Lollapalooza opened today in Chicago, the biggest one yet. The Chicago Tribune will be live-blogging it all weekend. Here's the lineup.

Will Sen. Barack Obama make an appearance? He's nuts if he doesn't. Rather than pitching them on his candidacy, since most probably already support him, he ought to welcome them to his home town and use the opportunity to encourage them to register to vote. And reach out and text a friend with the same message.

Three-day attendance is expected to top 200,000 for the first time since Lolla made its Grant Park debut in 2005.

8 stages,120 bands, 700 journalists and record high heat. Last year, we were all at Yearly Kos in Chicago when Lollapalooza kicked off. Too hot with too much humidity for me, but I can see why it's such a big deal.

Radiohead, Rage Against the Machine,Wilco, Kanye West and Nine Inch Nails seem to be among the more well-known groups. The clip above is Radiohead's House of Cards.

Via Digby, all three Bush men, George I, GW and Jeb got on the phone today to call Rush Limbaugh and congratulate him on the 20th anniversary of his show and his "excellent and important broadcasting." The transcript is here. At one point, Bush I, who didn't realize they were on the air, says to Rush,

Do you see our man Ailes at all?

Another open thread.

Natalie Merchant and Michael Stipe. You'll need to turn up the volume --I took this off an old VHS tape I had lying around of the 1993 MTV Inaugural Ball for Bill Clinton and Al Gore and put it on You Tube but I couldn't get it louder.

I always thought the song was called "Give them what they want." It's "Candy Everybody Wants."

This is an open thread, but new commenters, as always, are limited to 10 comments in a 24 hour period.

Resolving a 25 year inability to just get along, Cheech and Chong, recognizing they aren't getting any younger, are going to reunite and go on tour with a comedy show, called "Hey, What's That Smell?" Details will be announced this afternoon.

Says Cheech Marin:

Marin said he thinks dope humor can be as funny today as it was back in the '70s.

"I think it's time for a revival of dope jokes. It's a much bigger audience now, it's much more widespread and institutionalized," he said in an interview earlier this month.

I hope someone books them for Denver the week of the Convention. The Dems could use some prodding about the need to reform our marijuana laws.

Here's my 90 second video interview of Tommy Chong at Owl Farm last year, with Jimmy Ibbotson (formerly of the Nitty Gritty Dirt band) singing in the background.)

The Nation's Chris Hayes's article on Move On has sparked a healthy debate on what exactly Move On is doing and whether it is effective. John Stauber critiques:

[Move On is] an important organization that is tremendously successful as a fundraiser, cheerleader and marketer for liberal Democratic causes, MoveOn. I have praise for MoveOn in what they have accomplished, but their limitations are becoming more and more glaring and in the case of the continued Democratic funding of the war in Iraq, problematic.

I criticize MoveOn for what they are not doing, and that is empowering a bottom-up, democratic, progressive movement for fundamental social and political change. I am certainly not trying to reform MoveOn, that would be impossible because they are a tightly controlled organization and there is no access from the outside to change their modus operandi. Rather, I think we all should learn from MoveOn and focus on how we can use the MoveOn style, which has now been copied by thousands of groups and candidates, to actually empower a movement.

Matt Stoller defends Move On:

Let's set aside for the moment political differences and disapproval of Robert Novak's conduct, in order to wish him a speedy recovery from a brain tumor that caused his admission to intensive care last night.

[Novak's assistant Kathleeen] Connolly added that Mr. Novak is alert and talking ... and that he will undergo a biopsy at some time in the next few days to determine the kind of tumor he has.

In this thread, at least, please keep your comments respectful.

The TL kid and I finally got our new iPhones today. It's just like the iPod touch only it has a phone. Since I spent the better part of last week learning how to use the iPod touch, I'm hoping the phone will be an easy learning curve.

Not everyone loves it. This Washington Post reporter just returned his iPhone.

More...

The Dalai Lama gave a keynote speech yesterday in Aspen, a day after John McCain visited him there.

In Saturday's speech, he didn't mention McCain. Anita Thompson was there, and writing in HuffPo today, recaps the Dalai Lama's talk.

She begins:

My late husband, Hunter S. Thompson, said that he was a teenage girl trapped in the body of an elderly dope fiend. I realized something as I watched the highest ranking monk of Tibetan Buddhism: His Holiness is a teenage girl trapped in the body of a Dalai Lama! It was all very familiar, indeed spectacular, as I observed his demeanor during the keynote address he gave at the Aspen Institute Saturday. I have studied the Dalai Lama's teachings, practiced another form of Buddhism, and am even more curious now because Hunter was so often compared to him.

Here's what the Dalai Lama had to say on war in the 21st century: [More...]

Oh she tries to retain her cynical worldly approach and the title tries to stir up trouble, but Maureen Dowd got, to use her phrase, Obamarized. She portrays Obama as the anti-presumptuous one. Some snippets:

After 200,000 people thronged to see Obama at the Victory Column in Berlin, christening him “Redeemer” and “Savior,” it turned out Sarko [French President Nicolas Sarkozy] was also Obamarized, as the Germans were calling the mesmerizing effect. “You must want a cigarette after that,” I teased [Obama] after the amorous joint press conference, as he flew from Paris to London for the finale of his grand tour.

“I think we could work well together,” he said of Sarko, smiling broadly.

More . . .

Less cheery, more political version from Fahrenheit 911 here.

Is anyone still up? Here's an open thread for night owls and early birds.

Fred Hiatt is a shameless man. Today he publishes an editorial in the Washington Post chiding John McCain for his McCarthyite smear of Barack Obama:

Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, had one of those unfortunate moments the other day, when he charged that his Democratic opponent, Sen. Barack Obama, "would rather lose the war to win a political campaign." . . . It's one thing to say Mr. Obama is wrong. It's another to accuse him of putting political self-interest over country. This is not the "politics of civility" that Mr. McCain was promising as recently as last month.

A rather tepid critique from Hiatt's WaPo. But there is a reason for that -- Fred Hiatt has his own history of McCarthyite smears of Democrats:

Context: After a big battle yesterday, I won a detention hearing in federal court getting bail for a very young client in a drug case. Like all such hearings, it was decided by a Magistrate Court Judge.

Even when the defendant wins, the Government can get a stay of the release order while it decides whether to appeal to the District Court Judge. So despite winning the bail issue, my client stays locked up.

At 4:55 pm today, the Government filed a motion with the District Court Judge to revoke the Magistrate Judge's order. I will now spend the weekend writing yet another brief in hope that on Tuesday, when the reconsideration motion is heard, my client -- finally -- will be released.

This is an open thread.