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President Obama hasn't even named his choice to replace Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who plans to step down at the end of this term. But there's been a lot of heated rhetoric this week over one of the front-runners, Susan Rice.

Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, spoke on behalf of the administration on five Sunday talk shows days after the attack in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans. At the time, she suggested the attack began as a spontaneous protest over an anti-Muslim video. U.S. officials now say it was a terrorist attack.

Republicans have criticized Rice's characterization of the attack, and they don't want to see her get a promotion.

Rice may not have the nomination in the bag — but she does have her advocates, including Eleanor Holmes Norton, who represents Rice's hometown, Washington, D.C., in Congress.

"We do not intend to stand by while Ambassador Susan Rice, who had nothing to do with the tragic Benghazi attack, is made the scapegoat of the tragedy because she relayed to the public the only official intelligence that was available to the administration at the time," Norton said.

Enlarge Karen Bleier/AFP/Getty Images

Sens. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and John McCain, R-Ariz., appear during a news conference Wednesday about the terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya. Graham argued that Susan Rice, currently the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., misled the public when addressing the attack, in which four Americans were killed.

A decade after Sierra Leone's brutal civil war, voters on Saturday chose between an incumbent president who has provided new roads and free health care and a field of opposition candidates who decry the poverty and pace of economic recovery.

Some voters began lining up at 2 a.m. in the congested seaside capital of this West African nation, with only bobbing flashlights visible in the darkness as people walked to the polling stations.

"We've been through a lot in the last 20 years. Now we're trying to move forward," said Mannah Kpukumu, 36, a civil servant waiting in a line that snaked around a giant cotton tree before dawn. "We the young guys want employment and to be able to take care of our families."

Early turnout was heavy in downtown Freetown, where voters stood in packed lines with their chests pressed up against the people in front of them. Those not yet old enough to vote weaved through the crowds selling plastic bags of cold water stacked in buckets on their heads.

President Ernest Bai Koroma won office in 2007 on promises to help uplift the diamond-rich nation and sought to reassure voters with campaign signs that read: "I Will Do More."

His supporters especially point to strides made in the country's health care system through a program offering free medical aid. And they also see hope for Sierra Leone because of several offshore oil discoveries made in the last three years.

The opposition, though, says that more needs to be done and some frustrated voters said they were backing former military leader Julius Maada Bio.

"The economy is down and people are straining. Thousands of people are jobless," said Alfred Coker, 27, as he waited outside a school to vote in downtown Freetown.

Most of the country's nearly 6 million people live on less than $1.25 a day, according to World Bank statistics, and life remains especially difficult for the estimated 2,000 people who were seriously maimed during the war.

Tens of thousands died during the 1991-2002 conflict famously depicted in the film "Blood Diamond." Observers say the upcoming election, though, will mark a critical test as the country seeks to solidify its democratic credentials.

"Peaceful elections resulting in a credible outcome are critical for consolidating Sierra Leone's hard-won peace and for demonstrating that the tremendous progress the country has made since the end of the hostilities one decade ago is irreversible," said U.N. spokesman Martin Nesirky.

Koroma's APC party is expected to draw strong support in the north and in the capital, though he also appears to be making some inroads in traditonal opposition strongholds. It's unclear, though, whether he can garner the 55 percent of ballots needed to win outright and avert a runoff.

He faces eight challengers including the leading opposition figure Bio, a retired brigadier-general from the Sierra Leone Peoples Party (SLPP) who calls himself the "father of democracy" after his brief three-month tenure as head of state in 1996 before handing over power to a democratically elected civilian government.

"There are those who in spite of the progress we are experiencing continue to preach sermons of doom," Koroma said. "I am asking to be elected again so that I can scale up the gains we have made in just five years and bring prosperity to all Sierra Leoneans."

Bio and his supporters maintain the president has failed to deliver on his 2007 election promises and does not deserve a second term.

"This is not a classroom when you are allowed to repeat after you have failed," he told reporters. "Today the economy of the country is in bad shape. The plight of our youths is very serious and it is not only a developmental issue but a security threat."

Sierra Leone already has successfully held several mostly peaceful votes since the end of the war. This time the country is bearing the sole responsiblity for securing the vote, even though it is being organized with substantial foreign aid of some 46 percent of the election budget.

National election officials are spreading a message of nonviolence through posters afixed to tin shacks and traffic circles throughout the capital: "The world is watching us. Let us don't disappoint them."

Another poster reminds voters: "You have only one Sierra Leone — hold her like an egg."

Randy Sprecher came to Milwaukee years ago to make beer for one of the big breweries. But he didn't like the beer he was making so he founded his own brewery ... and now, his friends keep showing up at his door all the time with lame excuses.

We've invited Sprecher to answer three questions about Carrie Nation, the famously violent prohibitionist.

In 1942, the legendary actor John Barrymore prowled the stage of an empty Broadway theater to prepare for an audition. He wanted to revive his first great performance as Richard III, but that night, Barrymore also opened the traveling trunk of his overstuffed, fabulous and troubled life.

