Four cities are vying for the right to punish their own citizens with higher taxes, crippling transportation problems, and acres of over-priced and underused infrastructure projects that will blight the landscape for decades to come. Let the torch burn bright! Politicians, wealthy businessmen, and other "civic leaders" love to brag about the jobs and income that hosting an Olympics creates. And it will create income—for politicians, wealthy businessmen, and civic leaders. For everyone else, it's mostly a giant headache. They get eminent domain lawsuits and obnoxious construction snafus and in exchange they get pop-up souvenir stores and sporting events they can't afford to tickets to. Yet, the city fathers will bend over backwards to bring it to them. Higher, faste…

The context for LeBron’s 57-point masterpiece last night is something I, a devoted Wizards fan, would prefer to ignore—the Wizards spent portions of the spring and an interview with ESPN’s The Jump chirping that the Cavs ducked them in last season’s playoffs, and went so far as to say that they, the Wizards, who’ve neither advanced past the second round of the playoffs nor won more than 49 games during my lifetime, were the class of the Eastern Conference. Yeesh. What I would really like to do is puff up inside my basketblogger togs and scold you for needing that narrative silliness to appreciate LeBron’s sweet basketball moves, a position that not coincidentally ushers your attention away from the many crimes of self-ownage the Wizards have already committed this season. Q…