People keep trying and utterly failing to draw some kind of significant tie between the president-elect and disgraced Illinoid Gov. Rod Blagojevich. But is anyone listening to Google Images? CONNECT THE DOTS.

Last night at the Sunset Blvd. staple Book Soup, autism-unfriendly comedian Denis Leary was signing copies of his book, Why We Suck, when he was approached by two very curious fans. One of them tentatively asked whether Leary endorsed the idea of a reinvestigation into the events of 9/11, which Leary said would actually be a plotline in the upcoming season of Rescue Me. Then, a second fan asked him a more specific question about conspiracy theories surrounding Building 7's collapse. After a pause, Leary began, "You don't want to get into that with me, because several of the guys who I know really well were helping to hold that building up," upon which the fan, who was recording the incident, was swarmed by Book Soup security (they even blocked his camera). What do they know?! Video, after the jump:

Tech billionaire, anger-driven blogger, and owner of the Dallas Mavericks Mark Cuban has just been charged with insider trading by the SEC. The (civil, not criminal) charges center on an incident in 2004 in which Cuban allegedly got early insider information about a company he had an ownership stake in, and used that info to avoid a loss of $750,000. We have no idea whether the charges are true, but if they are, it's a foolish business move by a guy who's already been fined more than twice that much by the NBA just for running his mouth. Though it is possible to formulate a wild conspiracy theory about this! Mark Cuban would be just another rich guy except for his penchant for saying whatever pops into his head. He constantly criticizes the NBA, which is a no-no by owners. The flipside is he gets great PR. Although half of it is bad! Oh well. He also has a blog that is sometimes hilarious and not well thought out a bit. At the moment, Cuban wants to buy the Chicago Cubs from Tribune Co., which needs to sell the storied baseball franchise to raise cash, which it will burn in a vain attempt to save its newspapers. The idea of Cuban—a maverick—owning the Cubs absolutely kills traditionalists, who think he would totally ruin all the great Chicago traditions, such as having ivy on the outfield walls and losing constantly. So is it possible that there was some shady conspiracy that caused this allegation from 2004 to surface just in time to (likely) torpedo any chance Cuban has of buying the Cubs? You would have to be a crazy conspiracy freak to believe this, for which there is no evidence whatsoever, so please don't sue us.

The LA Times has a videotape of Obama at a luncheon with known Arab Rashid Khalidi. They say they won't release it because they promised their source they wouldn't. We said that somebody there should release it just so they can claim the $150,000 bounty offered for it and buy essential office supplies, such as toilet paper. Times are tough. But National Review's mongering blog The Corner has figured out that this conspiracy is way bigger than $150,000; $14.685 billion bigger! Break it down, crazy man: See, they figure it like this: LAT is owned by Tribune, which is $14.7 billion in debt, and the incoming Obama administration is gonna have $500 billion of government bailout funds to dole out, and $14.7 billion is "a very small proportion" of $500 billion (this is actually included in the reasoning) and if you keep Hussein Obama happy now then, hey, who's to say he won't give Tribune Co. $14.7 billion when he gets on the inside? Read the signs, people, they're all around you. The Corner also points out:

Hey we've reached the insane "Hillary Clinton killed Vince Foster and she's a lesbian" stage of wild far-right delusion. You heard that Barack Obama had an affair and crazy Michelle Obama shipped the mistress to an island somewhere, right? Hey, did you know Obama's real father was a communist? It's true, because some blogs found some photos of a naked lady that they are pretty sure is Ann Dunham, Barack Obama's mother, and they used brilliant CSI-style photo analysis to determine that the photos were taken by Communist "Frank," Obama's mentor. This is all proof that Obama is a secret commie.

