Blast from the past

In regards to the following quote from David Limbaugh (Is he related to Rush Limbaugh? Probably. They seem to have similar facial expressions. I could try looking it up, but I just can't get motivated to.)

It seems the Bush administration bends over backward to avoid placing its predecessor in a negative light. Remember the way it buried the trashing of the White House by the outgoing Clinton personnel?

No I don't and I paid close attention to the case at the time. Clinton's people left and a GAO investigation later established that the extent of the damage that could be blamed on the Clinton people was that a few computer keyboards were missing their “W” key. There was also some extremely minor damage of a similar nature. The Bush Administration blew this up into a minor-league scandal, accusing Clinton's people of “trashing” White House and Executive Building offices, without of course being able to produce the slightest shred of evidence to back up their accusations.

We were told that a group of Republicans took money out of their own pockets in order to pay for extensive damages. Further, we were to told that they didn't keep any receipts and could not identify where they had purchased the new office equipment and furniture that allegedly had to buy. Nor could they identify where all of the damaged items were disposed of.

This is not the slightest bit believable as I worked as a Personnelman in the Navy and consistently found that high-ranking personnel were extremely careful about money and always insisted on every last dime that the government owed them. I never worried about why this was so and simply accepted it as a fact of life. I noted at the time that by doing this, the Chiefs and Officers kept the Personnelmen and Disbursing Clerks on their toes and kept us sensitive as to how our jobs affected ordinary sailors. I simply can't believe that high-ranking government personnel of any branch or status would be so casual about money matters as to spend serious money out of their own pockets without worrying about being reimbursed. And had the described “trashing” taken place, reimbursment for replacing damaged equipment would have been granted without question, as a matter of course.

David Limbaugh takes the same casual, fact-free attitude towards the truth that Rush does. The Bush Administration did NOT “bend over backwards”, it did NOT “avoid placing its predecessor in a negative light” and did NOT bury any news about it. They instead MADE UP news and created a scandal out of thin air.