NORMAN ORNSTEIN at Roll Call says John Murtha is the wrong choice for majority leader, because of the long shadow of the Abscam scandal of 1980, when FBI agents posing as Arab sheiks offered cash to congressmen.
But the sheiks of Abu Dhabi are richer.
The oil sheiks took control of a crucial portion of world product.
They explained their motivation on the invitation: "Our communities are being ripped apart – by Russian oligarchs, Saudi sheiks, Israeli scumbag property developers, Texan oil-money twats and our own home-grown Eton toffs.
Having created hugely successful companies that have generated almost unimaginable wealth, Zuckerberg, Gates, and Buffett are sending a powerful message to Wall Street hedge-fund managers, Russian oligarchs, European industrialists, Arab oil sheiks, and anybody else who has accumulated a vast fortune: "From those to whom much is given, much is expected".
"The Sheik" (1921) — whose happily ravished heroine, one tends to forget, is Lady Diana — grossed more than a million dollars, prompted many humbled American males to walk out of the theatre, and spawned so many imitations that the Hollywood journalist Herbert Howe (the future lover of Valentino's budding rival Ramon Novarro) declared, "There are more sheiks here than in the Sahara".
Farmers worried that European aristocrats and oil-wealthy sheiks were driving up the price of land while also wresting control of the nation's food supply.
Several reasons lie behind this remarkable turnabout, according to senior religious sheiks, junior members and experts.
And while the Salafis' ideology strikes many Egyptians as extreme and anachronistic, their sheiks command built-in networks of devoted followers, and even voters who disagree with their puritanical doctrine often credit the Salafis with integrity and authenticity.
Manchester City, bankrolled by Abu Dhabi sheiks, beat Chelsea, owned by a Russian oligarch, by a solitary goal.
A group of tribal sheiks who arrived at the Ahmar family compound to mediate a cease-fire issued a statement to local reporters saying they had come under fire almost immediately after arriving, despite repeated efforts to coordinate by phone with the president's loyalists.
