Talking Points Memo - June 28, 2005

A very unpopular president.

New CNN/USAToday poll has disapproval at 53%, approval at 45%.

According to CNN, President Bush's worst numbers came on the issue of Social Security. He clocked in at 31% approval and 64% disapproval.

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Could this get a lot bigger?

In Tuesday's paper, The Washigton Post reports that the Pentagon has ordered "a halt in new work for MZM Inc. ... under a contract that has brought the company $163 million in revenue during the past 2 1/2 years."

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A few days ago one reader who's well-versed in the federal contracting biz told me he thought MZM's (Duke Cunningham's favorite company) profile looked like it was basically trolling for work. What he meant by this was that the company didn't seem to have any particular specialty as much as it was looking for politically-available contracts and then searching out people to do the work on them.

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It started with Duke Cunningham on the auction block. Now, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune, MZM Inc. itself is on the auction block.

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Before the whole Duke mess broke out, MZM Inc. was an awfully popular place.

Buried down in Marcus Stern's piece in today's San Diego Union-Tribune is the news that shortly before the CunningScam story broke someone named Kay Cole James had signed on as the company's "senior executive vice president for national security transformation". She just resigned on Friday.

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An interesting note from TPM Reader RW ...

Josh,

In case you hadn't caught this, check out this astounding coincidence.

"MZM opened its doors in 1993, but its first federal contract was a $140,000 deal in July 2002 to provide "office furniture" and "custom computer programming services" for the executive office of the president of the United States, according to the Federal Procurement Data System." San Diego Union-Tribune, June 25th, 2005.