NY mountain hits minus -114 degrees wind chill at summit

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While New York City had its coldest start to Valentine’s Day in 100 years on Sunday, it would seem balmy compared with the wicked wind chill at upstate Whiteface Mountain.

As temperatures dropped across the Northeast from the blast of a polar vortex, the wind chill at Whiteface, near Lake Placid, made it feel like a body- and mind-numbing minus 114 degrees late Saturday and into Sunday. Central Park could only muster a minus 1 degree.

The Wild Center, which works with the Atmospheric Science Research Center at SUNY Albany, recorded the frigid temperature from a research station at the mountain’s summit.

The Wild Center This is what happens when a tree is exposed to minus 114 degrees wind chill at Whiteface Mountain's summit.

POLAR VORTEX TO BLAST NORTHEAST WITH COLDEST AIR IN A DECADE

“The extreme temperatures (Saturday) night on Whiteface have to do with its elevation, 4,865 feet and the wind speed,” Tracey Legat, the center’s communications manager at the center told the Daily News. “The mountains of the Adirondacks are often some of the coldest places in the lower 48 states during the year.”

The Wild Center Winds at Whiteface Mountain's summit blasted at 45 mph on Saturday night going into Sunday morning.

The Arctic winds howled through the summit at about 45 mph, freezing almost everything in their path.

The center managed to capture a photo of a tree being turned into a popsicle as the winds formed “monstrous rime ice” around it.

The Wild Center On Sunday morning, the wind chill on Whiteface Mountain's summit was colder than the windchill in Antarctica.

The mountain’s summit was actually colder than Antarctica on Sunday, according to the National Weather Service.

ang@nydailynews.com

Tags: upstate new york , nyc weather

COMMENTS

Moody’s model gives Dem candidate advantage in 2016

thehill.com

The Democratic presidential nominee will win the race for the presidency but the election is shaping up as historically tight, according to a political model. 

Less than 11 months from Election Day, Moody’s Analytics is predicting that whomever lands the Democratic nomination will capture the White House with 326 electoral votes to the Republican nominee’s 212. 

Those results are heavily dependent on how swing states vote. The latest model from Moody’s reflects razor-thin margins in the five most important swing states — Florida, Ohio, Colorado, New Hampshire and Virginia. 

In each of those states, the Democratic advantage is less than 1 percentage point, well within the margin of error.

The election model weighs political and economic strength in each state and determines the share of the vote that the incumbent party will win.

The most important economic variable in the model is the growth in incomes in the two years leading up to the election. 

That factor captures the strength of the job market in each state, including job growth, hours worked, wage growth and the quality of the jobs being created. 

The model also factors in home and gasoline prices. 

So far, the strength of the economy has kept the model on track for the Democratic nominee.

But the trajectory of the president’s approval rating also makes a difference in who could win the White House. 

If President Obama’s approval rating shifts only a little more than 4 percentage points, a bit more than the margin of error for many presidential opinion polls, the move could further cut into Democratic hopes to retain the White House. 

Growing concern about terrorism and other issues could dent Obama’s approval rating further.

Usually, if the sitting president’s approval rating is improving in the year leading up the election, the incumbent party receives a boost. 

But in most elections, the president’s rating has declined in the lead-up to the election, favoring the challenger party. 

COMMENTS

Sarah Palin Endorses Donald Trump, Rallying Conservatives

www.nytimes.com

Sarah Palin at an event in Des Moines last year.By MAGGIE HABERMANJanuary 19, 2016

Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor and 2008 vice-presidential nominee who became a Tea Party sensation and a favorite of grass-roots conservatives, will endorse Donald J. Trump in Iowa on Tuesday, officials with his campaign confirmed. The endorsement provides Mr. Trump with a potentially significant boost just 13 days before the state’s caucuses.

“I’m proud to endorse Donald J. Trump for president,” Ms. Palin said in a statement provided by his campaign.

Her support is the highest-profile backing for a Republican contender so far.

“I am greatly honored to receive Sarah’s endorsement,” Mr. Trump said in a statement trumpeting Mrs. Palin’s decision. “She is a friend, and a high-quality person whom I have great respect for. I am proud to have her support.”

