First Answer: Yes. I did this with my D1 SD Card & I never had an issue.
Second Answer: Sort of. If you root your phone, you can use a program like Titanium Backup Pro to freeze the Verizon Bloatware, or use Root Manager to rename the files from VZWBloat.apk to VZWBloat.apk.old so they won't work or show in the app drawer, or move the files to a folder on your SD card. A word of caution, though, just for CYA purposes, do NOT delete these files. You never know what you might need.
Hope this helps!