Moldy Peaches

NDP Leader Jack Layton is expected to announce today whether he likes a package of health-care changes the Liberals gave him Thursday night, possibly putting an end to talk of a pre-Christmas election. Layton has threatened to withdraw his party's House of Commons support for Paul Martin's minority Liberal government unless it does something to stop what he considers the privatization of health care.

An NDP spokesperson has said the party won't support the Liberals beyond Nov. 15 if there's no deal. Although, when challenged by Stephen Harper and Gilles Duceppe to join the other parties in a non-confidence vote and bring down the Liberals, Layton gave this brilliant quote: "We're not into deadline politics. Harper and Duceppe may want to set deadlines, but I don't believe in that approach."

Layton is starting to sound a little like Donald Rumsfield. As we know, there are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know that there are known unknowns. That is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don't know we don't know.

My head hurts.