Christopher Plummer won the Tony Award for Best Actor for his performance of this lion of the stage. Now, he's committed that performance to film.

Plummer's film, Barrymore, directed by Erik Canuel, has opened in New York and Los Angeles. Plummer is an Academy, BAFTA and SAG award-winning actor, whose films include Beginners, The Insider, Star Trek 6 — not to mention a certain movie musical made in Austria. He speaks with Weekend Edition host Scott Simon about Barrymore, as a man and as a role.

Interview Highlights

On how he became familiar with John Barrymore

"I first came in contact with Barrymore by reading Gene Fowler's book, Good Night, Sweet Prince when I was 14, and I thought, 'My god, this is fascinating. This guy is so handsome, good looking, striking, romantic, athletic. And he can speak this wonderful verse.' I said, 'My god, he can do that and have all these girls and all that booze as well and still get up and be great. This is the profession for me.'"

On why he thinks Barrymore wanted to play Richard III

"It was his actual first big classical success. It was the first time, as he says in the play, that he was taken really seriously as an actor. He'd been extremely good at light comedy and doing all the sort of contemporary parts of the time in plays that were not exactly masterpieces. And then he realized that he should try the classics."

Enlarge AP Photo/Image Entertainment

Plummer portrayed actor John Barrymore in the play and reprises his role in the film.

The best thing about David O. Russell is that he cultivates his disequilibrium. In Silver Linings Playbook, his hero is disturbed and his heroine possibly more so, and his other characters have a grip on reality that is only marginally more secure. Russell might have made them seem the dreaded "q" word — quirky — and OK, he does, a bit, at the end, which broadly conforms to the rom-com template. But until then, Bradley Cooper's Pat Solatano is someone you'd be less likely to dream about than get a restraining order against.

In fact, that's what his wife has done at the start, which finds Pat, diagnosed with bipolar disorder, in a mental hospital — a place where the phrase "silver lining" as in "every cloud has a ... " is a mantra. In the novel by Matthew Quick, he's been there for four years after violently assaulting someone. Here, it's a mere eight months — and he acts like he could have used the extra three-plus years.

After his mother, played by Jacki Weaver, drives him home to the Philly suburbs, he throws A Farewell to Arms through his bedroom window because of the tragic ending, and he smashes furniture outside his psychiatrist's office when "Ma Cherie Amour" — his wedding song — plays in the waiting room.

While Pat pines for the reunion with his wife that he's certain will come, he lives with his mother and obsessive-compulsive father, Robert De Niro's Pat Sr., who has started gambling heavily on the Philadelphia Eagles.

He spends his days working out and running, until his friend Ronnie, played by John Ortiz, invites him to dinner — where Ronnie's wife (Julia Stiles) fixes him up with her widowed sister, Jennifer Lawrence's Tiffany. We think, "Who would fix her sister up with him?" — until we meet Tiffany, and wonder which of the two has more to fear.

Enlarge The Weinstein Co.

Jacki Weaver and Chris Tucker also help round out a team of actors who score a touchdown with the critics.

For celebrity chef Traci Des Jardins, Thanksgiving isn't complete without her grandmother's rice. Des Jardins was raised in a family of rice farmers in California's Central Valley. And, every day as a child, she ate this short grain white rice they grew.

Overnight, Israel stepped up its air assault against rocket launches from Gaza. Friday, Palestinians showed for the first time they could send a weapon into Jerusalem, and Israel is threatening a ground invasion. Host Scott Simon talks with NPR's Anthony Kuhn about the continuing airstrikes in Gaza.

If David O. Russell pulls anything off in Silver Linings Playbook — an almost-comedy about a bipolar high-school teacher who goes off the deep end and isn't sure how to climb back — it's this: He refuses to make mental illness adorable.

When Bradley Cooper's Pat, recently sprung from eight months in a mental hospital, walks into his doctor's office and hears the strains of the song that accompanied his breakdown — it happens to be Stevie Wonder's "My Cherie Amour" — his impossibly blue eyes seem to spiral into tiny pin dots, like those of a tortured bull. He barks at the receptionist: "Is that song really playing?" And for a moment, we don't know if we're hearing it for sure, either, or if it's simply an imagined sound that's been filtered through the exhausted coffee grounds of his brain.

Moments like that work beautifully in Silver Linings Playbook; in fact, it's more a movie of moments than a story with anything resembling a narrative drive. (Russell also wrote the screenplay, adapting it from Matthew Quick's novel of the same name.)

As the movie opens, Pat is being sprung from the hospital a little early, thanks to the intercession of his cautiously supportive mother (Jacki Weaver) and seemingly against the better judgment of his less-supportive dad (Robert De Niro).

He's feeling better, or so he thinks, and he's eager to get back to real life, although his hopes for that life are stupendously unrealistic. He believes he can rebuild his marriage, even though his estranged wife has taken out a restraining order against him. (His discovery of her extramarital affair instigated the act of violence that got him put away in the first place.)

