Talks to avoid going over the fiscal cliff on January 1 appear to be hopelessly stalled as the president and Speaker Boehner traded charges of intransigence yesterday. Politico: The dueling public statements signaled that little has fundamentally changed between Obama and Boehner, who have been here before. They got close to a grand bargain on the debt and deficit in 2011 only to see it crumble amid partisan pressures. Both felt burned. On Wednesday, it looked like history had a good shot at repeating itself, as the tenuous progress they made over the past week seemed to unravel.   Obama, betraying some of those bruised feelings, said Republicans just need to "take the deal." "They keep on finding ways to say 'no' as opposed to finding ways to say 'yes,'" Obama said. "And I don't know how much of that just has to do with, you know, it is very hard for them to say yes to me. But, you know, at some point, you know, they've got to take me out of it and think about...(Read Full Post)