Mom and Dad told me once when I was very young that “anyone can become president.”

I believed them, even though I’ve since learned that it’s not entirely true. The “anyone” they had in mind needs some help along the way: some connections, a good bit of money and unrivaled ambition and ego.
But taking that logic down a notch, to the U.S. Senate, I’m guessing that the truism is more realistic. Take Alvin Greene, the Democratic nominee for the Senate from South Carolina.

I’m beginning to pull for him just a little bit.

He emerged from the S.C. Democratic primary as the winner, even though he didn’t campaign for the office. He didn’t spend a nickel. He made zero speeches, issued zero position papers and held zero campaign meetings. But he conquered a field that included a South Carolina legislator.

Now he’s running against Republican incumbent U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint, who once declared that the angry health care debate would be President Obama’s “Waterloo,” and that it should be Republicans’ goal to ensure that the president fails at anything he sought to do. A real patriot, eh?

DeMint’s a smart guy, so I guess he played the calculation correctly in South Carolina, a state that is almost as reliably Republican as Texas.

But Greene, thought of around the country as a first-rate doofus, is now starting to actually campaign. He’s an unemployed veteran who lives with his father. He managed to pony up 10 grand to file for the primary, but the Democratic Party isn’t concerned about how he got the money.

It would be fascinating to the max to see this guy make a competitive race against DeMint. And were he to win — well, he becomes the “anyone” to whom Mom and Dad referred so many years ago.

The good news today from the Gulf of Mexico notwithstanding, BP still has plenty for which to answer regarding the oil spill.

— Why did crews on the Deepwater Horizon reportedly ignore warning signs before the platform blew up on April 20?

— Did the company take shortcuts regarding the casings used to seal the shaft it had sunk deep into the sea bottom?

— Why didn’t the company have a ready-made action plan drawn up in the event of such a catastrophe?

— Why did BP keep insisting that it would pay “all legitimate claims,” using language it should have known would enrage Gulf coast residents whose lives have been shattered by the oil spill?

Those are just for starters.

But today came word that the company had stopped the oil flow into the Gulf. The coast isn’t out of the woods yet. BP has more testing to do on the containment cap. Then we’ll wait for the relief wells to be finished, and then the company will pour cement into the blown-out well to plug it for keeps.

Meanwhile, the company had better get its “answer men” up to speed. There will be plenty of questions to answer in the weeks to come.

Red-light cameras are back in the news.

A study has come out that seems to give ammo to those who oppose the cams because they haven’t made our streets safer. Injury accidents at intersections are up a bit in the two years since Amarillo City Hall deployed the cameras as a deterrent against those who run red lights.

But am I ready to call for a wholesale retreat from this initiative? Not even close.

The data don’t prove anything conclusively. If anything, they suggest that the city needs to do a better job of bringing the cameras to the driving public’s attention.

For example, I drive routinely along Coulter Street, which has red-light cams at its intersection with Elmhurst. Do I notice the sign warning me of the cameras every time I drive by? No. State law requires the city to place the signs 300 feet in front of the intersection. But after awhile, they kind of become part of the scenery — not unlike Stanley Marsh 3’s ubiquitous lawn signs.

The cops said we have a problem with red-light runners. The mayor heard the police concerns and, along with the City Commission, acted in a way designed to make our streets safer.

I’m willing to give the experiment more time.

In the meantime, can’t there be a way to elevate the streetside warnings’ visibility to motorists?

Texas has 254 counties. Almost all of them are run by governments with headquarters in county courthouses, many of which sit on squares in the middle of the county seat.

An Amarillo “Vietnam veteran and his wife have had enough” of President Obama and his “radical Chicago thugs.” They sent a letter to be published in the newspaper. It won’t see print. But I thought I’d share a bit of it here, unattributed.

“Those of you that have never been in the military may not know that an American flag flown upside-down is a distress signal. As of today, our flag will be flown upside-down … Amarillo, it is time for Americans to stand up and fight for your country … Let it be known that Amarillo is a city that wants its freedom back … “

Well.

This hate-filled screed begs at least two key questions: What freedoms have we lost? What are Americans unable to do today that we were able to do when Barack Obama took the oath of office in January 2009?

The correspondents said that “we are Americans, Obama and his thugs are not. Those of us that have fought for our freedom will not give it up now because a band of thugs from Chicago do not believe in our traditional way of life.”

One tradition is to disagree respectfully. What has become of civil discourse?

I am engaged in a titanic battle against temptation.

Tonight is the LeBron James Special, to be shown at 8 p.m. on ESPN. He will announce where he’ll play basketball until his next contract expires. The world is holding its breath. Not me.

Well, not exactly.

My biggest curiosity is how ESPN will fill the first 59 minutes of the hour-long special, before James announces whether he’ll stay in Cleveland to play for the NBA Cavaliers, or move to some other city.

Thus, the temptation to actually tune in.

This stuff drives me a little nutty at times.