Pat can't be swayed from his mission to get his wife back, not even when he meets Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence), the tough-cookie sister-in-law of one of his closest friends. (In a stroke of cockeyed genius, Russell has cast Julia Stiles and Lawrence as siblings, and with their moon-shaped faces and alert, inquisitive eyes, they're like a pair of take-no-prisoners cherubim.)

Enlarge The Weinstein Co.

After spending time in a institution, Pat moves in with his parents (Jacki Weaver and Robert De Niro) while he tries to repair his relationship with his wife.

Thousands of demonstrators went back onto the streets of Amman and other Jordanian cities on Friday. The protests were sparked by fuel price hikes, but some are now calling for the downfall of King Abdullah, a key U.S. ally in the region.

The two biggest fears of the fiscal cliff are defense cuts and tax hikes. But the nation's mayors are saying the devastating effects of automatic cuts reach further than the Defense Department — right into their own cities. Steve Inskeep talks to the Democratic Mayor of Charleston, South Carolina, Jospeh Riley and Republican Mayor Scott Smith of Mesa, Arizona, about the impact sequestration could have in their cities.

Thousands of demonstrators went back onto the streets of Amman and other Jordanian cities on Friday. The protests were sparked by fuel price hikes, but some are now calling for the downfall of King Abdullah, a key U.S. ally in the region.

Audie Cornish talks with our regular political commentators, E.J. Dionne of The Washington Post and Brookings Institution, and David Brooks of The New York Times. They discuss the fiscal cliff, Mitt Romney's post-election comments and the ongoing investigation into the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington beat out Rep. Tom Price of Georgia for a top leadership post in the House Republican Conference. The race took on broader significance about the direction of the Republican Party going forward. Audie Cornish talks to Martin Kady, congressional editor for Politico.

Howard H. Stevenson and Shirley Spence are the authors of Getting to Giving: Fundraising the Entrepreneurial Way.

In the debate about the fiscal cliff, it is clear that private philanthropy will have a continuing and growing role. As a donor, nonprofit board member (including at NPR) and fundraiser, I've learned a few things over the years about philanthropy. Here are a few things which may surprise you about the art of doing good.

Grant Brownrigg/Grantland

grantland.net

Steve Inskeep has the Last Word in business.

If David O. Russell pulls anything off in Silver Linings Playbook — an almost-comedy about a bipolar high-school teacher who goes off the deep end and isn't sure how to climb back — it's this: He refuses to make mental illness adorable.

When Bradley Cooper's Pat, recently sprung from eight months in a mental hospital, walks into his doctor's office and hears the strains of the song that accompanied his breakdown — it happens to be Stevie Wonder's "My Cherie Amour" — his impossibly blue eyes seem to spiral into tiny pin dots, like those of a tortured bull. He barks at the receptionist: "Is that song really playing?" And for a moment, we don't know if we're hearing it for sure, either, or if it's simply an imagined sound that's been filtered through the exhausted coffee grounds of his brain.

Moments like that work beautifully in Silver Linings Playbook; in fact, it's more a movie of moments than a story with anything resembling a narrative drive. (Russell also wrote the screenplay, adapting it from Matthew Quick's novel of the same name.)

As the movie opens, Pat is being sprung from the hospital a little early, thanks to the intercession of his cautiously supportive mother (Jacki Weaver) and seemingly against the better judgment of his less-supportive dad (Robert De Niro).

He's feeling better, or so he thinks, and he's eager to get back to real life, although his hopes for that life are stupendously unrealistic. He believes he can rebuild his marriage, even though his estranged wife has taken out a restraining order against him. (His discovery of her extramarital affair instigated the act of violence that got him put away in the first place.)

Pat can't be swayed from his mission to get his wife back, not even when he meets Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence), the tough-cookie sister-in-law of one of his closest friends. (In a stroke of cockeyed genius, Russell has cast Julia Stiles and Lawrence as siblings, and with their moon-shaped faces and alert, inquisitive eyes, they're like a pair of take-no-prisoners cherubim.)

Enlarge The Weinstein Co.

After spending time in a institution, Pat moves in with his parents (Jacki Weaver and Robert De Niro) while he tries to repair his relationship with his wife.

It's no secret that, in many parts of the world, children don't experience what affluent Westerners would term "childhood." Still, even the most hardened documentary buffs may be dumbfounded by Buffalo Girls, a look at two 8-year-old Thai girls who support their respective families.

They do so by hitting each other in the head.

Stam and Pet compete in Muay Thai, a form of boxing in which kicking as well as punching is allowed. As depicted in fictional action movies, Muay Thai is both graceful and brutal. Practiced by 8-year-olds, it's neither.

Stam and Pet are not seriously injured in the bouts filmed here, although one adult observer acknowledges that broken arms and legs are fairly common among Thailand's 30,000 — yes, 30,000 — child boxers.

Enlarge 108 Media

Stam Sor Con Lek fights to support her family. Her winnings go toward completing their half-finished house.

Both House and Senate committees hold closed-door hearings Thursday to question administration officials about the Sept. 11 attack on the consulate in Benghazi that killed four Americans.

