Right now the storm is being blamed for at least five deaths. About 650,000 homes and businesses do not have power right now. Dozens of cars and drivers are still being rescued from the long island expressway in new york. Meanwhile, in plum island, massachusetts, homes are in danger of being swept right into the ocean given the high tide, combined with the howling wind and snow. Bostons mayor along with the governors of new york and connecticut are urging people to stay home. Its clear we still have a lot of work to do. Please stay home so we can allow our crews easy passage to the streets. Stay home, please, unless you have urgent business to be out on the roads. This is going to go on for a number of days. This will not all be done today. No rest for the weary, not even news reporters. I thought i would borrow vickys snowshoes to make this live shot easier. That was a big mistake. So im going to do the rest of this live shot sitting down. We are under two feet of snow. I can show you guys just how deep it is here and difficult. The big dig here has begun. Weve got reporters standing by some of the hardest hit areas this afternoon. Ron mott is in providence, rhode island. Tim caputo from our boston affiliate is in massachusetts. Whats the situation right now with particular in regard to transportation and Power Outages on there . Reporter it is tough to get around and the stay home message applies in long island and governor chafee ordered everyone off the streets here and not everyone is heeding the warning, unfortunately, most people are, but there are a lot of folks out coming around and joyriders taking this all in. I spoke to one gentleman a few moments ago who said he got stopped by police and he had a carful of elderly people in the car taking them to warmer climates. One of the elderly people had their thermostat had no power and the thermostat was reading 42 degrees and the cops said thats fine, go ahead about your way. There is a mall here and it is mostly closed here, but there is a panera bread inside and the assistant manager and one of the employees they decided to make their way in today to make sandwiches for power crews and theyre in there hard at work and well go down and get some video of them. What is going to happen over the next three hours and we have three hours left of daylight and this is why they want to keep people off the roads is so the power crews and can get to some of those downed lines. At last check 170,000 residents are without power in rhode island. And thats a pretty significant number and a lot of them may not get power believe monday and tuesday. Ron mott, good to hear about those workers doing some good. 170,000 without power in rhode island. Tim caputo standing by in sandwich, massachusetts, more than 400,000 people do not have power in massachusetts. Tim, whats the latest over there . I can tell you the conditions here have not improved in the 12 hours weve been standing by the water here in the town of sandwich. You might be able to see off in the distance behind me, a bit of the cape cod bay as we get closer to low tide. The winds have been sustained in the vicinity of 15 to 20 miles an hour and you get gusts still going to 30, 40 miles an hour and the big issue here, though, the power is out for a lot of people in downtown and its easy to see why. You see some of those power lines now sagging pretty close to the ground and they have a nice coating of snow and an icy mix on top of them. It has forced a lot of tree branches down and a lot of power lines down and certainly the Road Conditions are no better. You see it here. You can make out the double yellow line here, but plenty of slush and snow here the blizzard warnings have continued in cape cod and very low visibility and you can understand why conditions here are pretty bad and most have hunkered down since yesterday morning. I want to ask you quickly about a sad story were getting from your station about a little boy in the boston area who died from Carbon Monoxide poisoning. What more can you tell us about this . Reporter we know the family was shoveling out their driveway at the time up in boston. They got about 24, 25 inches of snow. The conditions not quite the same here as it is up there. So people are starting to clean up there. From what we understand the boy went to warm up in the car after doing a bit of shoveling, but because there was so much snow that car was covered in snow. We understand the tail pipe was kind of covered in snow as well so when they turned the car on and got it running there was obviously a concern there and the boy got Carbon Monoxide poisoning and was taken to the hospital where he was later pronounced. Tim caputo from our affiliate whdh. Thanks, tim. To politics now, First Lady Michelle Obama is among the mourners remembering a 15yearold chicago girl who died a tragic random death. Leah pendelton was gunned down after participating in the obamas inauguration. The New York Times topped its paper and well dig into the legal justification for drone strikes later in the program and president obama warning that the middle class will get hit hardest if congress does not do something to stop those massive cuts set to take effect march 1st. If the sequester is allowed to go forward, thousands of americans who work in fields Like National security, education or education are likely to be laid off. Democrats and republicans can still get together on a balanced solution to the deficit crisis. Republican senator Mitch Mcconnell says that he know that sequestration would have consequences, but he blames president obama for not putting forward an acceptable plan to prevent it. For more on that, jonathan strong, staff writer, role call, Alexander Burns