I agree that women are shocked and amazed that these issues are being brought up now. It's stunning to think that our children and grandchildren are going to have to fight for autonomy rights we took for granted, but at least the war on women doesn't appear to be paying off for the Republicans:

When the Wall Street Journal/NBC News survey asked last summer which party should control Congress, a slim 46-42 percent plurality of women said it should be the Democrats.

But in a survey released Monday, compiling polling since the beginning of the year, that figure had widened considerably to a 15-point advantage for the Democrats, according to polling by the team of Democratic pollster Peter Hart and Republican Bill McInturff. Fifty-one percent favored Democratic control; only 36 percent wanted to see the Republicans in charge.

Both sides have tried to shape the narrative in this battle for and about women. But many Republicans are beginning to wish they had never waded into what has become a heated conversation over contraception, who should have it and what it says about people who use it.

GOP pollster Kellyanne Conway, an adviser to presidential candidate Newt Gingrich’s campaign, said Republicans need to return to pocketbook and fiscal issues: “We know what works, and we need to get back to it.”

[...] Virginia state Sen. Janet D. Howell (D-Fairfax) said the focus on abortion and contraception will turn many women — and men — away from the GOP.

“I think most women assumed that these were settled issues probably three decades ago and are aghast that it’s been reopened,” Howell said. “Almost half my e-mails ... are from men. And they’re speaking for their wives, their girlfriends, their daughters, and are very upset by what’s happening. Many of them say they have been Republicans but they’re not going to vote Republican in the future.”

I had to laugh when I saw this Wall St. Journal video review. Dorothy Rabinowitz slams Kathy Bates' new legal drama, "Harry's Law": "You have major criminality, excused as nothing. You can do anything you want, as long as you're poor." She takes great umbrage at the show and its perceived lack of moral center -- I suppose because it shows the poor and disenfranchised using the spirit of the law to evade the letter of the law, achieving something more closely resembling actual justice. Do you suppose it even occurs to Dorothy that the legal deck is stacked against the poor?

Now, maybe you'll get the irony of this when you realize Dorothy is on the editorial board of the Wall St. Journal, which has never seen a corporate crime worth prosecuting.

These are the ostrich people who thought if they ignored it, it would just go away. Still buying the big LCD TVs, still going on nice vacations, still pretending it's all going to be okay. Well, it isn't.

Now that it's been a while and the jobs aren't coming back, those people are now getting hit with the reality stick - and because they carry the bulk of credit debt, the banks are going to be in even worse shape than they already are:

The long recession and rising joblessness are taking an increasing toll on the nation's most credit-worthy borrowers, who are now falling behind on their mortgage and credit-card payments at a faster pace than people with poor financial histories.

The mortgage-delinquency rate among so-called subprime borrowers reached 25% in the first quarter but appears to be leveling off, rising only slightly in the second quarter. The pace of delinquencies for prime borrowers is accelerating. Since prime loans account for 80% of U.S. bank exposure to mortgages and credit cards, these losses could ultimately exceed those from weaker borrowers.

"The subprime pain is in the rearview mirror," says Sanjiv Das, head of Citigroup Inc.'s mortgage business, which is seeing delinquencies rise among prime borrowers, who make up three-quarters of its mortgage portfolio.

In many cases, these "prime" customers, whose high credit scores afforded them the best interest rates on mortgages and credit cards, lost their jobs over the past few months and only now are running out of temporary fixes that have been keeping them afloat.

The trend signals more bad news for U.S. banks. Rising delinquencies on prime mortgages helped drive the total mortgage-delinquency rate to a record 9.24% in the second quarter, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. The data reflect loans at least one payment past-due.

[...] About 40% of the strapped consumers seeking help from the OnTrack Financial Education & Counseling center in Asheville, N.C., are prime borrowers, up from 15% last year, says Tom Luzon, director of counseling services at the United Way agency. Many of these clients already scaled back their lifestyles after losing their jobs or seeing their salaries slashed. Some are small-business owners whose companies foundered as a result of the recession.

"They have made adjustments and made adjustments, but then you get to a point where you can't adjust anymore," says Mr. Luzon, who is a former banker.

"People who are middle-class wage earners initially may have severance pay and think they have plenty of time to find a job, but then they start using credit cards to support living expenses," he says.