And the oil keeps spewing, 40 days after an explosion on an oil rig killed 11 and began what is now the largest oil spill in U.S. history.

"This scares everybody, the fact that we can't make this well stop flowing, the fact that we haven't succeeded so far," BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles told the media Saturday. "Many of the things we're trying have been done on the surface before, but have never been tried at 5,000 feet."

Yet the media reports that every step of the way the oil behemoth has lowballed spill estimates and evaded answering questions about his mismanagement. "It's obvious BP's lying,"’ said the Rev. Tyronne Edwards, who runs a community development organization in Plaquemines Parish, La. "It's criminal what they're doing. But the government cannot be let off the hook, either."

The immensity of this disaster is buried in soundbites and the limits of commercial TV. Salient facts get lost amid the noise.

Here's what’s captured my attention and warrants repeating:

The New York Times reported Saturday that there were "serious problems and safety concerns with the Deepwater Horizon rig" as far back as 11 months ago.

The busted well has dumped between 18 million and 40 million gallons into the Gulf, according to government estimates.

The oil spill forms a surface slick at least 130 miles long and 70 miles wide that stretches from about 30 miles west of the Mississippi River to the offshore waters of western Florida, according to the latest National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration estimates.

Human error is the reason for the oil spill. Even as the oil rig burned, employees on board it hesitated to activate[e] the emergency disconnect system that was supposed to slam the oil well shut at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico," the Associated Press has reported.

In a detailed story about what happened on the oil in the hours before and after the explosion, the AP reports that rig workers had a "skirmish" with a BP official over how to plug the deep sea well.

"I overheard upper management talking saying that BP was taking shortcuts by displacing the well with saltwater instead of mud without sealing the well with cement plugs, this is what it blew out,"’ Transocean rig worker Truitt Crawford told the Coast Guard. BP declined AP's request for a comment on Crawford's statement.

The federal government's official policing agency of the oil industry -- Minerals Management Service -- was literally in bed with oil company lobbyists. “A year and a half ago, inspectors found MMS workers in Lakewood, Colo., engaging in sex and drug use with oil industry representatives, taking payments from oil companies, and rigging contracts for them," says the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank.

Here what’s also evident: Americans are drowning in hopelessness and anger.

"If they have no fucking clue how to fix this, WHY WERE THEY ALLOWED TO DO IT IN THE FIRST PLACE?," lamented someone commenting as Larryfishkorn on Gawker. "Oh yeah, because selling oil makes a lot of money. BP needs to have all of their US coast drilling licences revoked immediately. Oh right, they make a [lot] of money, and no American politician has the coconuts to do that.”

It's time for President Obama to appoint Senator Al Gore to head up a task force directing the cleanup, investigation and communications surrounding this horrific disaster. No other public or private official has the public's faith on this issue.