Andy Martin is the habitual politician and "researcher" who created the original smear of Barack Obama as a secret Muslim in a 2004 press release, begetting a mutating series of email forwards still coursing through the internet. Last week, he was featured in a Fox News special that, in the words of the Times, "allowed Mr. Martin to assert falsely and without challenge that Mr. Obama had once trained to overthrow the government." But, hey, Martin isn't just worried about Obama and Islam, he's also deathly afraid of the Jews! The Times' Jim Ruttenberg dug into Martin's anti-Semitisim in this morning's paper after Martin tried to deny and brush off the issue last week:

Having completed his vision quest in India, Zuckerberg is now moving on to the requisite Eurotrip. Shown here guest-lecturing at the Technische Universität-Berlin, he's also expected to speak at an invite-only function in Munich. These trips might not seem peculiar, given Facebook's international expansion. But there is one odd pattern we've noticed.Every time Zuckerberg skips town, bad things happen at Facebook. Is it because he doesn't want to be seen as the bad guy as his former comrades in arms leave the company? We're not saying Facebook employees should worry every time they see the boss surfing Expedia. But we are wondering if this isn't a trend. Tip to the Z-Man: don't go overboard at Oktoberfest. (Photo by cpthook)

Page Six thinks it has figured out why Bill Clinton gave such a tepid endorsement of Barack Obama on The View and David Letterman last week. Not that anyone was really scratching their heads, befuddled, as to why the ex-president couldn't get past his wife's bitter loss of the Democratic primary to Obama. But Page Six gets specific: Obama supposedly refused to promise Hillary Clinton a Supreme Court nomination as she demanded, so Bill exacted revenge. Clinton on the high court is not exactly a new idea. And her people deny the new version of the rumor. The timing of the gossip is interesting, though. As the Obama ticket battles it out with Sarah Palin, star of Thursday primetime TV, for former Clinton supporters, painting Hillary as shrill and demanding makes Obama look a bit more sympathetic. And celebrity gossip sheets may be nearly as good a way to reach Hillary Democrats as The View.

On Katie Couric's website, it's always "Sen. Biden" this and "Sen. Biden" that, but the Democratic VP nominee's Republican counterpart gets the catty treatment. She's just plain "Sarah Palin." Conservative slam book American Spectator even found a CBS News editorial aide saying Couric sought approval to not call her "Governor." Because otherwise, you see, Palin might have looked all executive and so forth in her disastrous interviews. Couric is obviously just scared of a more powerful cougar. When will the jealous media elites stop conspiring to make Sarah Palin look bad? Watch Couric finally give Palin the respect she deserves, after the jump.

Some people believe that Nostradamus predicted the Wall Street crash of 1929. But a modern age requires modern prophets. On a Google Finance message board last July, one lone nut predicted a market crash. "The negative news that will move the market downward should occur September 15," he wrote. That would be today. This oracle may be raving, but he did predict the future correctly. "This organization below," he went on, "runs the show..." The Group's Name: Legatus Its Mission: " To study, live and spread the Faith in our business, professional and personal lives." What is it?: Legatus—Latin for "ambassador" (and the term for a general in the Roman army)—is a worldwide networking group "designed exclusively for top-ranking Catholic business leaders." Its main stated duty is to bring such leaders together for closed monthly networking meetings. The group calls itself "the conduit connecting two powerful realities, the challenge of top-tier business leadership and a religious tradition second to none." History: The group was founded in 1987 by Tom Monaghan, the devout Catholic who founded Domino's Pizza. It now boasts "thousands" of members throughout America and in Europe. It's somewhat reminiscent of Opus Dei, the shadowy Catholic group that starred in The Da Vinci Code. The Google Nostradamus went by the name of reinhardt (though his account has now been banned). He ID'd himself as the author of this conspiracy site as well. Here are some salient portions of his very extensive posts on the connection between Legatus and our current financial blowup:

We've updated our guide with three more rumors about the Republican vice presidential candidate.

Even false rumors can be revealing. It wasn't true that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama was a secret Muslim, or that his wife hated white people, but the persistence of those claims in email chain letters, online comments and blog posts told you what a chunk of middle America feared, namely scary foreign terrorists in disguise. What to make, then, of the flood of conspiracy theories about Sarah Palin that are flooding the dark corners of the internet? We thought rumors about the Republican vice presidential candidate and her family were going to dry up last week, but since our last comprehensive factsheet they have just kept coming. There's some genuine scandal. But a fake pregnancy? Secret rehab stints? Maybe the Bush and Clinton years left the blue states dreading anyone who seems too country-fried. Or maybe the Palin's really do have this many skeletons in their closet! Trudge through the thickening swamp of Palin mud and decide for yourself, one rumor at a time, after the jump.

