. According to statements by Bernanke, there was so little communication between the two parties, he stopped paying attention to the politicians and made his own decisions as he determined what was the right thing to do.

The GOP had nothin’ against Bernanke until Ron Paul got on his “Kill the Fed” soapbox.
Right along with the rest of Paul’s “libertarian” bandwagon that is at the core of current GOP policy acceleration, there is that plank.

There is some merit to Paul’s point that The Fed should be owned by the government rather than be privately owned. But the people who do own the Fed have always been in control of the economy and would not like to surrender it.

Senators Corker and Vitter should remember that it was Congressional brinksmanship on the debt level that caused the downgrading of US Debt. And their continued criticism without a valid alternative is just carping on someone who is acting on a non partisan basis. Ask Goldman Sachs what they think of quantitative easing. When Wall Street responds as positively as they have, I support it.

@Jaxk I don’t think there is any misread involved on my part. The policies of the Bush administration led to the lowest job growth numbers since the Hoover Administration led us into the Great Depression. He had us losing nearly 800,000 jobs a month by the end of his disastrous tenure. I think those fighting to elect Mitt Romney with his plans to go back to Bush policies injected with steroids are doing the misreading of history. Between the Bush TARP that helped save the big banks, Obama’s stimulus and the Fed’s QE1 and QE2, we’ve gone from losing nearly a million jobs a month to 29 straight months of private sector job growth. In the last three years, the economy has added more jobs than it did in the 8 year Bush was President.

According to the GOP, presidents can’t create jobs but Obama should be fired for not creating enough. Can you not see the absurdity of that claim? Romney says government can’t create jobs but his government will. What’s wrong with this picture?

We would arguably have done even better if Roadblock Republicans hadn’t blocked Obama’s infrastructure jobs initiative in an attempt to deliberately sabotage the US economy so they could blame Obama for their mayhem. Bernanke is exactly right when he says the biggest problem facing us is a do-nothing congress stymied by Roadblock Republicans who will only start trying to help America succeed it they get their hands on the wheels of power. It’s sad to see a once great party behave this way, but the Tea Party extremists seem now to be in control. The sane Republicans of 2006 tried to ride the Tea Party tiger, and it turned around and ate them.

Romney and Ryan’s claim that the Fed action won’t work, and that it’s going to help Obama’s reelection chances show they are lying through their teeth and contradicting themselves. They can’t have it both ways.

I think @tedd‘s analysis of the Fed’s move is more accurate. And the board vote was nearly unanimous.

@janbb That is a certainty.

@Dutchess_III True. The GDP has been increasing as well, after having dived nearly as much in percentage as it did in the Great Depression. Manufacturing jobs are on the increase now after decades of shrinking. @Jaxk is simply not considering all the facts when he falsely claims this is all about Wall Street. He’s equally misinformed (or informed by his right-wing world view) when he claims I hate Wall Street. I do not. I hate its recent abuses.

@bkcunningham Interesting. Two scandal ridden Republican Senators who have, since Obama took office, voted against every move to do anything to reverse Bush’s Great Recession, are now outraged that something might get done that they can’t put a roadblock in front of. Why am I not surprised?

@Jaxk In the answer to @Dutchess_III I rebutted that falsehood. We are far from where we need to be, and if we maintain a congress gridlocked by partisan efforts to destroy the economy for political gain, we may stay that way for another 2 or 4 years, but all the key economic indicators are moving in the right direction.

@dabbler Paul may have a point on auditing the Fed, but he’s off his rocker when he suggests that eliminating anything remotely like a central bank capable of reviving credit markets and returning to the Gold Standard is a panacea for perfection. Most Americans know about the Great Depression, but are not aware there were 12 other depressions before it. Boom and bust was the order of the day when we were on the gold standard and had nothing approximating a central bank. Our economy has been far more stable since the establishment of the Fed and it being charged (after the advent of the Great Depression) with the charter and power to make sure that did not happen again.

@zenvelo Thanks for backing up the point I was making above to @bkcunningham.