Shoplifting costs the retail industry nearly 35 billion dollars annually, according to the National Retail Security Survey. Shoplifters who are caught are most often prosecuted, but some may also face a process known as civil recovery, where retailers demand additional payment to recoup some of their costs.

This week marks the start of Mark Thompson's tenure as the new chief executive officer at the New York Times Company. The company is facing financial head-winds, and is hoping Thompson can recapture some of the success he enjoyed in leading the BBC. But there's concern within the "Times" that its new leader has been tainted by scandals at his old employer.

Service members are known for their discipline and their ability to stay cool under fire. Veteran and financial planner Steve Repak says those skills are crucial to managing everyday finances. He speaks with host Michel Martin about his book, Dollars and Uncommon Sense: Basic Training for Your Money.

Audie Cornish talks with Gary Loveman, CEO of Caesars, which operates 52 casinos around the world in seven countries. They talk about what he would like to see from the Obama administration over the coming months, and thoughts on the looming "fiscal cliff." The White House hosted a roundtable of CEOs on Wednesday.

The National Book Awards announced Wednesday night honored both longtime writers and new authors, from Louise Erdrich who won for her novel The Round House to Katherine Boo, who was honored for her debut nonfiction work, Beyond the Beautiful Forevers.

More On 'The Round House'

Books

'Round House' Is One Of Erdrich's Best

The latest installment from Microsoft's blockbuster video game series, which pits humans against aliens in the future, was released last week. It made more than $220 million in the first day sales. That's more than the second Harry Potter movie, which holds the record for the biggest film opening.

Ryan Crocker was formerly a U.S. ambassador to Lebanon, Kuwait, Syria, as well as Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. He warns that we may draw the wrong lesson from Benghazi. He spoke with Steve Inskeep before a large audience of diplomats and others at the Middle East Institute in Washington, D.C.

The Center for American Progress, a think-tank closely associated with President Obama, offered up a deal on Wednesday on how to cut the deficit by reducing spending for Medicare without, it says, hurting seniors.

President Obama sounds like he's in for a fight over the woman who could be the next secretary of state. Republicans have been blasting U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice for the way she characterized the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11.

But the president came to her defense in his news conference Wednesday afternoon.

"When they go after the U.N. ambassador, apparently because they think she's an easy target, then they've got a problem with me," he told reporters.

Obama says he hasn't decided on who he will appoint, but Rice is clearly a front-runner. Republicans are vowing to block her and they are calling for a Watergate-style congressional committee to look into Benghazi.

Sen. John McCain is leading the charge to set up a select committee to investigate the Benghazi attack that killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others.

The Arizona Republican says there are just too many questions: why the U.S. Consulate was so poorly protected and why the Rice gave what McCain called false information on five Sunday talk shows.

"And if Ambassador Rice was relying on intelligence assessments as she insists, why were those assessments so dramatically at odds with the earliest reports of our people on the ground?" he said.

McCain says he will do "whatever is necessary" to block Rice if she's nominated to become the next secretary of state. Republican Sen. Lindsay Graham of South Carolina echoed that sentiment.

"I don't think she deserves to be promoted. There are a lot of qualified people in this country the president could pick," he said. "But I'm dead set on making sure we don't promote anybody who was an essential player in the Benghazi debacle."

Harsh Language

The language has been harsh: McCain says Rice is not qualified, and Graham says he doesn't trust her.

"And the reason I don't trust her is because I think she knew better, and if she didn't know better, she shouldn't be the voice of America," Graham said.

But Rice is a trusted adviser to President Obama. She is a member of his Cabinet, and as U.N. ambassador, she advocated for tougher sanctions on Iran and played a key role in facilitating international action on Libya. Obama says she has served with "toughness and grace."

"If Sen. McCain and Sen. Graham and others want to go after somebody they should go after me. And I'm happy to have that discussion with them," Obama said. "But for them to go after the U.N. ambassador, who had nothing to do with Benghazi and was simply making a presentation based on intelligence that she had received, and to besmirch her reputation is outrageous."

State Department and CIA officials have been briefing members of Congress in a series of closed-door meetings this week. The president says he will put forward "every bit of information he has" on Benghazi.

It's unclear if that would be enough to help Rice get confirmed by the Senate. Obama says he hasn't made his selection for secretary of state yet. Rice also avoided questions about her future when she spoke earlier this week to reporters in New York.

"I love my job here at the United Nations. I always have. I always will," she said. "And I look forward to continuing to serve for as long as President Obama would like me to."

She has made no secret, though, that she wants to be back in Washington with her family and in a prominent role in a second-term Obama administration.

Related NPR Stories

Diplomatic Security: What Went Wrong In Benghazi Nov. 13, 2012

Anti-austerity demonstrations took place across southern Europe today, from Portugal to Greece. Large crowds voiced anger over budget cuts imposed by their governments or by multinational financial institutions. This is the first time that austerity protests have been coordinated across European borders.

President Barack Obama takes questions from reporters at the White House today, in his first press conference since March. NPR's Ken Rudin and political strategists Vin Weber, a former Republican congressman, and Anna Greenberg, a democratic pollster, analyze the President's remarks.

