Unemployment in July was 8.3 percent, the Labor Department announced on Friday. Millions of good-paying jobs could be created, Sen. Bernie Sanders told The Stephanie Miller Show on Friday, by transforming our energy system away from fossil fuels to solar, wind and other clean energy sources. Congress has resisted that and other proposals to address global warming, the focus of a major Sanders floor speech on Monday and a Senate environment committee hearing on Wednesday. Senate Republicans on Thursday used another filibuster to block consideration of a cybersecurity bill. House Republicans refused to take up a Senate-passed bill to save the U.S. Postal Service, which defaulted on a big payment that came due on Wednesday. 

Jobs 

U.S. employers added 163,000 jobs in July. That's the most since February and the 27th straight month of private sector job growth. Still, the Labor Department said the July unemployment rate was up slightly from 8.2 percent in June. Real unemployment - which counts those forced into part-time jobs and others who gave up hunting for work - rose in June to 15 percent, about 23 million Americans.

Global Warming 

As the drought of 2012 worsened and threatened to send food prices up, Sanders clashed head on with the leading Senate opponent of doing anything to address climate change. In a Senate speech on Monday, Sanders challenged claims by Sen. James Inhofe that global warming is a "hoax." At a Wednesday environment committee hearing, Sanders asked a panel of experts about Inhofe's assertions that global warming is a conspiracy dreamed up by the United Nations, Al Gore, and Hollywood, that it's a hoax, and that the planet instead actually is cooling. The scientists were polite, understated and matter of fact. Inhofe is wrong, they said. 

Watch the speech »

The Wealth of the Waltons 

The Walton family of Wal-Mart own more wealth than the bottom 40 percent of America. It's a fact Sanders cites to dramatize the growing wealth gap in America. PolitiFact checked it out. "Sanders' claim is solid. We rate it True," the fact checkers concluded. 

Read the analysis »

Cybersecurity 

A cybersecurity bill was blocked by a Republican filibuster in the Senate on Thursday. Sanders supported the effort to strengthen defenses against computer attacks, but he said security must be balanced with protecting privacy and civil liberties. "Our nation's national security and economy face unprecedented threats from cyber attacks, and it is important that we defend ourselves as best we can while, at the same time, protecting the privacy and civil liberties of the American people. I worked hard with a number of colleagues to make sure that language in the bill would protect the constitutional rights of the American people," he said.

Read more »

Health Care 

Under the Affordable Care Act, Wednesday was the date when insurers owed rebates to policy holders if less than 80 percent of the premium dollars they collected went for medical care. "One of the reasons that health care costs in the United States are so much higher than the rest of the world is that insurance companies spend too much on administration and profiteering," Sanders said. "What we're trying to do is get health care dollars into health care." Nationwide, insurers owed $1.1 billion to 12.8 million Americans. The average rebate was $151. In Vermont, more than 4,600 Vermonters covered by CIGNA were due an average $807 rebate, more than anywhere else.

USPS 

The U.S. Postal Service didn't pay $5.5 billion due on Wednesday to the U.S. Treasury for a retiree health fund.  The truth is that the fund already has more than enough socked away to cover benefits for decades. It's also true that the default will have no bearing on mail service or have any impact on the workforce at the country's biggest employer of veterans. But it's also the case that the Postal Service must modernize to survive in the digital era. That's something a bill that the Senate passed three months ago would do. Sanders helped craft the measure that, among other things, would preserve rural post offices. Irresponsibly, the House left town on Thursday without taking up the bill. Another $5.6 billion payment to the same retirement fund is due in September.

Gore Vidal, 86 

The American author and playwright died Tuesday. "Gore Vidal was not only one of the great writers our time, but a brilliant defender of democratic traditions. He also was an extremely brave man who time after time stood up against the prevailing wisdom and was unafraid to attack wealth, power and greed," Sanders said.

• Richard A. Muller, a physics professor citied in the past by Sen. James Inhofe to raise doubt about the very existence of global warming, wrote in a July 28 New York Times op-ed that he is now convinced that global warming is real and that "humans are almost entirely the cause."

• "There's reason for most Americans to fear the deal-making aimed at avoiding the fiscal cliff,"Michael Hiltzik wrote in the Los Angeles Times. "The debate seems increasingly to be driven by the wealthy, who can be trusted to protect their own prerogatives while declaring everyone else's to be wasteful."

• "Are too many Democratic voters sleepwalking away from our democracy this election cycle, not nearly outraged enough about Big Money's undue influence and Republican state legislatures changing the voting rules?" Charles Blow asked in a New York Times column.