@ETpro, you asked the question, why are republicans so furious at Bernanke. You linked a story and I used two sources from your linked story telling you in their own words why they are furious at Bernanke. You shouldn’t be surprised. I simply provided what you asked for in your question. : )

@ETpro Agreed. I’m not for eliminating the Fed. We need the Fed and we need Glass-Steagall back.
I just agree with the point that it should be owned by We,The People, i.e. it should not be owned by private global financial superpowers.

@ETpro I rarely read long-assed posts but I read every word of yours! So logical. I wish there had been a GA after each paragraph.

@ETpro

I obviously don’t agree. The job loses stopped before Stimulus and before QE1 and QE2. There is no realistic way to connect those with the massive job loses when Obama took office. I don’t hate Bernanke, hell I actually kinda like him. That doesn’t mean I agree with everything he does. Nor do I agree with Romney that he is the worst Fed Chair we’ve had. The truth is Bernanke is trending in dangerous water. Whether he can arrest the inflation when it starts in earnest, is a risky proposition at best. Everything he is doing has risk associated and the benefit is small at best.

As for creating jobs, it is not very hard to understand. Government doesn’t create jobs, they create an environment where jobs can flourish. Or they create an environment where jobs shrivel and die.You love to use that ‘jobs created for 29 straight months’ line but it doesn’t mean anything. Hell Bush created jobs for 50 straight months, so what?

And again with the talking points “Mitt Romney with his plans to go back to Bush policies”. What policies? Do you guys think you’re running against Bush? Hell the biggest contributor to the recession was the gutting of Glass-Steagal and that happened under Clinton. Enough with the meaningless talking points.

@Jaxk To address at least the first part of your post, regarding ”...the massive job loses when Obama took office.” see this graph. It’s very easy to see that it did not START when Obama took office. It started well before then.

It’s easy to see that unemployment started sky-rocketing at the beginning of 2008. It coincides with the market bust, when Bush was in office. It’s also easy to see that the trend continued until the 3rd quarter of Obama’s first year in office, in 2009, and has been steadily dropping since then.

@Dutchess_III

I’m not sure where the disagreement is. I didn’t say the job losses started when he took office only there there were massive job losses when he too office. The losses occurred between the middle of ‘08 and the middle of ‘09. I have no disagreement with that. Obama took office in the middle of the steepest part of the curve.

Where we will likely disagree is the idea that the job figures have been steadily improving since ‘09. The unemployment rate as measured is showing improvement but the number of unemployed isn’t. If we had the same participation rate as when Obama took office the unemployment number would be 11.1%. That’s not an improvement. As people drop out of the workforce, the unemployment numbers decline but it’s an illusion. The number of people on welfare, disability and food stamps rises proportionally. That’s exactly what has been happening. We’re not putting people back to work merely shifting them to government subsidies.

Sorry a few typos in the above. S/B – I didn’t say the job losses started when he took office only that there were massive job losses when he took office.

@Jaxk “And again with the talking points “Mitt Romney with his plans to go back to Bush policies”. What policies? Do you guys think you’re running against Bush?”

Hey, your committe’s the one who’s saying that he’s going to go back

Alexandra Franceschi, Specialty Media Press Secretary of the Republican National Committee

“ESPUELAS: Now, how different is that concept from what were the policies of the Bush administration? And the reason I ask that is because there’s some analysis now that is being published talking about the Bush years being the slowest period of job creation since those statistics were created. Is this a different program or is this that program just updated?

FRANCESCHI: I think it’s that program, just updated.”

And it’s your guy who’s palling around and taking advice from all the Bush veterans

@BhacSsylan

Kudos for finding that obscure interview with those obscure people. I suppose I should argue against the meaning of what was said but I won’t. An embarassing interview for me.

@bkcunningham And i posted my reaction to what Senators Corker and Vitter said. Thanks for your answer, but I feel I have a perfect right to respond to that answer.

@dabbler I fully agree that the Fed should be a real central bank. But with the current Congressional balance of power, Republicans would never allow that. Ditto on returning to Glass-Steagall.

@Dutchess_III Here’s an even more dramatic view of job gains.losses month by month. The first two charts show that Bush’s TARP and the subsequent Obama Stimulus and FED quantitative easing dramatically turned the tide on job losses. It’s an utter fiction that big job losses did not start till Obama took office at the end of January, 2009. The fact is that within 2 months of taking office, the dwindling spiral reversed and we began moving back in the right direction. BTW, all the charts on that page are very informative.

@Jaxk It’s not an illusion that the economy has added 3.5 million jobs in the past 29 months. If Roadblock Republicans had not scuttled the President’s plan to put a million people back to work repairing and building new infrastructure, that would be 4.5 million jobs.

That is a great link @ETpro. How the hell do you guys all know so much about this stuff?? Anybody wanna talk about teaching and jails and stuff that I can talk about??!!

Ask and ye shall receive, Seek and ye shall Find. I love to talk about teaching and jails.

@ETpro

Yes those graphs are informative. If you follow them to the end, you will see that the estimates place us fairly close to where we are with or without the stimulus. So if Obama had done nothing at all, we’d be right where we are and the same number or more jobs would have been created. But we would have $6 trillion less debt. Now imagine what could have been done with some pro-growth strategies. If we had made the tax rate permanent, that whole issue would be off the table and business would have to worry about what is going to happen. If we had opened up the federal land for drilling, millions of new jobs. If we had not threatened businesses with Cap N Trade and allowed them to grow.

I know you think the current growth is great but compare our recovery to other recessions and you’ll see this one is very anemic. If all those $trillions only got us back to where we would be without them, how can that be the best we could do?

@Jaxk It’s difficult to compare this recession to other recessions since it was more than twice as bad as any of them excluding only the Great Depression.

I also want to point out that a pretty hefty chunk of that 6 trillion in new debt was automatic spending that would’ve gone into effect regardless of who was president (something to the tune of 3ish trillion), whilst almost all of the remaining came from the bank bailout, which was passed under Bush but largely distributed under Obama.

The tax rate is a stupid argument. They’ve been low for the last decade and look what happened to the economy. Lowering taxes does not in and of itself give the economy a boost. We already have opened up federal lands to drilling. There are hundreds of thousands of acres of land that’s already had drilling rights auctioned off to major oil companies here in the US. They haven’t even started building the infrastructure to drill because they’re trying to keep oil prices up. And millions of jobs? HA. Optimistic estimates were hundreds of thousands…. also worth noting that the same money put into green jobs like solar and wind would actually create several million new jobs. And aside from drilling the most oil this year that our country has ever drilled, we’ve also expanded natural gas drilling greatly under Obama (largely from stimulus funds).

You’re just pushing the same old crap that Republicans have always pushed. You’re literally giving me the Bush economic plan. How’d that work out for you?

@tedd

Actually it is not difficult to compare them at all. Every recession will have it’s own unique characteristics but things like unemployment and GDP are quite comparable. The screams from Democrats that this one is special simply doesn’t hold up. The only thing special about this one is the government response to it, which is pretty much the same as the response the the Great Depression. The response to the great depression drug out our recovery for more than a decade. The response to this one is the same and will likely drag out the recovery for more than a decade as well.

As far as your budget deficit, it’s wrong. The bush budget would have created a $400 billion deficit. Tarp which was passed under Bush was a loan program which has been mostly repaid. That doesn’t add to the debt. Stimulus and all related programs were totally Obama’s. The increase in The Omnibus spending was a massive increase in the federal budget and was higher than Bush would approve. Obama raised it and passed it. 2009 was going to be a bad year for deficits no matter what. The problem is that what was supposed to be a shot in the arm has turned into a new baseline. The lack of a budget is no accident. Democrats want to use the continuing resolution for spending because it locks in the spending increases.

You use a false argument about the taxes. You’re right in that they have been in place for a decade. letting them expire is a tax increase. Making them permanent is not a tax reduction. I don’t know of any reputable economist that would recommend a tax increase in the face of a recession. And the continuing argument over letting them expire and even raising taxes is an issue.

Your argument on oil drilling doesn’t hold up either. Oil from federal lands has decreased. Oil from private land has increased. The oil companies will drill if they have a chance of finding any appreciable amount of oil. The lands they have that they are not using simply don’t have any reasonable chance of producing oil. The lands that do have large quantities of oil are being restricted by the government. The estimate of 400,000 jobs is an estimate of jobs by 2013. That’s before the oil even comes to fruition. That’s just opening the lands for exploration. The gas increases are in spite of Obama, rather than because of him. And you ‘Green Jobs’ is a joke. How many Solyndra’s do you need? Wind and Solar won’t replace oil in any event. They replace coal. We don’t use oil to produce electricity. You’re mixing apples and oranges. And lastly we don’t have to put any money into drilling for oil, the oil companies will do that. All we have to do is let them.

@tedd

Maybe you need a little help on this. Oil generates 1% of our electricity. It is insignificant. If you cover the US in Solar panels the most you can save is 1% since that is also the amount of our oil usage for electricity. Oil is used for transportation and industrial purposes. Electricity won’t replace those. Here’s a reasonable projection for jobs if we were to open government lands for drilling. You really do need to get information from somewhere other than the liberal blogs.

We spent $603 Billion from the TARP funds. From that we have received $428 billion in paybacks, interest and stock rebuys. I read that as most of the funds have come back. You can read it anyway you want.

Being an investor in Solar doesn’t mean your smart. In fact I would argue just the opposite. The solar industry is dropping like a rock. About 80% in the past three years despite massive inestment by the government. While you whining that China is subsidizing solar, our own goverment is doing the same. Spending billions on companies in the way of guarenteed loans and billions more on installation. And let’s not forget the additional billions for installations by the state governments. Solar is still tanking. Smart investment? I would not think so. The only reason China’s solar industry is growing is because they sell to us and we subsidize it. They certainly don’t use it themselves.

As far as Stimulus is concerned According to www.recovery.gov, the self-reporting website set up by the U.S. government, $772 billion of the $840 billion allocated to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (commonly known as the stimulus package) had been spent as of Feb 2012. Not much left, eh?

So realistically, you don’t know how oil is used, you are heavily invested in Solar, don’t have a clue how much money has been spent and you call me stupid. You really need to update your reading list.

As for FDR, I’d be more than happy to discuss him with anyone. At least anyone with a brain.

@Jaxk Most of this is painful because I can just talk to you until I’m blue in the face and you’ll still think the wrong things, so let me just point to the two things that I can show you 2+2=4.

1)Oil comes out of the ground in the form of crude oil, something you may have heard of. Crude oil is essentially useless, it’s too “crappy” to really use in any processes for which we use gas/oil/combustion/etc. They take this crude oil to places called refineries. At refineries they use the basic physical properties of various hydrocrabon chains that are found in crude oil (melting point, boiling point, effects of pressure, etc) to refine the crude oil into usable compounds. The one most people can name off the top of their head is gasoline, but they also refine methane, butane, and natural gas. This natural gas is almost exclusively used in natural gas power plants, which supply 20–25% of our electricity needs in this country. In fact until the recent boon in natural gas drilling in the US, the vast majority of natural gas came from this “refining” process.

I’m familiar with this process because I made natural gas in a chemistry lab my sophomore year, from crude oil.

2) Solar power is at the moment not cheaper than fossil fuels. That’s simple fact. Until the 2008 economic crash though, when governments pulled their money out of green energy research, the process was improving by leaps and bounds and most estimates predicted it would become cheaper than fossil fuels within 20 years (in part because of rising costs of fossil fuels due to them being finite).

As you pointed out, over the last 3 years the solar industry has dropped to the tune of 80%, but what you don’t seem to understand is why that happened. When the market crashed in 2008, solar was certainly going to go through some tough times. But the companies with good products were already secure enough in their resources that they would almost undoubtedly survive. First Solar, Solyndra, Evergreen, three US companies with some of the most superior solar-tech in the world, and a pipeline of power plants already coming down the line worldwide. Their Chinese counterparts however, used flawed parts with materials that don’t pass inspection (think how their toys have lead in them, same type of thing). So the smart money was on investing in the US companies, which the US did, by giving them loans so that they could open up power plants. I can’t stress that last point enough, the loans were to open power plants, not production, not research, power plants (in fact to that end First Solar has already opened 2 of 3 planned with their loan money).

