Over the last few months, thenation.com has made an effort to foster a robust and thoughtful comments section befitting the mighty intelligence of our readership. We’re pleased to report that the shoe ads are gone, the name-calling is at a minimum and astute and witty commentary is on the rise. Here are our favorite comments from the last week. Let us know what you think — in the comments!

puttch: The austerity “class” you refer to can be described in much simpler and easy to understand terms: the Republican and Democratic Parties. As for the tired “there’s no doubt that the Republicans are to blame” theme, we are somehow to be assuaged that the GOP is refusing to pass Republican legislation while forgetting that the Democrat Obama – for whatever reason – is pushing it?   I don’t think so.   Indeed, any attempt to make the Democrats a little less guilty completely misses the obvious:  there would be no austerity “class” without the Democrats.  Without the Democrats the austerity “class” would be called the Republican agenda and would be recognized as nothing new to conservative ideology. The Democrats failure – over decades – to hold true to New Deal ideology is the principle reason for the bloodletting of austerity that is upon us. In Response to Ari Berman’s “How the Austerity Class Rules Washington.” October 19, 2011

Bobzz: The OWS movement seems to be so disparate because there are so many manifestations of serious trouble in America and trouble America has made in the world. A reporter that sticks a microphone in one’s face and gets one answer, another answer from the next person and so on. If you are a rich guy, you think the great unwashed are just anarchists, communists, socialists— the usual pathetic, reflexive name-calling. The majority of us hear, in the different answers, pieces of a mosaic that fit together showing greed at the bottom of it all. And it is systemic. What George Wallace said decades ago is truer than ever now: “a vote for either party is a vote for tweedle dum(b) or tweedle dee.” In Response to Tarif Ahmed’s “Why I Occupy.” October 24, 2011

Occupy the Holidays: Love your blog. Three weeks ago in Portland, Oregon over 10,000 marched through downtown Portland then set up camp in two parks on city property near City Hall. Why has it received no national attention? A grandmother, I’m so inspired by the Occupiers that I created a Facebook page today called “Occupy The Holidays” to encourage people to buy American-made gifts this year! In Response to Greg Mitchell’s “The Occupy Blog for Tuesday (Oct. 25), with Frequent Updates.” October 25, 2011   SGillhoolley: Wow, why do you still trust the Democrats to do the right thing?  Oh sure, there are still a handful of people who do not appear to be corrupt, but the vast majority of Democrats are in the pocket of the corporations.  The GOP is honest about who it works for, but the Democrats are better at telling us what we want to hear, and then doing the thing we like the least.  We need a new political party… or perhaps a new political system. In Response to George Zornick’s “Supercommittee Democrats Offer Major Capitulation.” October 26, 2011

 JakobFabian01: "I’ll believe that corporations are people when one of them gets executed in Texas." This grim joke has many corollaries, all of them equally true. It occurs to me that this is one of them: "I’ll believe that corporations are people when one of them gets seriously injured by the police for occupying a public space." In Response to John Nichols’ “’We Are All Scott Olsen’: Movement Marches in Solidarity with Iraq Vet Wounded in Oakland.” October 27, 2011   Red Son: The sentiments expressed by sister Rinku Sen are being echoed by people of color participants of the occupy together movement nationwide. It’s time to begin embracing a racial justice analysis and agenda to transform the economic inequities that plague the 99% in this country. As a black woman, I am tired of hearing denial from my white comrades. We can do this together, but only when OWS stops being focused on the narrow self-interest of middle class urban whites, and begins to truly engage poor whites, rural communities, and people of color. OWS is beautiful, but it can be better. In Response to Rinku Sen’s “Race and Occupy Wall Street.” October 26, 2011