Democratic Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin's sexual orientation was never really a factor in her victorious campaign against Republican former Gov. Tommy Thompson. Advocates for gay rights see that as a watershed moment for the movement.

Baldwin won a seat many thought she couldn't, defeating one of the state's most successful politicians in the process. The celebration Tuesday night in Madison was euphoric.

The enthusiastic crowd was never louder than when Baldwin acknowledged making history.

"I am well aware that I will be the first openly gay member of the U.S. Senate," she said.

Not About Being Gay

Election 2012

What An All-Female Delegation Says About N.H. NHPR

Americans cut back sharply on spending at retail businesses in October, an indication that some may still be cautious about the economy. Superstorm Sandy may have also slowed business at the end of the month.

And wholesale inflation fell last month as a big drop in energy prices offset a rise in the cost of food.

The Commerce Department said Wednesday that retail sales dropped 0.3 percent after three months of gains. Auto sales fell 1.5 percent, the most in more than a year.

Excluding autos, gas and building materials, sales fell 0.1 percent. That followed a 0.9 percent gain in September for that category. Online and catalog purchases fell 1.8 percent, the most in a year. Electronics and clothing stores also posted lower sales.

The government said Sandy "had both positive and negative effects" on sales. Some stores and restaurants closed and lost business. Others reported sales increases ahead of the storm as people bought supplies.

In September, retail sales jumped 1.3 percent. Spending rose in nearly all categories. The buying spree helped lift economic growth in the July-September quarter and reflected growing consumer confidence. Consumer spending drives nearly 70 percent of economic activity.

The October decline in retail sales may be temporary, economists said.

A key reason is that Superstorm Sandy hit the East Coast on Oct. 29 and disrupted businesses from North Carolina to Maine. The storm also lowered auto sales last month by about 30,000, according to TrueCar.com. Overall, car sales dipped to an annual pace of 14.3 million in October, down from a 14.9 million pace in September.

Retail sales are likely to rebound this month, analysts said, because Americans are spending more on repairs and making up for lost shopping trips.

Producer Prices Dip

Wholesale prices dipped 0.2 percent in October, the Labor Department said in a separate report Wednesday. It was the first decline since May and followed big gains of 1.1 percent in September and 1.7 percent in August, increases that had been driven by spikes in energy.

Energy prices retreated a bit in October, dipping 0.5 percent but food costs were up 0.4 percent as the summer drought continued to put pressure on some food prices.

Core prices, which exclude food and energy, fell 0.2 percent in October, the biggest drop in two years. Over the past year, core prices were up a moderate 2.1 percent, evidence inflation remains under control.

In October, the fall in energy costs included a 2.2 percent drop in gasoline prices, the biggest since July, and a 3.3 percent decline in home heating oil costs.

The rise in food costs was led by an 8.1 percent increase in the price of pork, the biggest spike in four years. The summer drought in the Midwest has driven up food costs include the cost of beef and pork because animal feeds made with corn have increased in price.

The 0.2 percent drop in core prices in October reflected in part big declines in the price of passenger cars and light trucks. Without those declines, core prices would have been unchanged.

Many people keep cremated remains in an urn on the mantle or scatter their loved one's ashes over a sacred place.

Now, a company has pioneered a new twist: putting cremated remains into ammunition.

Enlarge DAPD/AP

Thad Holmes and Clem Parnell, who founded Holy Smoke last year, say business is picking up, and they've received orders from as far away as South America and Europe.

There are nearly 400 art galleries in New York's Chelsea neighborhood. Many of these galleries were flooded by the storm surge that accompanied Hurricane Sandy. One insurance company estimates it has $40 million in claims.

Titan, the new supercomputer at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, has been crowned the fastest in the world. It can clock 17.59 petaflops (quadrillions of calculations per second). Audie Cornish talks to Steve Henn for more.

A new Congressional Budget Office report explores the economic and budget impacts of the "fiscal cliff. The non-partisan government agency warns automatic tax hikes and spending cuts could do serious damage to the economy.

With the election settled, Washington and Wall Street are focused on whether Congress and a re-elected president can avoid the so-called "fiscal cliff." Renee Montagne talks to David Wessel, economics editor of The Wall Street Journal, about the automatic budget cuts and tax hikes that would happen if an agreement can't be reached by early in the new year.

With the election settled, Washington and Wall Street are focused on whether Congress and a re-elected president can avoid the so-called "fiscal cliff." Renee Montagne talks to David Wessel, economics editor of The Wall Street Journal, about the automatic budget cuts and tax hikes that would happen if an agreement can't be reached by early in the new year.

Beginning next summer, federal rules will require pilots to have six times more flight time to get hired, and will then also require airlines to give pilots more rest between flights. This will increase the number of pilots airlines need, just as thousands of senior pilots reach the mandatory retirement age of 65.

When German Chancellor Angela Merkel visited Athens last month, a few Greek Army reservists in fatigues greeted her with chants of "Get out, Nazis!" Like other Greeks, they are furious over the drastic budget cuts Germany and other eurozone countries are demanding in exchange for billions in bailout loans.