I don’t care one bit about LeBron James’ basketball future. I care even less about his unprecedented display of ego.

But still, the temptation to watch this bizarre event is taxing my strength of will.

Frankly, for me a bigger story this week was former Beatles drummer Ringo Starr turning 70. Where was the TV special for a guy who helped raise a generation of graying baby boomers?

It happens every year, right about now.

Summer sets in and it gets hot in places like, oh, New York and Washington, D.C. Then the media, realizing that it’s hot in their neighborhood, report it with the kind of zeal reserved normally for really big stories, such as the Gulf oil spill.

As someone who lives in an area of the country that knows summer time heat, I have to ask: What’s the big deal? The cable networks are all over the heat. Why? Well, my guess is that it’s because the networks are based in NYC and DC. Thus, a local story becomes a national story because the media hounds and talking heads must deal with what the rest of us out here in places like the Texas Panhandle deal with every year at this time.

Yes, a couple of people reportedly have died from the heat. That’s tragic, for sure. But is the casualty list mounting rapidly? Well, no.

If the heat wave was happening in, say, February or March, then I’d understand the enthusiasm over this event.

But it’s summer, man. It gets hot in the Big Apple and inside the Beltway every single year.

If the media pack wants to chase a story, I can think of other events that deserve at least as much attention as the weather is getting this week.

Last time I checked, the oil was still spilling into the Gulf of Mexico.

Technology is introducing us to a new language.

Specifically, it’s turning nouns into verbs.

Two such terms stand out.

The first one is “text.” It used to mean a body of type. Text was a noun. Today it’s become a verb, as in, “My boyfriend, like, texted me just a minute ago and, like, he was so cute trying to tell me he was doing it while driving his car down the freeway at, like, 80 miles an hour.”

OK, “texted” is the past tense of the verb “text.” But you get the point, right?

Now comes the newest version of a common word: friend.

My wife and I were having dinner one night this past weekend with a young couple with whom we are friends. I informed the young woman that I had just opened a Facebook account. “Oh, really?” she said. “Now I’ll have to ‘friend’ you.”

Huh?

The term “friend” used to mean only someone with whom one is quite close; the person to whom you can tell the truth. You share secrets with that person, who knows more about you than you know about yourself.

Now it’s a verb, which describes the act of becoming a friend on a Facebook network.

I was hoping that “parent” would be the last noun to become a verb (e.g., “I am learning how to ‘parent’ my kids”). I never imagined what technology would do to the English language.

I’m sure there’ll be much more to come.

I’m mystified at the silence of the Panhandle’s faithful Republican residents, the folks who gave John McCain 80 percent of their vote in the 2008 presidential election.

They’ve been silent on the latest gaffe by their party’s chairman, Michael Steele. National Republicans, such as Weekly Standard editor William Kristol and Sen. McCain himself have called for Steele’s head over remarks he made the other day in which he described the Afghanistan war as President Obama’s “war of choosing” and said the war was all but unwinnable, given history’s record of failed military efforts in that primitive land.

Steele’s utterance, of course, shows tremendous ignorance at a couple of levels. First of all, it wasn’t Obama’s war to begin with; the war began on President Bush’s watch. And it surely wasn’t a war of choice, since the first hostile act came from terrorists headquartered in Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, national Democrats are keeping silent. They aren’t saying anything about whether Steele should remain as head of the RNC. They no doubt want the GOP’s human gaffe machine to stay right where he is.

But out here, in Flyover Country, where Republicans rule the roost, our rank-and-file electorate remains amazingly quiet over Chairman Steele’s latest bout of foot-in-mouth disease. The many Republican partisans throughout the Panhandle who are so quick to criticize the Democrats in Congress, and the one in the White House, need to speak up now.

Do they want Steele to stay or go?

Watching the Republican Party leadership try to “clarify” its chairman’s remarks about the Afghanistan war is making me laugh almost out loud.

RNC Chairman Michael Steele said this week that the war is of President Obama’s “choosing.” Furthermore, the chairman said the war is virtually unwinnable. Party loyalists have jumped all over Steele, saying that no RNC chairman should declare anything but unqualified support for our troops in the field. Many in the party have called on him to resign.

What the party hacks aren’t acknowledging, though, is that the Afghanistan war didn’t even start on President Obama’s watch. It began nearly nine years ago, when President Bush was in charge. And it surely wasn’t a war of choice. Bush sent the troops in to go after al-Qaida and Taliban terrorists responsible for the 9/11 attacks.

What’s interesting in the fallout over Steele’s stupid remarks — made at a fundraiser and caught on video — is what the loyal opposition isn’t saying.

If the Democratic Party chair, Tim Kaine, had said something similar to what Steele said, the GOP opposition would accuse him of hating our brave soldiers fighting for our freedom. So far, we aren’t hearing such nonsense from Steele’s political adversaries.

But oh yes, Chairman Steele has made a terrible mess that he’s going to have trouble cleaning up.