What no one foresaw is that the Chinese government, rather than allowing the Free Market to bring about the end of most of their Solar companies, instead bought out the entire industry. Then they completely subsidized the Chinese companies and increased their production and output. In a market that saw a decrease in demand, this literally flooded the market with Chinese products, driving down the cost of everyone’s products. The Chinese companies literally sell every solar panel at a complete loss. And the Chinese government continues to pump them full of money, and then have them buy the superior technology from US companies that go under (See Solyndra and Evergreen). You want to point to the tens of millions in loans the US guaranteed under the stimulus to US companies… China has put billions of dollars into it’s companies each of the last 3 years.

The 80% drop in the Solar Industry came from China flooding the market with cheap panels in an effort to bankrupt the US competition and take control of the market. In fact were it not for a single patent at First Solar that allows them exclusive rights to an entire branch of Solar Power… they probably would’ve succeeded and the entire Solar industry would be in Chinese hands. Makes you wonder why they want it so badly that they’re willing to dump good money after bad by the billions year after year.

And to correct you, China’s solar industry isn’t growing. They have factories full of panels that will never sell. They could stop producing for the next decade and still have product to sell, because they’ve literally doubled their production from 2008 when the product was in high demand.

Your ignorance on both of these things shows me why you shouldn’t be allowed to vote.

@tedd

It sounds like you should have stayed in school. Natural gas comes directly out of the ground. Usually associated with oil deposits but also with coal and shale deposits. That’s why it’s called NATURAL Gas Even if your sophomoric view were true, which it isn’t, you would need to explain how solar would change the amount of oil we use. Here is a list of products made from oil. Tell us which ones would be eliminated by solar power. Just because you ate a burrito and created gas, doesn’t make you knowledgeable.

And just so that we can understand your point (as if you had one), you say China has enough solar panels on the shelf to last the next decade. Yet they are still pumping billions into it to make more. Are you saying that is a smart strategy? I hope First Solar is not the stock you own. It has gone from $160/sh to about $20/sh in the past year and a half. Another smart strategy?

Frankly, I don’t know where you get your information or even if you get information but you need a little more research. Or maybe just a little research. Your high school sophomore chemistry is letting you down. Maybe you could supplement it with Junior chemistry. Or try posting a link to some of your more asinine theories and by looking it up you might learn something.

@Jaxk facepalm. I never said that natural gas doesn’t come from the ground. My point was that until recently the majority of the natural gas we used in our natural gas power plants came from refining crude oil… which is simple *fact.

And solar most definitely contributes to energy independence. It could conceivably replace the need for any other power sources (though using a “one system only” power plan isn’t a smart plan). We would still need oil for plastics, gasoline, and the like, but our demand would go down. Not to mention if we reaffirmed our local sources of power to creating gasoline (bio-fuels, natural gas motors, etc) we could drastically cut down our intake of foreign oil… solar would make the ability to use those local sources for gasoline much more plausible.

And there’s nothing illegal about what China is doing. If I wanted to make cars and give them away for free, the Free Market says I can do that. I would lose money hand over fist, that is generally the deterrent to doing something such as that, but as I pointed out the Chinese government is footing the bill because they know it benefits them to have the solar industry completely within their borders. And my guy in the white house is inflicting tariffs and what have you on China, or have you not paid attention to the news for the last 3 years?

and lol… who said I lost money?

And yes, I call you an idiot, because you don’t understand basic facts. When I call you out and point out an inaccuracy in your statements or claims, you simply move onto the next falsehood and attempt to forget the last one ever happened… until at some point down the line you come full circle and repeat the first lie again, as if I hadn’t already refuted it.

We’re all pretty familiar with your schtick on this site. Maybe you should try the Fox News comment section. You’ll be amongst ignorant friends there.

@Jaxk Always a source of hilarity !
After peppering your posts with dismissive insults, making bad-tempered wholesale misinterpretations for the convenience of your conclusions, only vaguely if at all answering any point made, and countering with marginally relevant information as if it debunks anything, you haul out the phrase “reasonable debate”.
Kudos! You have never been in better form as a triumph of belligerent pretzel logic. It is obviously intentional, and it shows what real determination and effort in that direction can produce.

@dabbler

I respond in kind. The addition of your gibberish does nothing to advance your case. If you have a point to make, make it. I can only assume your point is to give us a good example of belligerent pretzel logic. Sorry delete the logic part.

I made my point just fine. Your assumption is characteristically incorrect.