Morning Edition

Harvey Hilbert enlisted in the Army in 1964. He was in the infantry, and in January 1966, he was sent to Vietnam to fight. Five months later, his unit was sent into the jungle. That was the last time he fought in Vietnam.

"It was coming on dusk, and we went into what's called a hot landing zone — means we were under fire," Hilbert told StoryCorps. "We jumped off the helicopters and took a position. And then the enemy stopped shooting."

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RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

Good morning. I'm Renee Montagne. Fans of William Shatner out there with a yen to write poetry, there's an app for you. The Shatoetry app allows users to compose poems from 400 words recorded by the former Star Trek captain in his signature staccato voice, like this example on YouTube.

WILLIAM SHATNER: She who lives with caffeine joyously fears not the dark.

MONTAGNE: Shatoetry on MORNING EDITION. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

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Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep, with congratulations to Lance Gilman. He's a newly elected member of the county commission in Storey County, Nevada. Mr. Gilman is a business owner, who won 62 percent of the vote. But as he takes office, Gilman is unlikely to be one of those people who disparages politics by, say, comparing it to a brothel, because Gilman runs a legal brothel, one of the most famous in the country: Nevada's Mustang Ranch. You're listening to MORNING EDITION. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

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Most of New York City's one million public school students went back to class on Monday, a week after Sandy hit. Still dozens of school buildings were flooded, damaged, without power so their students had to relocate. Beth Fertig of member station WNYC visited one of those schools in its new location on Staten Island.

BETH FERTIG, BYLINE: Intermediate School 2 is almost a mile away from the beach. But when the surge of water came during Hurricane Sandy, Principal Adrian Stallone(ph) says it flooded the basement.

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And today's last word in business is Mandela money.

That's Nelson Mandela, the anti-apartheid leader and first black president of South Africa. He's now also the first black person to grace South Africa's currency.

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Opposition groups working to bring down the regime in Syria are meeting in Doha, Qatar in a furious bid to reorganize and reinvigorate themselves. The aim is to form a legitimate government in exile that would be recognized by the international community. This new effort to bring together the Syrian opposition is strongly backed by the U.S. NPR's Kelly McEvers is in Doha and joins us to talk about it.

And let's start by you telling us exactly who is there.

The effects of a nor'easter is bringing wintry weather to the Northeast. The storm began blowing along the coast Wednesday — bringing new misery to those in New York and New Jersey. A lot of residents there are already without heat, power or in some cases, a place to live.

When Stephen Wheeler realized he had an aching, swollen finger, he called his primary care doctor, who works for MedStar Health. The doctor referred him to PromptCare, an urgent care clinic in a strip mall in the Baltimore suburbs.

Wheeler says he probably would have ended up waiting a long time if he'd gone to the doctor. And even longer at the emergency room.

A couple hundred years ago. hard apple cider used to be the drink of choice for thirsty Americans. It was easy to make and easy to find. But as people moved into cities, and beer became more popular, cider fell out of fashion.

Now it's come roaring back. U.S. hard cider sales are up 65 percent over last year, and just about all the big beer companies sell it, as well as many artisan brewers. Finding cider at your local bar is often no longer a problem.

Although voting problems in Tuesday's election were fewer than some people had expected, there were extremely long lines at many polling sites; so many that President Obama noted them in his victory speech.

"I want to thank every American who participated in this election, whether you voted for the very first time, or waited in line for a very long time," he said, adding, "by the way we have to fix that."

With the election over, attention in Washington has turned to the nation's debt and deficit challenges — most immediately the looming fiscal cliff. That's the $600 billion worth of expiring tax breaks and automatic spending cuts set to start taking effect Jan. 1.

The president and Congress agreed to those automatic measures to force themselves to find a more palatable compromise to rein in deficits. On Wednesday, there was an attempt to jump-start that process.

President Obama's re-election and the retention of a Democratic majority in the Senate means the likelihood of a repeal of the Affordable Care Act has receded.

So what now?

"The law is here and we should at this point expect it to still be here Jan. 1, 2014," says Alan Weil, executive director of the nonpartisan National Academy for State Health Policy.

As we near the end of another year, the music industry has a few reasons to be optimistic. Digital music sales are expected to reach record highs this year, and legal streaming services continue to gain in popularity. But unauthorized music file sharing is still going strong.

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Let's hear two strong points of view on last night's election.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

Jonathan Chait is a liberal columnist for New York magazine. Welcome back to the program.

JONATHAN CHAIT: Thank you.

MONTAGNE: And Jonah Goldberg is a conservative columnist and editor-at-large for National Review Online. Welcome to the show.

