Below is a partial transcript of Glenn's opening monologue tackling the looming government shutdown:

I’m in New York mainly because I’m a little concerned about the panic that is coming, and there’s no place safe than New York City when panic happens.  And the panic, of course, is because the government is going to shut down, and you should be afraid, and I’m telling you, be very afraid.

The country is going to grind to a halt.  If the government closes its doors, what will you do?  The market is going to collapse.  I’m afraid I have to bring you the bad news, but the national parks are going to close.  They’re going to gouge the eyes out of anybody who tries to look up at Mount Rushmore.  It’s going to happen.

And the economy – I was going to say the economy will get worse, but I don’t know if it really can do that, but oh yes, yes, it can.  And that’s what they want you to believe if there is a government shutdown.  The media is feeding this kind of nonsense and propaganda, but it’s a game.  That’s all it is.  It’s not really even a shutdown.

Here’s what could happen if Congress doesn’t agree on a spending bill:  One, the government will not have the legal authority to spend money on nonessential services.  Okay, two, essential federal employees will continue to work.  That’s the border patrol and military, and nonessential employees will not get paid.  I’d vote for a candidate who said that’s what they were going to do to us on purpose.

Are they supposed to look scary?  Because this looks good.  I mean, we’re trying to trim the fat.  That sounds like that’s a pretty good start, doesn’t it?  Make it a felony crime for politicians to spend taxpayer money on nonessentials; that’s what we should be doing.  This is the least frightening list I’ve ever seen in my life.  It actually sounds like a pretty good idea.

I mean, if you really think about it, the candidate who would make this their platform wins my vote.  Bring it on, bring it on.  Shut it down, I’m all for it.  You know, the only people who should be afraid of a shutdown are the Progressives who have been, you know, making a living lying to people, convincing them that they couldn’t live without government handouts.

Please shut them down, please.  People will realize that their life, their small business, their job, their state, their economy is actually better off without Congress constantly interfering in it and messing it up.  People might actually realize that they can be self-reliant.  Now, that’s crazy.  And that the Life of – do you remember this – the Life of Julia that the president put out, it’s a load of garbage.

Think about the concept they’re trying to get you to accept, that you should be afraid that Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid will lose their ability to legally waste your money.  That’s a good thing.  You should be terrified that government won’t have the funds to do things like this.  For instance, let’s see, do we need the White House?  Not really, not really.  All the tours, cry your eyes out, little kiddos, we can’t do it.

Department of Education, oh, turtle crossings, $3.4 million, sorry turtles.  Department of Education, do you really think if we took the Department of Education off, do you really think that your schools wouldn’t be able to run?  Do you really think you couldn’t fix that and make it work better just locally and through your state?  Come on.

Fannie and Freddie, it would be a dream come true.  Military, let’s keep.  Consumer Protection Bureau, what the hell have they even done?  Buh-bye.  Amtrak, I can’t get that one off the board fast enough.  Border patrol, I’m kind of torn on that one, because if I have a border patrol, of course I’m a racist, but we’re going to have to leave it there.

Congress, if I could only do this to Congress.  Believe it or not, we are spending $200 million a year creating a reality show for India.  Robo Squirrel, this was to create…$350,000 to create a robotic squirrel to figure out how snakes would react to a robotic squirrel.  What the heck?  Martian food tasting, $950, almost $1 million on out of this world food tasting.

Amtrak snacks, okay just took Amtrak down.  Do you know that we give Amtrak $84.5 million a year, and they lose it on snacks?  They lose $85 million a year on snacks?  I don’t even know why that’s even in the budget.  One hundred forty-one thousand dollars to study pig poop…and air traffic control, I’m going to leave that.  I have no problem with a government that does that, do you?

I think everything else could go away.  One of the best-run states is Texas.  That’s the way the country should run is like Texas.  In Texas, their House and Senate meets every other year, and each session goes a maximum of 140 days, but that’s usually about three months.  That’s all they can do.  That’s how it should be it, and believe it or not, that’s the way it used to be.