Mrs. Palin, who is to appear alongside Mr. Trump at a rally on the Iowa State University campus in Ames late Tuesday afternoon, could amplify the news media-circus aspects of Mr. Trump’s candidacy: Like him, she is a reality-TV star accustomed to playing to the cameras and often accused of emphasizing flash over substance.

But Mrs. Palin, who despite her waning visibility within the Republican Party retains a sizable following, provides Mr. Trump with valuable new currency at a moment when he is being attacked over his conservative bona fides by Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, with whom Mr. Trump is neck-and-neck in the Iowa polls.

As Mr. Trump fends off questions about his “New York values” from Mr. Cruz, Mrs. Palin could help vouch for Mr. Trump’s credentials with skeptical conservatives.

What’s more, while Mr. Trump has already shown the ability to garner wall-to-wall cable-news coverage, Mrs. Palin’s active involvement in his campaign could help him deprive Mr. Cruz of vital attention in the homestretch to the Feb. 1 caucuses.

The two are not strangers. Mrs. Palin, Mr. Trump and his wife, Melania, shared a pizza in New York in June 2011, when Mrs. Palin was considering a presidential run of her own and was making a bus tour around the country. (Mr. Trump was mocked at the time for using a knife and fork on his slice.)

They also share a trusted operative: Mr. Trump’s national political director, Michael Glassner, was chief of staff to Mrs. Palin’s political action committee.

And like Mr. Trump, Mrs. Palin has maverick tendencies. The mantra of her final weeks of the 2008 campaign was “going rogue,” as she defied instructions from aides to Senator John McCain of Arizona, the party’s presidential nominee.

Little-known before Mr. McCain picked her as his running mate, Mrs. Palin ultimately eclipsed Mr. McCain in popularity. She has endured as a coveted endorser with an impressive fund-raising list.

Mrs. Palin endorsed several of Mr. Trump’s Republican rivals in their statewide races, including Mr. Cruz in Texas and Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky. Mr. Cruz, after his 2012 primary victory over the incumbent lieutenant governor, David Dewhurst, said he would not have made it to the Senate without Mrs. Palin’s backing.

COMMENTS

Republican Party Uses State of the Union Response to Attack Donald Trump

by JULIA HAHN12 Jan 2016Washington D.C.4,252

A new CBS report ahead of President Obama’s last State of the Union address details how the Republican response– delivered by South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley– will serve as a rebuttal to the policies of GOP frontrunner Donald Trump. The new report seems to underscore prior reportingfrom the Washington Post that “Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) is rapidly emerging as Republicans’ anti-Trump.”

CBS writes: “The Republican response to the President Obama’s State of the Union address Tuesday evening appears to rebut… some of the policies espoused by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, according to excerpts released by House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin.”

According to Ryan’s excerpts, it seems as though Haley will focus particularly on chastising Trump’s call for curbing immigration:

I am the proud daughter of Indian immigrants who reminded my brothers, my sister and me every day how blessed we were to live in this country…My story is really not much different from millions of other Americans. Immigrants have been coming to our shores for generations to live the dream that is America…Today, we live in a time of threats like few others in recent memory. During anxious times, it can be tempting to follow the siren call of the angriest voices. We must resist that temptation. No one who is willing to work hard, abide by our laws, and love our traditions should ever feel unwelcome in this country.

Haley’s declaration that “no one who is willing to work hard… should ever feel unwelcome in this country” articulates the central principle of the open-borders philosophy. In essence, this policy formula means that any willing employer should be able to hire any willing worker regardless of the country in which they reside. Under this theory, there is no limitation whatsoever to the amount of labor that can be imported into the country and, thus, there is no preference given to American citizens for jobs.

Republican leadership’s decision to rebuke Trump’s policy positions may seem surprising given the recent polling data. According to Rasmussen, 65% of conservative voters say the United States should not let in any refugees from the entire Middle East– the point of view Republican leadership is presumably attacking with its State of the Union rebuttal.

Yet Ryan’s strategy for the Republican Party’s State of the Union response seems consistent with GOP leadership’s longstanding practice of demeaning its own voter base.

