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Referring again for Obama’s call to end the petty grievances in Washington and "heal," Nancy Pelosi is still at it even after George W. Bush is now ex-president:

Pelosi said one of her favorite moments from Inauguration Day was when Marine One lifted off the Capitol grounds, signifying former President George W. Bush’s exit from Washington. "It felt like a 10-pound anvil was lifted off my head ," she said.

Classy, Madame Speaker. Even the media has found it in its heart to have some respect for Bush now that his term is over.

UPDATE

Somebody has been listening :

Bloomberg article headline reads "Obama’s First Civility Test Is Pelosi’s Manners ."

Liberalism: Mortgaging the future to feel good today.

More of the same :

[President Obama] cited the worst U.S. economic conditions in 70 years and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars as having placed the country in crisis and said it was time to "proclaim an end to the petty grievances " that have long divided Americans.

"What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility – a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly," he said.

Why now? Why not two years ago? Why not six months ago?

Liberals mistakenly think that merely proclaiming that the age of partisanship is over, it is over. I’m sorry, but Obama’s statement just reeks of disingenuous. If liberals were committed to "ending the petty grievances," they wouldn’t be clamoring for Bush’s head on a pike today. They wouldn’t have waited until the first day they are in charge to offer the olive branch.

The time for sincerity has long passed. If you are really serious about ending this sort of squabbling President Obama, you liberals will have to take the first steps. And let me clarify, merely saying "let’s be friends" doesn’t count. You will be judged on what you do , not what you say .

To all the liberals, the ball is in your court now. Let’s see what you do with it.

UPDATE

The headline says it all:

Bush Mocked As He Arrives on Inauguration Dais

Yes, let’s put aside our petty grievances…

Today is the inauguration of President Obama. I hope he has his Presidential Seal ready.

This morning’s reading was a little hard to stomach, mostly due to the smugness underlying the articles I read. Two headlines caught my attention. Unfortunately, I think these headlines paint a somewhat accurate picture of the way liberals think.

1. The first is an article by Robert Shrum entitled "Battered Liberal Syndrome ." He explains that Barack Obama will succeed because he is reaching across the aisle in an effort to end partisanship.

He writes:

I’m convinced Obama’s right to pursue the politics of change in his own remarkable fashion. Americans are fearful, but they yearn to be hopeful; that’s why they voted for Obama. They want solutions, not ideological battle. His stratospheric approval rating as transition yields to inauguration suggests how far he has moved beyond his Election Day majority and how effectively he has harnessed the public will. This could be a powerful force for advancing his agenda—and he’s not going to jeopardize it by letting his presidency be cast in partisan terms.

…

Everyone assumes that partisanship ultimately will reassert itself—in a year or two, or certainly four. Differences will remain and debating them will always be the essence of democracy; the sense of a new dawn may fade. Yet maybe there is a chance we’ll see change here, too—that the political clashes of the future will be more respectful, less angry, more open to finding common ground . . . . Today, Obama speaks for America in part because he respects and responds to voices across the American spectrum . At times, this may discomfort progressives. The end result, however, may be a cure for Battered Liberal Syndrome. It may also usher in a new, if imperfect, progressive era.

What bothers me is this: why did liberals have to wait until their man was in office and they control the legislature to have "a more respectful, less angry, more open" discussion? Over the last eight years, hasn’t nearly all the vitriol from the American public come from the left? What I take away from these sorts of statements is that liberals will only play nice when they are in charge. If liberals really wanted to extend an olive branch (which I don’t believe they do… see below), the time to do it is when the other guy is in office. Liberals have had eight years to play nice, but they haven’t.  It simply doesn’t look genuine when, after winning, you say, now things will be different. Now we won’t be angry. Now we will have a respectful conversation.

2. The second is a pair of articles about prosecuting George W. Bush. Did I mention that there isn’t an olive branch? Here is case in point.

(I have to be honest. I am not a huge G.W. Bush fan. I am conservative mostly from a fiscal standpoint, and he has been anything but a fiscal conservative.)

From Pelosi Open to Prosecution of Bush Administration Officials

I think you look at each item and see what is a violation of the law and do we even have a right to ignore it ," the California Democrat said. "And other things that are maybe time that is spent better looking to the future rather than to the past."

Rep. John Conyers, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, announced Friday he wants to set up a commission to look into whether the Bush administration broke the law by taking the nation to war against Iraq and instituting aggressive anti-terror initiatives. The Michigan Democrat called for an "independent criminal probe into whether any laws were broken in connection with these activities ."