and National Political reporter with politico. Good afternoon to both of you. Hello. Outgoing defense secretary leon panetta warned that the 85 billion in cuts would curtail American Naval operations by a full third and could force furloughs of as many as 800,000 civilian workers. Take a listen to what he said. It is difficult to believe, frankly, that congress would simply stand aside. Stand aside, fail to make the decisions necessary to resolve this crisis and allow the defense economy, equality of life of america to be irreparably damaged. How damaging would these cuts be to our National Security . Its a great question. The impact is going to be fairly dramatic to some of the employees, civilian employees of the pentagon and some other places. The 85 billion in cuts is through the rest of the fiscal year through september 30th and were not even talking a full year. Its 50 50 between the defense cuts and the discretionary am doestic spending cuts and the warnings that were hearing from experts on National Security are very severe and vehement. They have told us that this will be a very significant damage. Lets put the list up here, alex. The white house put out this fact sheet yesterday on the most damaging effects of the cuts that are supposed to go into effect march 1st. 17,000 education jobs at risk. 70,000 kids being kicked off head start. Nearly 400,000 mentally ill patients not receiving health care and Small Business loan guarantees being cut up to 540 million, roughly. The white house did not mention the massive military cuts. What was the strategy there . Well, look. I think that for the white house, the strategy here is to emphasize that basically every american would be impacted in some way. If you emphasize defense cuts and i think americans if you look at public polling have mixed feelings about the need for a big military and the need to put a lot of money into defense spending, but when you talk about issues like education, local public safety, Energy Programs and these test extraordinarily well in focus groups of middle class swing voters who with are exactly the kind of people that need to be there in the runup to sequester and if it does take effect those will be the voters who decide who is to blame afterward. There is this 11th hour deal thats done because there are sides that are talking. I just heard a few minutes ago from molly ball with the atlantic. The two sides arent even engaged in conversation. Is that accurate . Yes, it is. In fact, Speaker John Boehner in the house has told his republican colleagues that hes only going to work on these issues through the regular order and there was a lot of there was a lot of Division Within the republicans over him talking behind the scenes with president obama. They didnt entrust him to get a good deal. So now he said everything that happens between the two sides will be happening in public, and so if unless theres something we dont know about, thats what we have right now. Alex, this week conservative columnist charles scot hammer wrote this in part, the republicans have leverage, they should use it. It was the president s idea in the first place. Theres some question over just how accurate that is, but first of all, how much of an issue is this going to be in terms of the blame game that we have here . I think if sequester were to take effect it would be one of the dominant themes in the next year and a half, when theyre happening in 2013, virginia which has a governors race is a state that depends to an extraordinary degree on defense in military spending and the issue that Charles Kraut hammer raise saturday cycle that were stuck with now is just how much leverage do Congressional Republicans have with these big brinksmanship like the fiscal cliff and like the sequester in terms of being able to implement an agenda from a minority. Politicos Alexander Burns. Well come back we enjoyed it so much well do it again in a few minutes. Well do it a little later in the show. Hes on the cover of Time Magazine, dubbed the republican savior. Senator marco rubio is set to deliver the republican response to the president s state of the Union Address, but hes facing stiff competition in having the last word. Well tell you when is set to steal his thunder and coming up later, ill ask the postmaster general himself what was behind the decision to end an american tradition and shut down saturday letter delivery. Well talk about that and well also talk about what, if anything, can be done at this point to save the post office. K. When the doctor told me that i could smoke for the first week. Im like. Yeah, ok. Little did i know that one week later i wasnt smoking. [ male announcer ] along with support, chantix is proven to help people quit smoking. It reduces the urge to smoke. Some people had changes in behavior, thinking or mood, hostility, agitation, depressed mood and suicidal thoughts or actions while taking or after stopping chantix. If you notice any of these stop taking chantix and call your doctor right away. Tell your doctor about any history of depression or other Mental Health problems, which could get worse while taking chantix. 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Discover card. Cashbacashback concierge . we have a concierge i know; its exciting wow what exactly is a cashback concierge . Well theres lots of ways you can get cash back im here to help you get the most bangforyourbuck. Its a personalized thing from discover. Its easy, we wont try and sell you anything, and its free. Free . I want that. Yeah you do this guy is great. Highfive through the phone yeah i did it. Did you actually do it . Oh, i did i totally did. At discover, we treat you like youd treat you. Cashback concierge get the new it card at discover. Com. You are looking at hartford, connecticut where 22 inches of snow has fallen so far there. I want to bring you up to speed with figures from the storm. A statewide traffic ban will remain in effect through today. About 645,000 customers throughout the northeast are without power. 