Indeed, this is not the first time the Ryan wing of the Republican Party has sought to rebuke Donald Trump’s immigration plan. Donor-class favorites Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Paul Ryan have both essentially suggested that Americans cannot restrict the large numbers of Muslims migrants resettling within America. In a November interview with Sean Hannity, Ryan saidcurbing Muslim migration is “not who we are.” Similarly, in a separate interview, Marco Rubio told Hannity, “We’ve never had a religious test, and I would just say to you that to have a religious test would violate the Constitution”.

In contrast to Haley’s call for continuing large-scale visa issuances, conservative heroine Phyllis Schlafly, who recently expressed her full-hearted supportfor Trump’s presidency, declared that it is time to pause immigration:

If we don’t stop immigration, this torrent of immigrants coming in, we’re not going to be America anymore because most of the people coming in have no experience with limited government. They don’t know what that is. They look to the government to solve all of their problems, and as soon as we have a high majority of people who think that, it’s going to be a different country…”

Indeed, the Senate Immigration Subcommittee issued a chart book today detailing how if visa issuances are not curbed, the U.S. will issue more green cards in the next ten years than the population of Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nikki Haley’s state of South Carolina combined– effectively nullifying the electoral impact of those states’ voters.

Haley, however, is not the first South Carolina politicians to push immigration policies that would nullify the electoral power of its own constituency. For instance,Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC), who has pushed for citizenship for illegal aliens, along with Gang of Eight member Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and immigration booster Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-SC), all represent South Carolina voters as well.

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Big Government, 2016 Presidential Race

The Norquist Tax Pledge vs Fiscal Cliff

For those of you that don't know, Grover Norquist is a conservative activist who created an "Anti-Tax Pledge" for politicians to sign who are against any and all tax increases in order to let voters know where they stand. All over the news lately (or at least since immediately after the election) is what is called "The Fiscal Cliff." In a nutshell, the Fiscal Cliff is what we are told the country will fall over in January 2013 because of an automatic rise in taxes coupled with a mandatory sequestration on government spending which expert say will be devastating to the economy. What doesn't make sense is that liberals are fear-mongering the public into pressuring the Norquist Pledge Signers into caving in to raising taxes. It doesn't make sense because if nothing is done, taxes are set to raise automatically because the Bush Tax cuts expire. Tom Cohen of CNN says,

"With the U.S. economy showing more signs of improvement in its long recovery from recession, economists point to fears about higher taxes in 2013 as a potential threat to rising consumer confidence."

It seems to me that what I am seeing is very well executed plan by Democrats to put Republicans in a no-win situation: Either they violate their pledge and agree on a compromise which includes raising taxes which can be used against them when the higher taxes are blamed for stunting the growth of the economy even further, OR they can blame Republicans for sending us over the fiscal cliff by doing nothing, OR they can blame Republicans for the national deficit spiraling out of control if they keep their Norquist Pledge and pass legislation to not allow a raise in taxes.

What everyone should keep in mind is that taxes are the dollars earned by the hard work of people like you and I and redistributed to politicians to do with it what they want to. Money is power, so this effectively gives even more power to the Socialists in control of Washington.

Please do not fall for this fear mongering and focus on what's real. We don't have a TAX problem. While it might not be true for the bottom 47% of wage earners, the government gets plenty of our money, in terms of percentage of our income. We have a REVENUE problem. The BEST way to increase revenue is by ADDING more taxpayers by way of increasing the number of jobs (decreasing unemployment) and by increasing average wages (by fixing the economy). And honestly, the only reason we have a revenue problem is because the amount of revenue is nowhere near what the government spends, hence the national deficit. So we also have a major SPENDING problem. The biggest consequence of the current spending problem under the Socialists in control is that they are using a big chunk of the taxpayers money to pay able-bodied people to live comfortable enough to NOT work. This creates an unstable situation of reducing the need to work for people who would otherwise be able to earn enough to pay the taxes to increase the revenue that the government so desperately needs. The end result is a collapse, plain and simple. So Democrats are doing this free-stuff-givaway of taxpayer money in order to earn votes necessary to make such a giveaway possible all at the expense of the entire society, and possibly our beloved country as we have known it. What happens to the United States and her Constitution when the government that runs it and protects it dissolves? And are Democrats doing this knowingly or are they just ignorant of these consequences?

