CAP takes a look at various “sharing” schemes — from bike sharing to car sharing to “slugging” to carpooling — that help improve the mix of available transportation options. Relatedly, Ryan Avent observes that electric cars will work best in some kind of shared/fleet model, since it will be much easier to provide juice to a modest number of shared depots than to every single parking space in a city.

After this ad I don’t think people can say that Barack Obama isn’t going after John McCain with some tough attacks.

Two items. One, Ali Frick has John McCain responding to a question about whether we need to reinstate the draft in order to meet his pledge to “follow bin Laden to the gates of hell” by saying “I don’t disagree with anything you said.” Previously, McCain has said we’d only need a draft in “all-out World War III” and that he agrees “to some extent” that we’re already in World War III.

Meanwhile, Matt Duss wonders why McCain won’t follow bin Laden into Pakistan where, unlike the gates of hell, he actually is. I, for one, would just settle for McCain getting some priorities straight. The point of the gates of hell line, after all, is to underscore how seriously McCain takes the al-Qaeda issue. But he’s also absolutely committed to an undefined goal of victory in Iraq. And he’s also absolutely committed to halting the Iranian nuclear program. And now he’s also absolutely committed to rolling back Russian influence. In the real world, you can’t accomplish anything unless you’re prepared to focus and set priorities.

The Christian Zionist influence on American — and, I suppose, Israeli — policy continues to be terrifying. Here, for example, Tim McGirk reports for Time on Mike Huckabee:

A trip to Israel does no harm to his standing with American Jews; they are traditionally wary of the Christian right, but might overlook Huckabee’s Bible Belt beliefs on education and abortion because of his backing for Israel. A guest of the Jerusalem Reclamation Project, which aims to move thousands of Jewish families deep into the Arab neighborhoods of this divided city, the ex-Arkansas governor told reporters that he supported Israel’s control over all Jerusalem. Jerusalem was a beacon to the Judaism, Christianity and Islam, he said, “but you can’t have two governments overseeing the same real estate.”

The guitar-playing ex-governor went far beyond the White House view on the conflict, which calls for separate Israeli and Palestinian states. “From the security standpoint, the Israeli state should include the West Bank,” Huckabee said, referring to the territory that is a cornerstone of an eventual Palestinian nation. Huckabee claimed that his views supporting an Israel that expands beyond its pre-1967 borders, were based on “common sense” rather than his own religious beliefs.”Would I tolerate this in my own neighborhood? No,” he said. Many Christian evangelicals believe that it is part of Biblical prophecy that Jews should return to occupy all of their ancient homeland.

Now clearly a certain number of American Jews are already conservative Republicans. But the majority are liberal Democrats who are unlikely to support any aspect of Huckabee’s Christianity-fueled approach to domestic politics. But what’s more, I dare say that few Jews who actually care about Israel’s future are going to embrace this vision. To achieve long-term security, Israel needs a viable peace deal with its neighbors, and that’s never going to happen if Huckabee’s proposals are adopted. And that’s to say nothing of the appalling human rights implications for the Palestinians. Meanwhile, the McCain campaign is now slamming Barack Obama over the fact that one of his informal advisers went to Syria and told the Syrians they should make some concessions now if they want to be able to secure a durable deal under the next administration. And, yes, if you go wildly out of your way to portray what happened, you can spin this as an attack on Obama.

The New York Times runs an interesting article about a handful of firms considering moving toward a system of greater transparency about salary practices. Frustratingly, however, the articles gets through many, many, many words of discussion about the “don’t ask your coworkers what they make” convention that attributes the convention solely to American middle-class values. It seems to me, however, that there’s no way of understanding this phenomenon without recognizing that its traditionally been considered to be in the bosses interest to keep workers in the dark about salary scales. After all, management knows perfectly well what everyone’s earning. And management also has some sense of what everyone is worth. And management wouldn’t pay people more than management thought they were worth, but management would gladly pay someone less. If people learn what their colleagues make — especially those in comparable positions — they may get a sense of how much management actually thinks they’re worth.

That can lead to demands for salary increases as people push their compensation right up to the margin of what an employer is willing to pay. And worse, these kind of conversations can lead to really subversive activity like a desire to bargain collectively. But luckily enough, it’s impolite to do this:

“It’s a very American, very middle-class phenomenon,” said Ed Lawler, the director of the Center for Effective Organizations at the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California, who has studied salary transparency since 1962. “The way we were raised is that it was bad taste to talk about how much you make.”

A very American phenomenon and a very useful coincidence.