JONAH GOLDBERG: Hey, thanks for having me.

Republicans and independent analysts didn't think there was any way President Obama could reassemble the coalition that enthusiastically backed him in 2008. But Michael Dimock of the Pew Research Center found a few surprises in exit polls. Dimock talks with Steve Inskeep about the exit polling data.

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Russian President Vladimir Putin sent word congratulating President Obama on his victory. Still, as NPR's Corey Flintoff reports from Moscow, during the campaign, the Russian government and state-run media sough to discredit the American electoral process.

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And it was no ordinary Election Day either in Belmar, New Jersey, one of the beach towns that was badly damaged by Superstorm Sandy. Some of the regular polling places were flooded out and town officials had to come up with new ways to get voters to the polls. NPR's Jim Zarolli reports.

JIM ZAROLLI, BYLINE: These days the Belmar Town Hall has been turned into a kind of rescue center for displaced residents, a place where they can get food and clothing. And yesterday they could vote, too.

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It's MORNING EDITION, from NPR News. I'm Renee Montagne.

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And I'm Steve Inskeep. Good morning. Let's talk about the gender gap in the election results. We're joined now by Democratic pollster Celinda Lake. She's on the line. Welcome to the program.

CELINDA LAKE: Thank you for having me.

In West Fargo, N.D., voters have a tradition of sending one party to the White House and the other to Congress. Two voters maintained that tradition — but not as you'd expect. North Dakota's Senate race is still too close to call.

Renee Montagne speaks with Republican strategist Ed Rogers and Democratic political analyst Dee Dee Myers about Tuesday's wins and losses, and about challenges facing the Republican Party.

Why didn't the Republicans win the White House Tuesday night? For insight, Steve Inskeep talks to Michael Gerson, a Washington Post colmnist and a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush.

Israel is the United State's closest ally in the Middle East, and home to a large number of overseas American voters. Israelis have been debating which candidate, Barack Obama or Mitt Romney, would do more to ensure their country's security.

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In China, President Obama's re-election has been greeted with muted relief, as NPR's Louisa Lim reports from Beijing.

LOUISA LIM, BYLINE: As the vote closed in the U.S., ballots were still being cast in Beijing at a mock voting booth at the U.S. embassy's election party. For Chinese students like Lily Zhang and Zhang Weiwen, the novelty of voting was a heady experience.

LILY ZHANG: It was great. The first time I vote for the American president. That's very amazing and I'm very honored.

LIM: So who did you vote for?

Although exit polls showed a majority think the country is on the wrong track, voters still gave President Obama a second chance and four more years to govern. For a look at what to expect in a second term, Renee Montagne talks to Neera Tanden, who runs the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank in Washington, D.C.

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Good morning. I'm Renée Montagne. First-time mother and first-time voter Galicia Malone of Chicago didn't expect to become both on the same day. After going into labor a 3:00 AM, the 21 year old stopped by New Life Celebration Church to vote before driving to the hospital where she delivered a baby girl.

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Five hundred thirty-eight electoral votes were up for grabs on Election Day. President Obama has won, so far, 303 of them, a comfortable majority. Mitt Romney has 206. Twenty-nine are still unaccounted for - the electoral votes of Florida. Too close to call there. Less than a percentage point divides the candidates. But down the ballot, Democrats did well. The party retained a Senate seat and picked up a few key congressional races as well. NPR's Debbie Elliott reports.

President Obama will spend another four years in the White House after winning more than 300 electoral votes. In his victory speech from Chicago, the president promised that the "best is yet to come."

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For weeks, months - make that years - the conventional wisdom has been that the presidential election would all come down to Ohio, and Ohio would be very close. Well, that was partially right. Ohio was very close, but as NPR's Tamara Keith reports, not as pivotal as predicted.

TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: Jack Shumate(ph) flew into Ohio last Thursday from Dallas, Texas. He came here because this was the place where he felt he could really make a difference for his candidate, Mitt Romney.

For better or worse, the financial markets face a little less uncertainty — investors know who's going to be president for the next four years. Steve Inskeep talks to David Wessel, economics editor of The Wall Street Journal, about what the outcome of the presidential election means for the economy and financial markets.

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Here we are on election morning, and in the swing state of Nevada, most of the work is already done. Most of the ballots were cast in early voting. Nevada political journalist Jon Ralston has been keeping close track of the tallies. He's on the line.

Welcome to the program, sir.

JON RALSTON: Hi, Steve.

INSKEEP: So, in recent days, what have you been seeing?