The protesters compared the situation to Nazi Germany's brutal occupation of Greece during World War II, when more than 400,000 Greeks died.

But investigative journalist Dimitris Psarras hears other echoes of the past.

"The economic crisis that Greece is facing today is similar to the one faced by Weimar Germany," he says. "Just as Germany struggled to pay reparations imposed by the victors of World War I, Greece is now struggling to pay off giant debt racked up by its own corrupt political system."

Even Prime Minister Antonis Samaras has used the reference. In Weimar Germany, paramilitaries from the far right and far left fought in the streets. Germans struggled through head-spinning economic and political crises.

Then, in 1933, after parliamentary elections that gave the Nazi Party the biggest share of the vote, Adolf Hitler came to power.

Now Greece may have its own version of the Nazis, Psarras says, the Golden Dawn Party. He has researched the movement for more than two decades and just released a book, The Black Bible of Golden Dawn.

Enlarge Andreas Solaro/AFP/Getty Images

Ilias Panagiotaros, deputy of the Greek Parliament and member of Golden Dawn, looks on before giving a speech in Athens in June.

Nickelback. The name itself is musical shorthand for everything music aficionados love to hate about modern rock.

But with more than 50 million record sales worldwide and a lead singer who earns $10 million a year, the band is laughing all the way to the bank — as reporter Ben Paynter describes in Bloomberg Businessweek Magazine.

To start with, Paynter tells weekends on All Things Considered host Guy Raz, the band has worked hard to become ubiquitous in the blue-collar rock scene. You can hear them on the entry songs for World Wrestling Entertainment, commercials for NASCAR's Speed Channel and Michael Bay's bombastic Transformers movie. The band even struck a strategic promotional alliance to have some of their music played during Stanley Cup highlight videos.

"If something's getting punched, smashed, broken or otherwise causing chaos, Nickelback is usually the background soundtrack to it," Paynter says.

The band also tours on the cheap, under a promotional deal with Live Nation that rivals that of Jay-Z and Madonna. Lead singer Chad Kroeger is an incredibly prolific songwriter, Paynter says, who co-owns 604 Records, the Canadian label that spawned Carly Rae Jepsen's monster summer hit, "Call Me Maybe." Paytner says the label takes a lot of chances on young, Canadian talent.

"They just work on building them up in Canada and launching them in the United States," he says.

As for the band's take on its divisive reputation, Paynter spent some time with them — and concluded they don't seem to mind much.

"These guys know exactly what they do. They do it to a T. They pack stadiums because of it. And they've worked real hard to get to that point."

Steve Inskeep has business news.

Republicans and Democrats agree: Election season may have ended just four days ago, but it's already time to get back to work. In this case, "back to work" might mean "back to fighting."

Leaders in both parties made their opening bids Friday on how to deal with the tax, spending and debt problems that face the country at the end of this year.

While the scenario echoes last year's spending battle, there are some differences that could push the parties toward the resolution they never reached last time around.

Where The President Stands

In the East Room of the White House, nearly 200 Obama supporters sat in chairs, ready to jump to their feet the minute the commander in chief entered the room. These were President Obama's first public remarks since election night.

"Now that those of us on the campaign trail have had a chance to get a little sleep, it's time to get back to work," he said. "And there is plenty of work to do."

The campaign was challenging. But two days back in Washington was enough to remind everyone that governing is no cakewalk either. Many of the president's lines Friday were lifted directly from his stump speech.

"We can't just cut our way to prosperity. If we're serious about reducing the deficit, we have to combine spending cuts with revenue," he said. "And that means asking the wealthiest Americans to pay a little more in taxes."

The president said he's open to compromise, with one caveat: The rich must pay more. According to Election Day exit polls, six in 10 voters said they agree, a number you're likely to hear a lot from Democrats.

"I'm open to new ideas. I'm committed to solving our fiscal challenges, but I refuse to accept any approach that isn't balanced," Obama said.

Enlarge Susan Walsh/AP

House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio holds a news conference on Capitol Hill on Friday.

When Andrew Solomon started his family with his husband, John Habich, he says, people were surprised that he wasn't afraid to have children, given the topic of the book he was writing. That book, Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity, explores what it's like for parents of children who are profoundly different or likely to be stigmatized — children with Down syndrome, deafness, autism, dwarfism, or who are prodigies, become criminals, or are conceived in rape.

Though these experiences can be difficult and isolating for families, Solomon writes about parents who have accepted their children in spite of conditions others might consider tragic. "We all love flawed children and the general assumption that these more extreme flaws make their children somehow unlovable — it wasn't true of most of my experience," Solomon tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross.

Solomon found that while many children experience their difference at first as illness, over time, they understand it as part of their identity.

