From Nonrhotic:
In what can best be described as mildly coherent rambling, Sarah Palin, the Governor of Alaska, announced her resignation on July 3. During her speech, she alluded to a combination of factors that lead to her decision. Reading through the full text of her speech, I was able to extract 11 reasons that were buried deep amidst her wandering prose and tangled logic. They are paraphrased below (along with the relevant text from her speech in italics):
1. Defending myself against claims of ethics violations by political operatives is distracting me from doing my job as governor. Therefore, I resign.
“Political operatives descended on Alaska last August, digging for dirt. The ethics law I championed became their weapon of choice. Over the past nine months I’ve been accused of all sorts of frivolous ethics violations … Every one – all 15 of the ethics complaints have been dismissed. We’ve won! But it hasn’t been cheap – the State has wasted THOUSANDS of hours of YOUR time and shelled out some two million of YOUR dollars to respond to “opposition research” – that’s money NOT going to fund teachers or troopers – or safer roads.2. Life is short. Time is too precious to waste. I am wasting my time as governor. Therefore, I resign to make better use of my time.
“Life is too short to compromise time and resources… Productive, fulfilled people determine where to put their efforts, choosing to wisely utilize precious time… to BUILD UP.”3. I am expected to serve out the term I was elected for. But that would make me a quitter. Therefore, I am quitting because I don’t want to be a quitter.
“… it may be tempting and more comfortable to just keep your head down, plod along, and appease those who demand: “Sit down and shut up”, but that’s the worthless, easy path; that’s a quitter’s way out. And a problem in our country today is apathy. It would be apathetic to just hunker down and “go with the flow. Nah, only dead fish “go with the flow”.”
More here.