From Bashers End Bush Era Deflated by Lack of Prosecutions

Activists who have spent years protesting President Bush admit their chances are slim of seeing Bush or any members of his administration face legal recourse for what they say are "crimes against humanity."

While Shrum tells everybody that partisanship and vitriol are over, his friends are busy setting up the gallows for President Bush. What’s even more ironic here, is that according to Conyers, a "criminal probe" needs to be set up to see if any laws were broken. In other words, Conyers, Pelosi, and the rest have no concrete evidence of any wrong doing.

They want a witch hunt.

Pelosi justifies herself with the "we don’t have a right to ignore it" mantra. Ignore what , Madame Speaker? Moreover, since when does the legislative branch enforce the law ? Since never. That is the job of the Executive branch, which is exactly why Pelosi et al. need Obama to be on board with their lynching of Bush, and the source of the frustrations for the lack of prosecution for the so-called crimes against humanity.

Here we have liberal retribution at its finest. Why are these people so bent on prosecuting Bush for war crimes? Where is the outcry against the terrorists for their crimes against humanity? Are you angry at Bush because he kept us safe for the last seven years? Because he stumbles over his words? Because he took us to war and actually used our military for more than just funding the college education of our troops?

No,  this goes back to the Monica Lewinsky scandle. The liberals have waited a decade for some payback for impeaching President Clinton. It is their turn to loudly proclaim "off with his head." And in so doing, they show their true colors.

On one hand we have Mr. Shrum’s smugness, and on the other we have the balance of the left’s hatred. Sorry, Mr. Shrum, but I don’t see the conversation in Washington becoming any more civil now that Obama is on the beat. The problem is largely with yourselves. A civil discussion doesn’t work when you are only willing to be civil when your guy is in the house and when you are getting your way. It doesn’t happen when you are turning the leader of the other party over to the liberals in the Hague for prosecution of war crimes. The truth is that even now that your guy is in the house, your people still aren’t civil.

My sister, Staci, asked me to help her look for a service to publish her blog as a book. Coincidentally, I have been interested for some time in having a hard copy backup of the blogs I maintain (for when WWIII breaks out and we are back gathering berries for our food).

Staci uses Blogger. I use Wordpress. I figured that blog publishing services would be a sort of one-size-fits-all proposition. Turns out, not so much.

Below are the services I found:

1.  Blurb is supposedly the gold standard for converting blogs to books. When I visited the site, however, the "slurping" algorithms are broken for Blogger and Wordpress.  It still works for other blog platforms, such as TypePad and LiveJournal. To create a book, you have to install their BookSmart client to install on your computer. Because I run Wordpress blogs, however, I was unable to see functionality and comment on layouts, etc.

This site is good for most run-of-the-mill bloggers who are not computer geniuses, the lack of Blogger/Wordpress functionality is problematic because most run-of-the-mill bloggers use either Blogger or Wordpress. They say this will eventually be fixed. It better be if they want to stay in business.

2.  A good option for Blogger, however, is SharedBook . All you have to do is put your blog address into the form on the main SharedBook webpage, tell it whether you want the whole blog or a certain time period. It then creates a book for you and tells you how much dough you need to cough up to get the book. Three limitations I saw are (1) it will not print a book with an excess of 350 pictures 500 pictures, which means that picture blogs will need to be broken up into smaller periods of time;  (2) it forces comments to be printed; (3) there are no options for formatting to make the book really snazzy like the other sites. That said, the default layout was great and I appreciated the simplicity of the site. You literally will have your book ready to preview and order in two minutes.

SharedBook didn’t work for my Wordpress blogs.

Update

Carolyn from SharedBook weighed in. Because I don’t really solicit comments on this blog, which means readers are unlikely to see her comment, I copy her comment below.

Hi. Just wanted you to know that SharedBook has lifted the 350 picture max and expanded to 500 the number of photos that can automatically be loaded. Also, you can remove all or some portion of the comments by personalizing your Blog2Print book (you can also add more photos).

It looks like that in addition to super ease of use of SharedBook and great default layout, you are also likely to have a hands on experience with the operators if any issues need to be resolved. Sometimes that alone is worth using a service.

3. Lulu . This is for real die-hards. It really isn’t a blog book printing site, but has an amazing array of utilities for printing books from cookbooks, to comic books, to wedding books, to text books. If you want to sell your content, this is place to do it, but creation of a book here will take some elbow grease because there is no automated feature for blogs. I.e., there will be a lot of copying, pasting, and uploading. Pictures are uploaded using their slick Lulu Studio that is able to import from Flickr or Photobucket. Lulu is an ideal site for aspiring professional photographers to make proof books or demo books.