415,000 of those are in massachusetts. Boston where nearly 22 inches of snow has also fallen has just lifted its blizzard warning, milford, connecticut, 38 inches of snow. Ham den, 36 inches of snow. This is the second storm that slammed into the northeast and that follows, of course, in the wake of super storm sandy and its left the entire corridor one big, soggy mess. Joining us to make sense of this bill nye the science guy. Good to see you. Good afternoon. The storm today on a similar trajectory recently taken by super storm sandy, i and want to show these images, very similar images of the two paths. Whats behind these massive storm systems in this particular part of the country . Well, this particular part of the world. So you get storms that start in off the coast of africa and they make their way across the Atlantic Ocean and the nature of the spin of the earth and the pull of gravity makes these things get a little bit of pressure behind them and it pushes them northward. The thing is and as you observed, both sandy and both the rainstorm and the snowstorm follow the same track. Its not a coincidence so when youre there, you may notice that the wind generally come from the northeast and the people in new england refer to it as a noreaster. When you live on the west coast. Im sitting right now in los angeles, that same type of storm is called a southwester, so if you go to the sail boat store you can get a noreaster hat in new england, but if its a souwester hat in seattle and thats because it has a counter clockwise mouth in the northern hemisphere. It is extraordinary, everybody, that the storm is so big. How big is it . Its so big that the difference in spin at the southern part of the storm versus the northern part of the storm causes it to the spin of the earth. Okay. Causes the storm to spin and here we are. This could be the future, everybody. This could be the new normal. With all of the extra heat energy thats in the atmosphere, climate change, this could be the way its going to be a lot. Now people say its a blizzard, how can it be Global Warming . Well, the difference between snow and rain is very small. Its just a few degrees celsius. A few degrees fahrenheit. And when the heat surface has more heat impacted on it theres more evaporation and more moisture in the air and here we are. While i have you i want to talk about this asteroid thats coming dangerously close to us next friday . Should we be worried at all . We should be worried, but not about this asteroid. This is 2012 da14 which was discovered by my colleagues at the planetary site. Do you know, i have a day job now. I have the planetary site for people to look for nearearth objects so this asteroid will pass between us and the satellite that msnbc is using right now to broadcast this uhoh. Uhoh. To send this message, this broadcast around the world or around the country. Understand, this thing is about 45 meters across. Its about the same size as the one that made the big hole in the ground in arizona not too far from flagstaff. Its about the same size as the one that created the tungusta event. This is where the rock comes into the earth so fast that even the atmosphere acts like a solid piece of material. Okay. The thing bursts in the sky and destroys everything over about 200 square kilometers. 22 120 rather, 1200 miles. Square miles. If it lands over new york, paris or tokyo or atlanta. Thats it. And now there are about 100,000 of these things that cross the earths orbit as this one is doing. So we have to look out for them. But again, before i let you go, really quickly. Were not expecting that this time. Not this time. Absolutely not. I wanted to make sure. Definitely miss and thats rocket science. Thank you. Bill nye, the science guy who now has a day job, as well. Thank you. Good afternoon. Still ahead on this saturday afternoon a milestone during black history month, 250 miles above the surface of the earth. Well stay in space. Also whats seen in the movie lincoln prompted a connecticut congressman to fire off this angry letter to steven spielberg. Joe courtney is calling for major edits. Youre watching msnbc, the place for politics. Capella university understands businesses are trying to come back from rough economic times. Employees are being forced to do more with less. And the need for capable leaders is greater than ever. When you see these problems do you take a step back, or do you want to dive right in . With a degree in business from capella university, youll have the knowledge to go further in your career than you ever thought possible. Lets get started at capella. Edu all right. The super mayor cory booker cant be everywhere during a major storm so he puts his twitter page to work. Booker will be posting advice to his followers as he tries to ride out this noreaster as well like this one. Yes. If that would help that was in response to a mother asking if the school would be shut down today. No, cancel your party. Cancel your party and practice on dj hero if it was okay for he and his buddies to attend the party last night. To a political playground. The onion revealed two things about stephen chu. First of all, hes a pretty good sport and he may be quite the pick up artist. Sort of. Check out the onion headline. Hung over Energy Secretary wakes up next to solar panel and thats a pretty good picture. Not true, of course, but chu posted this on his Facebook Page with thi