"Those are the reasons I support Barack Obama. And those are the reasons you should too." [Observer]

Michelle Obama is scheduled to speak at the Democratic Convention in about an hour. It's the first thing any reasonable number of people will care about at the big political show in Denver. When the speech ends, and talking head spin mode begins, everyone should remember the TV people are completely desperate to conjure news at the pointless, made-for-media convention. Here's some evidence, in the form of a CNN segment that seems to be hinting that Pepsi controls the Obama campaign and entire Democratic party, because of its logo.

Nothing good in this world can last forever, and so it is with The Wendy Williams Show, which concluded its six-week test run today before it relaunches nationwide in 2009. When we last checked in on Wendy, she was shocking the audience with unorthodox opinions on matters like Heath Ledger's baby (not a random, drive-by splash-off, you'll be happy to know) and The Curse of Jennifer Aniston. Still, for her final broadcast, Wendy ceded the crazy to audience member Rosie, who proceeded to accuse actress Kate Hudson of attempted murder, twice (as well as the inability to fill out a C-cup). We're speechless, so we'll simply quote from Wendy's signoff: "See you in 2009," she said, "just how you like it: real, raw, and regular." Indeed. [The Wendy Williams Show]

Ken Layne over at Wonkette has done some heroic digging into Plum Island, the Department of Homeland Security-run animal horror lab suspiciously close not only to Montauk, where our friend Monty washed ashore, but to a long string of terrifying outbreaks and hybrid animal attacks. We knew from the start of the Montauk Monster mystery that Plum Island was at the center of various conspiracy theories, but when one looks at the entire awful history in one blog post, one must inevitably conclude that, despite its shifty and inconsistent denials, the federal government is assembling there a fearsome monster army that, if left unchecked, will someday slaughter us while we sleep.

Eagle-eyed commenter Raincoaster noticed something funny about the picture we posted last night of Bee Shaffer: The daughter of Vogue editor Anna Wintour was wearing an Oscar De La Renta dress last seen in July on the back of actress Jennifer Lopez. But it was barely on her back. As pointed out with varying degrees of cruelty on lolebrity and D-Listed, one photo showed how famously-voluptuous Lopez didn't quite fit the dress, so it had to be held onto her body with some sort of rope or scrunchy or something. Now Shaffer is prancing back into New York with that same dress elegantly draped over her wispy, fashion-friendly frame. COINCIDENCE?

There's still more information to report on the mysterious decomposed creature that washed ashore on Long Island recently, if not any definitive answers. A slew of clues come from some actual, you know, reporting done by New York magazine, which somehow tracked down our original tipster, who again denied the photo is part of any PR campaign and said it came from "my girlfriend's sister was there with her friends and one of them took the picture." Then they talked to an eyewitness!

Seriously, what's going on with these Bonnie Fuller columns in Ad Age? The deposed Star chief must still be desperate for cash. And Ad Age must be desperate for amusement, because the main thing these columns do is expose the fact that Bonnie Fuller-despite being paid astronomical amounts of money by several media moguls-is not all that bright. At least when it comes to writing about and/ or analyzing things. Her last column blew the big A-Rod-and-Madonna conspiracy wide open; and today, she reveals what's really going on with Barack Obama's "celebrity" strategy. The twisted truth must come out! You see, Barack Obama didn't just stumble onto the cover of People magazine by chance. Oh no. It's all part of a big PR strategy! That's how things work in the high-level circles to which Bonnie Fuller is privy:

Now that Bonnie Fuller's been kicked out of American Media, she can finally reveal the dirty secrets of how the Celebrity Tabloid game is really played. It's all an elaborate Watergate-like conspiracy! The celebs are in collusion with the glossies! You know that thing where baseball player Alex Rodriguez was suddenly hanging out with Madonna and divorcing his wife? Remember that? You know how none of it made any sense? Well Fuller-whose career in the tabloid trenches gives her a special understanding of how these sorts of stories work-smells a rat. An aerobics-addicted 49-year-old celebrity rat.