Lesson of 2012: Propaganda Works!

A new Pew Poll came out today that says if America falls off the "Fiscal Cliff," 53% will blame the GOP (Republicans) to only 29% blaming President Obama.

First of all remember the difference between reality and perception. We are talking about a party that let their president add $4.8 trillion to the national deficit in only 3 years, more than Bush did in 8 years. The economic crisis started when Democrats took over the real power in America - both the House of Representatives and Senate of Congress, in 2006. Meanwhile the downward spiral looks to be slowing finally, thanks largely to the sweeping victories of the GOP (particularly the Tea Party) in the 2010 election, which gave the House back to the party which I thought everyone knew was the more fiscally responsible.

I should think again.

It turns out, whatever lie NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, Hollywood, teachers, professors, labor unions, musicians, the NY Times, community organizers or any other entity that makes up the propaganda arm of the progressive movement tell you or your children, IS REAL.

This Pew Poll just tells me two things: #1 the false propaganda worked. #2 the GOP needs to spend all of their time, energy, resources and money into taking back the schools to stop the indoctrination of our children and implement a program to properly educate adults not only of the righteousness of conservatism, but the evils of socialism.

And don't listen to the simpletons on the news networks saying "the GOP has a demographics problem." That is just code for, "the indoctrination of graduates of the last 20 years is finally paying dividends." We have a perception problem. Re-educating them is now required, but let's prevent the Cancer of America in the first place, not just administer chemotherapy. We just have to prey Socialism in America is not stage 4.

Here is a guy named Toots Sweet that points out that our ability to get the message out is so bad compared to the Left that we are left with no other choice but to "get out of their way" and "let them sink themselves" by letting them raise taxes and spend like drunken sailors until America is collapsed. His video:

I really hope it doesn't collapse but if we can't get our message out, Toots is right - we must let them see for themselves what communism does.

Obama Log #1: "Fiscal Cliff Looming?"

This will be my first of many (possibly thousands) of short posts on SickBias.com where I will log events, facts and news reports that support my theories of Barack Obama being a horrible choice for president, especially when you consider Mitt Romney was our alternative.

Today's topic is "The Fiscal Cliff"

Forbes does a good enough job explaining what exactly the fiscal cliff is in their article in this link, but what leaves me scratching my head is this simple question: If this problem is so important just days after the presidential election that both FoxNews and MSNBC have the topic dominating their coverage then why was this issue never brought up during the campaign season? Were they so distracted that they are just now thinking of this? Experts all agree that the fiscal cliff is going to directly effect the American economy, so why then in a presidential campaign that seemed to revolve around the phrase, "It's the economy, stupid!" did this suddenly-so-important topic get left out?

Some may argue that all those people most concerned with the economy were certain that Romney was going to win, and a President Romney would have fixed problems like this, just as he fixed budget problems in both the state of Massachusetts and the Olympics in 2004, Salt Lake City. But he is not, and will not be our fiscal savior, so all of the sudden this has become a major issue. Well that's just pathetic. It should have been part of our choice on election day - a vote for Obama is a vote for sending America off a cliff. It was withheld from the voters. We were no more informed in 2012 than we were when we voted for the stranger nobody knew about in 2008.

So for this first Obama Log, I would like to sum up by sarcastically saying thank you to all the Obama voters for putting us in this crisis. Because we all know good and well that an election of the successful businessman and former successful governor of Massachusetts would not have resulted in the domination of a "Fiscal Cliff" in the headlines. So if the "fiscal cliff" is such an important issue then why didn't you just cut out the middle man and support Romney for president?

Will She Survive?

My mother was bitten by a deadly snake a while ago. While her health was failing due to the venom coursing through her body, a doctor came running with a single vile of the antidote. He tripped and fell, smashing the bottle to the ground. Now my mother is at the fate of her own body being able to power through and rid it of this deadly toxin, or die trying.

This is an honest-to-God true story...

if by "mother" I mean "country,"

if by "bitten by a" I mean "plagued by the election of,"

if by "deadly snake" I mean "Barack Obama,"

if by "a while ago" I mean "four years ago,"

if by "health" I mean "economy,"

if by "venom" I mean "socialism,"

if by "coursing through her body" I mean "being implemented,"

if by "a doctor" I mean "American patriots,"

if by "a single vile of antidote" I mean "candidates Romney and Ryan,"

if by "he tripped and fell" I mean "the concerned citizens failed on election day,"

if by "smashing the bottle to the ground" I mean "eliminating any hope of reversing the effects of socialism being implemented,"

if by "her own body" I mean "the strength and will of freedom loving Americans."

Will she survive?

The New Silent Majority

Barack Obama has just been reelected president by a majority of the U.S. population. Although this comes as no surprise to those at MSNBC, I must point out that this win bucks a whole lot of conventional wisdom on polls and turnout. Liberal commentators, pundits, journalists and Obama campaign officials spent the entire month of October pointing to polls that Obama had slight leads in nearly all battleground states. The election results proved the liberals right. But that doesn't mean all the conservatives that claimed that the polls were wrong were deliberately trying to be misleading. In fact their claims had so much merit, it lead me to believe that it was the democrats that were living in Fantasy Land. During October, I looked further into it and it turns out the polls were based on a methodology that included the belief that even though independents were breaking for Romney, a massive turnout of democrats very similar to 2008 was going to make up the difference.

Conservatives had plenty of reasons to be skeptical. First of all 2008 was an historic election for the ages. Supporters of Obama were going to vote for America's first black president. There was so much hope in the air it was electric. The numbers of young, minority and women voters that showed up in 2008 was overwhelming compared to any election before it. People who never voted in their life wanted to be a part of history. Then there was the 2010 election. The newly formed conservative tea party turned out to oust huge numbers of democrats in the house and senate. It seemed to most experts that the election of 2008 was an anomaly. Conservatives were convinced that the polling methodology for 2012 was wrong.

But wait! There's more!

The conventional wisdom of polling statistics was not the only thing that made conservatives skeptical of a huge 2008-like turnout. There was also obvious visual clues as well. In the last month of campaigning, both candidates held many rallies, almost every single day. In the last week there were several rallies per day for both candidates. One of the big stories reported by reputable conservative news organizations both on television and on the internet was that there was a huge difference in turnout to the rallies of Obama verses the rallies of Romney. It was reported that the Romney campaign had to move his scheduled events to larger venues because of the overwhelming turnout. I heard crowds as large as 30,000 were driving in from hundreds of miles away to get in to see what they believe was going to be their future president. By the end of the campaign, Romney was calling it "a movement." At the same time it was told that the Obama campaign was struggling to scrape together a couple thousand people. Reports of half empty venues were all over the place. One conservative article claimed an Obama rally featuring a concert by Stevie Wonder managed to muster up only 200 people! It doesn't help that the liberal news organization were silent about rally numbers. So while it may not be scientific, the reported rally numbers really made many feel like the momentum, energy and excitement was definitely on Romney's side.

More anecdotal evidence:

The visual evidence was not limited to rallies. I live in a swing county of a swing state. A strong argument can be made that Hamilton County, Ohio elects presidents of the United States. We voted for Bush twice and Obama twice. That's where I live and work. I drive all over the county all day, every day. In 2000, yard signs were equally divided between Bush and Gore supporters. In 2004, Bush signs were much more numerous than Kerry signs. In 2008, Obama signs totally overwhelmed McCain signs. This year, Romney signs absolutely dominated Obama signs. I can't speak for the rest of America and what kind of support they display on their residences, but here it is generally loud and proud, and this year the louder support in a county that is a microcosm of the rest of the country was loudest for Romney.

Last but not least...

