While he may be severely lacking in intelligence, one thing that Barack Obama does excel at is his ability to make blatant lies palatable, at least to the uninformed (including the MSM.) His modus operandi for this treachery is to proactively accuse his opponents of the exact thing he and his cohorts are guilty of.  With the assurance that the ineffectual media will never follow up on his fallacious pronouncements, he uses this scheme again and again to successfully advance an otherwise unpopular and unconstitutional agenda.  His latest slight of hand:  trying to divert the public’s attention away from the real cause of skyrocketing fuel prices.

Following hot on the heels of Karen’s post describing Obama’s most recent attempt at this diversionary tactic, i.e. feigning concern by placing the Justice Department in charge of an “investigation” into the situation, comes this report from Fox News:

Shell Oil Company has announced it must scrap efforts to drill for oil this summer in the Arctic Ocean off the northern coast of Alaska. The decision comes following a ruling by the EPA’s Environmental Appeals Board to withhold critical air permits.

Shell has spent five years and nearly $4 billion dollars on plans to explore for oil in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas. The leases alone cost $2.2 billion. Shell Vice President Pete Slaiby says obtaining similar air permits for a drilling operation in the Gulf of Mexico would take about 45 days. He’s especially frustrated over the appeal board’s suggestion that the Arctic drill would somehow be hazardous for the people who live in the area.

The EPA’s appeals board ruled that Shell had not taken into consideration emissions from an ice-breaking vessel when calculating overall greenhouse gas emissions from the project.

So the next time you hear Obama or any of his minions on the left try to place the blame for $5.00/gal gas on “speculators” or “Big Oil” please keep in mind that this man rarely, if ever deals in reality, and is in fact more likely to be facing exactly 180 degrees from the truth, despite his phony protestations to the contrary.