Trump Bails, Gingrich Fails.

See: Trump Not Running for President: 'Decision Does Not Come Easily Or Without Regret'

"I maintain the strong conviction that if I were to run, I would be able to win the primary and ultimately, the general election," Trump said in a statement on Monday. "I have spent the past several months unofficially campaigning and recognize that running for public office cannot be done half heartedly. Ultimately, however, business is my greatest passion and I am not ready to leave the private sector."

No regrets from me. I was having too much trouble taking Trump seriously as a candidate to begin with.

And in another corner this Sunday, we had the former Republican House Speaker, Newt Gingrich, proving that he is now completely unfit to lead the Republican Party in any capacity.

See: Gingrich Blasts House GOP's Medicare Plan

White House hopeful Newt Gingrich called the House Republican plan for Medicare "right-wing social engineering," injecting a discordant GOP voice into the party's efforts to reshape both entitlements and the broader budget debate.

I have a middle finger here for you Newt.

In the same interview Sunday, on NBC's "Meet the Press," Mr. Gingrich backed a requirement that all Americans buy health insurance, complicating a Republican line of attack on President Barack Obama's health law.

And here is the other middle finger for you Newt.

Newt, you're fired!

If you would like to read a transcript of the interview, you can find it here : Meet the Press transcript for May 15, 2011 (The msnbc website is a real POS. It is a huge pain in the ass to navigate but if you would like to go to the original source, help yourself.)

[Additional] See: Gingrich Shifts to Damage Control

Why Now? About the Timing – The Birth Certificate Circus

The screaming above-the-fold headline story of the Seattle Times today was about Obama's Birth certificate: Why now? Obama decided enough was enough

Why Now? Indeed. It is a good question.

If Obama was a Republican, the Seattle Times reporters and the whole of the MSM might have actually done a little investigating into the why of it all, but since Obama is a Democrat (like them), they merely parroted the President’s lame rationalizations without lifting nary a finger at seriously looking into what changed this month and on that day in particular.

Obama’s “We don't have time for this kind of silliness” explanation fails - save that something has been changing in the legal landscape for candidates for Presidency. The time left that he could continue playing games with his Birth Certificate ran out.

Several states have had bills progressing through their legislatures that would have required Presidential candidates to present their birth certificates as proof of eligibility. On the very same day that Obama released his certificate, the Oklahoma House of Representatives had passed a measure that would have required Presidential candidates to show the Birth Certificate in order to appear on their Primary Election ballot.

Arizona passed a similar law last month, but the Governor of that State vetoed the bill.

Louisiana has a bill of this type working its way through their legislative process.

It was just a mater of time before one or more states passed and signed into law a measure that would require the Presidential Candidates to present their Birth Certificate. The “I don’t have to show you my Birth Certificate – you have to take my word for it” game that Obama has been playing since the first day that the Hillary Campaign brought the issue up, had drawn to an ignoble close.

Obama would have had to present his Birth Certificate, or if he chose to continue with the charade, skip having his name on the ballot in one or more states. That would have been too explosive. The game had thus ceased to serve its purpose of being a side-show distraction to keep people from looking at just how awful a President Obama really is.

The Birth Certificate Circus and con-game is now done and over with.

The next left-Dem game will be to call Trump and everyone that is critical of Obama and his policies a racist.

Trump Wins, Obama Loses - The Obama Birth Certificate Circus

I will Give Trump a win on this. He has managed to get Obama to release his birth-certificate after having made a game of it for the entire length of his short Presidential career.

“We do not have time for this kind of silliness,” he said to reporters after the White House released a long-form copy of his birth certificate. Potential Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump stirred up the controversy in recent weeks by demanding Obama prove he was born in Hawaii, not Kenya.

Obama, me-thinks though dost protest too much.

The whole of the birther circus was Obama's creation. He stoked and fuelled it from day one. He has no one to blame for it but himself. All that he had to do was release the damnable thing early on. Instead, he kept the controversy alive. Obama was in control of this issue the whole time. Everyone knows it.

Trump, calls Obama on this while taking credit for getting Obama to release the document.

"I'm taking great credit and you have to ask the president, 'why didn't he do this a long time ago? Why didn't he do it a long time ago?' When Hillary Clinton was asking, when everybody was asking, why didn't he do it? It's shocking. It's shocking," Donald Trump said at a press conference this morning on President Obama's birth certificate.

And like the proven and expert negotiator that Trump has proven himself to be in his business life, he has upped the stakes on Obama, demanding that Obama now release his college transcripts.

"I'd like to know how does he get into Harvard, how does he get into Colombia if he isn't a very good student," Donald Trump told the press this morning in New Hampshire.

"If he wants to release it that's fine, if he doesn't want to release it that's fine too. But the word is he wasn't a very good student," Trump added.

I don't think that Trump understands foreign policy very well. But it is pretty clear that he knows how to "steal the oxygen" in a political campaign. Trump is driving the campaign, Obama is reacting, and reacting badly.

Trump wins today. Obama loses.

If the vote ends up being between Obama the Community Organizer incumbent and Trump the Side-Show Pop-Icon challenger, I will hold my nose and vote for Trump.

Ron Paul, Donald Trump - Losers

Ron Paul is expected to announce his umpteenth Presidential Campaign today. I expect him to do as well as his last campaign for President, which he lost big.

Ron Paul - doing the same thing and expecting a different result.

Donald Trump will be stumping in Nevada at an event billed as “A Return to the Reagan Revolution, from Ronald to Donald.”

Trump has the cajones to go for the jugular in politics, unfortunately, he does not have the judgement necessary to make a good national level candidate for President, much less an actual world leader.

His Birther nonsense is a distraction from how awful Obama is as a President and Donald's remarks about threatening the Saudis and thinking that we should seize Iraqi and Libyan oil fields pretty much proved that he would be as much of a foreign policy disaster as is Obama.

Ron and Don will get a lot of media attention. What they won't get is the GOP nomination.