I am a chronic Yahoo! user. Don't get me wrong - do not think for a second that in my quest for intellectual punishment, my choice of torture device is in any way an endorsement of such a device. I have grown to love to hate Yahoo! and everything their editorial staff stands for. Once you get beyond that, I am hopelessly addicted to their comments section. This is not a new development either. I was a notorious troll on the old Y! Message Boards before it got shut down, gutted and transformed to Y! Answers. These days, the public gets their fix of trolling in the comments section of Yahoo's front page articles. Its extremely popular, and I became convinced over the years that you can use the overall attitude of the collective posts as a bellwether for predicting actions of Americans. For example, back around 2005-2007 I could truly tell that Bush's popularity was waning. The more popular posts (based on their ratio of thumbs up to thumbs down) were mostly anti-Bush posts, and the overall percentage of pro-Bush posts was getting smaller and smaller. Then of course we saw the landslide election of 2006 against Republicans. In 2008 the comments were mostly pro-Obama, or anti-Bush, which of course led to the huge Obama win coupled with the election of the Democrat super-majorty in Congress. In 2010, I saw slightly more comments on Yahoo of pro-tea party types. It was only "slightly" because Yahoo comments section have always been a safe-haven for liberals, as many of the most popular news sources online have become by that time.

Fast forward to October, 2012: Following the debates, the comments section of Yahoo has become more one-sided than I have ever seen them - but not for the liberals. It has been flooded with conservatives earning hundreds of thumbs-ups for pro-Romney and anti-Obama posts. As far as I was concerned, this alone was an indication of a landslide for Romney. There was also the incumbent presiding over the worst economy of our generation, the foreign policy missteps of Benghazi, and to put the icing on the cake, the last few days of the campaign included a Hurricane Sandy that was very quickly looking like a debacle for Obama.

All the conventional wisdom was pointing towards the polls being wrong. How could a majority of independents be for Romney while the overall numbers were showing Obama ahead? How could this be while everything I can see with my eyes and hear with my ears says that most people are going to vote for Romney? How was it that the polls ended up being right on election day despite the conventional wisdom of presidential elections in years past?

The New Silent Majority

The answer is that there were many millions of people who voted for Obama that never put up a yard sign. They either didn't ever log into Yahoo, or stopped posting comments. They were quietly waiting in the shadows and pounced on election day. The are the "Silent Majority". Wait, what? For those not familiar with the phrase, the Silent Majority has in recent history been that large group of politically silent people that largely voted Republican on election day. For more information on the old Silent Majority, click here. The group of Obama voters that proved the polls right on election day are "The New Silent Majority." The question as to whether or not this is an Obama phenomenon or whether it is the new norm for the Democratic Party will not become apparent until the election of 2014.

As I write this, I am listening to Rush Limbaugh express his opinion that the reason Romney lost was because of a lack of turnout of the Republican Base. As of right now, based on what I have said about rally turnout, "Mittmentum," the movement, etc. I am rejecting that claim. Conservatives were fired up about the possibility of ousting Obama and replacing him with anyone. While conservatives were skeptical of Mitt for a long time, his performance in the debates really truly excited conservatives. Besides, just one day prior, Rush was talking about how the election results were a trend, not an anomaly. I'm not writing off the theory, but if Rush is correct, then I would have to write another article explaining how so many indicators pointed to a huge conservative turnout, but it just simply didn't happen on election day. For now, you can just know that it was the New Silent Majority.

America has lost her way.

  As I look back at the last few months leading up to the election of 2012 I am perplexed as to how the fuck the majority of the America people could not for the life of themselves see that the emperor has no clothes.  He was elected on hope and change and the promise of a new day and the people bought it hook line and sinker.  He ran his second campaign based on hate and revenge and the people bought it hook line and sinker because they wouldn't have bought the old message.  Why wouldn't they have bought the old message ?  The simple answer, "cause it never came true", it was all smoke and mirrors.  There was never any hope and change unless you consider moving America to a communist state.  We now live in a country where the majority of people feel like victims and that the government owes them a life and that hard work and perseverance will never pay off.  We live in a world where ignorant children think that the way you make it big in this world is by accident or coincidence.  Where American idol, America's got talent or Britain's got talent is how you make it big and none of the winners worked their ass off to be who they are. It is sick to think that the media in America is also pushing this as reality.  Ive lost faith in the American people to do what is right not what you want but what is best for the world not your individual selfishness.  Shame on everyone of you fools that voted to line your pockets with hard working Americans money.  Damn you thieves  damn you.