One point that's essential to understand about the current North Korea crisis is that while North Korea's leadership is dangerous, reckless and all-around-bad, the US did a lot to escalate this situation over the last two years through mix of bad policy, two policies, and no policy. As we note below, that might not have been quite so bad if the administration had any idea how to handle the situation once it reached a boil. Since they don't, it's pretty bad. Today's edition of the DLC's New Dem Daily gets at some of this point.