It used to be a Senator or a Representative, it used to be a part-time job.  They would show up for a maximum of six months.  They’d get a per diem, and they’d go back to their regular job the rest of the year.  Guess when that changed.  I know you’re thinking I’m going to say Woodrow Wilson, but who’s the next guy?  1933 and FDR when Congress ratified the 20th Amendment.

Now landing a job in Congress doesn’t look anything at all like service.  It’s more like winning the lottery.  There is no sacrifice.  They are paid more than three times what you, the average American, gets paid, and they have incredible benefits.  They don’t have to worry about health care.  They’ve got it.  You, no, you’re going to be held to ObamaCare but not them.

And all they do is just increase the size of government.  George Bush increased the national debt, doubling it from $5 trillion to $10 trillion, and remember when that was horrible?  When Bush enacted TARP, it was all about stabilizing the economy.  I told you no, it’s not.  But then when the president, President Obama, enacted the stimulus, it again was all about stabilizing the economy.

When they did QE1, QE2, QE3, printing money from the Federal Reserve, that was also about stabilizing the economy.  Over five years of stabilizing the economy, the economy is anything but stabilized, and that’s because all of the money pumped into the system wasn’t ever about stabilizing.  It was about leveling the playing field.  Oh Congress, would I like to level the playing field.

If you could just live within your own laws, and you had to live by all the laws and the rules and regulations that we have to, wouldn’t that be a level playing field?  They devalue our currency and take America down a notch or two or all the way to the bottom so we’re not a global colonialist superpower anymore.  We’re just part of global equality.

I don’t want to be a global colonialist, and I don’t want to be at the bottom of the barrel, either.  I just want to really be left alone.  If we keep spending and flooding the market with printed dollars, that’s exactly what’s going to happen, because what are your long-term prospects?

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America is going the way of Greece and Cuba, and at best, by 2016, with an estimated 100 million Americans on food stamps, we will be Venezuela, who by the way just put military, stationed them, and I’m not making this up, stationed military at the toilet paper factories because it’s an evil capitalist plot to destroy their toilet paper factories, and so they had to send the government out there.  Why is it that every time somebody tries to do global Socialism or Communism, it always ends up with guards at toilet paper factories?

That’s where we’re headed, gang, because every government, bloated government disaster, is currently imploding all around the world, and it’s going to implode here.  The only way to stop it, to stop some epic form of collapse, is to send people down to Washington, D.C. with spines.  You saw some of them last week.  Ted Cruz is being the poster example of this.  He and anyone standing with him and the principles that they are promoting, I believe, will be remembered.

I believe what they did to Ted Cruz, they made him into such an evil poster child, that by the time people really figure out what ObamaCare is, and it’s cutting their hours, it’s making them lose their doctors or the health care coverage that they did have, or destroying jobs, they’re going to look at this guy and say he was right.  And anyone for the status quo or the establishment who caves into that idea to keep expanding the government and spending money will also be remembered, but in a more notorious sort of way.

We are learning now on the right, and this is the good news, this weekend, The New York Times had a piece on how we’re not the people we were just a few years ago, that the party relied on Newt Gingrich and his progressive Republicans in Washington to be our voice, but according to the Times, “Today, a fervent group of Conservatives – bloggers, pundits, activists, and even members of Congress is harnessing the power of the Internet, determined to tell the story of the current budget showdown on its terms.”

Let me translate from The New York Times, its terms, translation: truth, the truth lives here.  And the truth is that America cannot afford nonessential spending bonanzas.  It can’t.  It is time to boil things down to the essentials.  We’re done playing the game, and we’re not going to let Progressives do things like scare us with a government shutdown debate.

I don’t know about you, but I celebrate that idea.  We won’t let progressive Republicans get away with protecting the status quo, either.