Before the news broke yesterday that a team of Navy SEALS saved an American captive from pirates, Newt Gingrich was twittering away: "President obama is making a major mistake in not forcefully oulining the rules of civilization for dealing with pirates."

Well, if force in dealing with pirates is the metric Newt wants to use, he should note this clever chart that was sent in to Politico:

Game, Set, Match.

The Wayback Machine, provided by the internet archive, is a fantastic tool for researching what the world wide web looked like at previous points in history.  Today, I decided to use this tool to look at the world of Barack Obama, and how his now famous whirlwind political rise left a fast and rapidly expanding footprint on the internet.

 Here's an interesting way to look at it: On May 30th, 2004, the first day for which an archived Wikipedia page is available, Barack Obama's Wikipedia page had 340 words, counting menus and footnotes.  Today, that number is 14, 129.  Wikipedia now has ~41.55 times the amount of information about Barack Obama as it did just four short years ago.

Another interesting avenue of exploration is scanning through Barack Obama's campaign website over the years, which was first archived on April 15th, 2004.

There are many ways in which the wayback machine can give you an insight into the world of politics as it once was, and into the rise and fall of politicians and how their footprint is felt across the internet.  I suggest you have yourself a peek. 

 Oh. My. God.  This is too funny.  I have to hand it to SNL, although they've been very hit or miss of late, this is a fantastic skit: