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So during this peculiar betwixt-and-between moment of ours, with one administration packing its bags and the next one trying to get its bearings, a question of immense significance to the future course of American statecraft presents itself: Will the United States at long last ring down the curtain on the most endless of its endless wars?

He warned of a reckoning: "The Negroes of this country may never be able to rise to power, but they are very well placed indeed to precipitate chaos and ring down the curtain on the American dream."

In the end, though, he didn't so much ring down the curtain on "The Colbert Report" -- Comedy Central's scathingly hilarious sendup of political posturing and the culture of uninformed narcissism --  as he finally, and most genially, pulled it aside.

By the time Tim Southee hustled one through Joe Root's desperate 10th-wicket heave to ring down the curtain on England's first innings at 204, New Zealand were in such a strong position, with a lead of 239, that they might, with some measure of comfort, have been able to enforce the follow-on and have another crack at England's tottering batting.