Interview Highlights:

On what it's like for mothers who have children conceived in rape

"All of the women were concerned about the ways in which their child might resemble the rapist psychologically. If the biological father of this child was capable of something so awful, is this child going to turn out to be capable of awful things? So that was one fear. And then next to it — and not entirely separable from it but also not entirely the same thing — the child was a constant reminder of the rape. As one of the women said to me, 'I have a friend who was raped and a few years later she was really able to get into a useful denial and say it never happened. I will never be able to say it never happened. I will always have that pair of eyes looking at me, that are evidence that yes, it did happen.' "

On what it's like for children to learn they were conceived in rape

"There's a central problem always for a woman who decides to keep a child conceived in rape, which is at what point do I actually tell my child where the child came from? So people who adopt children are usually now advised to tell the children from the very beginning of childhood, 'You are adopted, but you were adopted because we so much wanted a child and we are so lucky to have you,' and it's a part of their narrative. But rape is too disturbing and violent and the sexuality involved — it is too complicated to explain to a 2-year-old. ...

"I've met children who have been conceived in rape and who said that actually finding out had been a great relief — that it explained to them why their mother had had a child under odd or unusual circumstances. It explained why they sensed some ambivalence in a mother whom they had tried to please. ... But there were others who were so horrified by that news and felt so polluted by it that they acted out in various very destructive ways. ... They felt that other people would think, 'This person is a child of rape; this person is like a rapist; this person is untrustworthy; this person comes from dirt and darkness.' "

Enlarge Annie Leibovitz/Scribner

Andrew Solomon's 2001 book, The Noonday Demon, won the National Book Award for nonfiction and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Solomon lectures in psychiatry at Cornell University.

When Katherine Marsh was a young girl, she was mesmerized by the dwarfs of Diego Velazquez's paintings. Years later, that obsession inspired Jepp, Who Defied the Stars, her latest novel for young adults.

Marsh joins NPR's Guy Raz to discuss her book, which is rooted in history, yet speckled with fantasy. It carries her readers to the Spanish Netherlands in the late 16th century to tell the coming-of-age story of Jepp of Astraveld.

Interview Highlights

On Jepp's story

"He is a dwarf and when we meet him he lives ... with his mother who runs an inn. And one day a stranger comes to the inn and asks him if he wants to go to court and become a court dwarf, and this opens up all sorts of possibilities for Jepp. By court, I mean the Palace of Coudenberg [in Brussels], which is where the Infanta Isabella lives, and he decides that he wants to do this. He feels that there may be possibilities for him there that he can't find in his small town. He has some reservations. He is a little nervous about leaving home, but this is his chance to see the world."

On the history of court dwarfs

"There is an amazing history of court dwarfs, which is something that I learned. They go back to the ancient Egyptians, Chinese emperors — all of them had court dwarfs. And they were very popular in Europe, as well, amongst the monarchs. The job really was multifaceted. Oftentimes they were jesters. They were there to amuse the royals, and sometimes they were treated as friends or companions, but most of the time they were treated more as possessions and playthings. ... There are a number of these incidents where court dwarfs were asked to do things that were particularly demeaning, for example, jumping out of cakes, donning animal costumes, doing acrobatics, doing mock weddings.

"I was really drawn to these characters because on the one level they were insiders, they got to see the inner sanctums of these powerful courts, and on the other hand, they were outsiders because they were treated as entertainment, as freaks."

On what it means for Jepp to defy the stars

"Basically he decides that he wants to realize his own self worth, and there are opportunities at the court to develop himself intellectually, and he decides that he wants to actually control his own fate.

"What's interesting about the time ... is that most people are intensely religious and they also have this very strong sense of fate, and the strong sense that the stars will control their destiny. And yet, there is just the beginning of this sense of possibility that comes from the emergence of science, that there can be free will and you can shape your own destiny."

Read an excerpt of Jepp, Who Defied The Stars

The Greek government passed a 2013 budget on Monday that includes more spending cuts and tax hikes. But European leaders, while welcoming the move, won't give Greece its latest loan fix for now because of the country's rising debt. More than two years after Greece adopted a punishing austerity regimen in exchange for bailout loans, the country remains deeply in debt and addicted to loans. There has been some progress on reforms, especially in doing business in Greece, but this has been vastly overshadowed by a deep recession that has left more than a quarter of the work force unemployed and a mounting debt that everyone agrees is unsustainable.

More than five million people in the U.S. claim some form of Native American identity. November is Native American Heritage Month and host Michel Martin is having a series of conversations with author Anton Treuer. Today, they talk about some of the particular political and economic challenges facing Indian Country.

With the election settled, Washington and Wall Street are focused on whether Congress and a re-elected president can avoid the so-called "fiscal cliff." Renee Montagne talks to David Wessel, economics editor of The Wall Street Journal, about the automatic budget cuts and tax hikes that would happen if an agreement can't be reached by early in the new year.

Robert Siegel and Melissa Block talk with our regular political commentators, E.J. Dionne of The Washington Post and Brookings Institution, and David Brooks of The New York Times. We get their take on President Obama's victory, as well as what it means for the direction of the GOP.

A second term means some new Cabinet appointments for President Obama, including at the Treasury. After four pretty grueling years, Secretary Timothy Geithner has made it clear he will be leaving Washington.

White House press secretary Jay Carney said last week that Geithner would be staying on through the inauguration. He's also expected to be a "key participant" in "fiscal cliff" negotiations.

The Treasury secretary was arguably the most important Cabinet post in the first Obama administration. Secretary Geithner had wobbly banks, auto bailouts and the Great Recession on his plate. The next secretary will face big challenges too, beginning with the "fiscal cliff" and working with Republicans to craft a "grand bargain" on deficit reduction.

It's not surprising that there's been a lot of talk about Erskine Bowles as a replacement for Geithner. Bowles chaired the president's deficit reduction panel, the Simpson-Bowles commission. Speaking on Charlie Rose's show last March, Bowles outlined the content of a good budget deal.

"Any of them that don't address defense, any of them that don't address Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and don't reform the tax code and aren't balanced in some way between that, aren't serious," he said.

Bowles was a chief of staff for President Clinton. He's also a former investment banker and is popular with Republicans and on Wall Street. But he's criticized President Obama's budget publicly while praising Paul Ryan's.

A more likely choice might be Jack Lew, the current White House chief of staff and formerly the president's budget director. In April 2011, he discussed overhauling Social Security:

"It's never really moved the debate forward for one side or another to put a plan out there. It's only really worked well when the parties come together; that's what happened in 1983," he said.

Lew worked on that 1983 Social Security fix as an aide to House Speaker Tip O'Neill. He has Capitol Hill experience and the budget expertise to tackle the big issues that are on the Treasury's plate. And he's got a good working relationship with the president.

Iran is stockpiling gold. That's the way David Cohen sees it. He's undersecretary of the Treasury, and the Treasury's point man for the banking sanctions the U.S. has imposed on Iran.

"Iran is attempting to hoard gold, both by acquiring it and by preventing the export of gold from Iran, in a somewhat desperate attempt to try and defend the value of its currency," Cohen says.

Enlarge Vahid Salemi/AP

Iranians make their way through Tehran's main bazaar. Iran's economy is under increasing strain, and its currency has fallen sharply.

Veterans Day — originally Armistice Day — was renamed in 1954 to include veterans who had fought in all wars. But the day of remembrance has its roots in World War I — Nov. 11, 1918 was the day the guns fell silent at the end of the Great War. On this Veterans Day, we celebrate the poetry of World War I, one of the legacies of that conflict.

Enlarge Sherril Schell/Getty Images

English poet Rupert Chawner Brooke died of dysentery aboard a troop ship headed for Gallipoli in April 1915. His poem "The Soldier" is one of the most famous poems written during World War I.

Tax policy has been a divisive theme throughout the presidential campaign. At the core of the debate are divergent philosophies about what the economy needs — and how to get it.

In this Oxford-style debate from Intelligence Squared U.S., a panel of experts dissects the motion "The Rich Are Taxed Enough." The term "enough," in this case, is determined by three factors: fairness, sufficiency and efficiency.

More On The Debate

Jacques Barzun, the esteemed cultural historian, lived 104 years and wrote a multitude of words about the most important issues in society, but when he died last week, his one quote that was invariably cited was a pithy one that he wrote back in 1954: "Whoever wishes to know the heart and soul of America had better learn baseball."

Never mind that that is no longer even remotely true.

For, yes, as the World Series had among its lowest television ratings ever, it was even more evident that football is now far and away our national game. Baseball was the national pastime, but nobody would dare call football a pantywaist thing like "pastime." Football are us.

Of course, all sorts of treatises have been written comparing the two sports, but none has been so brilliant as the comic routine that the late George Carlin developed, in which he described baseball as a "19th century pastoral game" and football as a "20th century technological struggle." He went on to contrast the two, using a harsh, gruff voice for the gridiron — "in football you wear a helmet" — and a sweet, near-falsetto for the diamond, "in baseball you wear a cap."

But Barzun's death, which obliquely served to turn his famous old observation into an epitaph for baseball's pre-eminence, does make us wonder why football has supplanted baseball so in popularity. Does it tell us anything about ourselves? Or as Mary McGrory, the late Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist, framed it most succinctly back when football was ascending: "Baseball is what we were. Football is what we have become."

So, do we love football more because the essence of football is brutality, and we are now a more violent people? Or does the fact that football is easier to bet account for our greater fondness for it? Or maybe, above all, is it simply that football eclipsed baseball because it is so perfect for television?

It is ironic, too, that even as women have become so much more involved in sport, football is the one retrograde game which is played almost exclusively by boys and men. Might football not be that 21st century technological struggle after all, but instead, at heart, a subversive vestige of the male-centric past?

Whatever, indisputably, football remains uniquely our game, even as so much else in the cultural world — music, movies, video, video games, fashion and most sport, too — catches on all over the world. However, except perhaps across the border with our Canadian cousins, no one else plays what is knowingly dismissed as American football.

Talk about United States exceptionalism in this America-first election year. Baseball is still an extremely popular entertainment, but whoever wants to know the taste and passion of America had better learn football.