Warning: Place all liquids aside and away from your computer when watching the above trailer for Tea Party: The Documentary Film.

Sadly, the above is not a joke. The narration is priceless. And it should come as no surprise that Dick Armey's Freedom Works is assisting in the marketing of the film. Congressman Peter DeFazio warned the other day that without a new focus on jobs and small business from the White House "a faux populist" Republicanism would fill the void come 2010. Well, that's what we have to look forward to, a government of clowns.

On a more serious note, the New York Times reports that with unemployment now in double digits a number of liberal-leaning economists who see "confirmation of their warnings that the $787 billion stimulus package President Obama signed into law last February was way too small" are calling for a second round of fiscal stimulus to spur the economy and create jobs.

The legislation, a variety of economists say, is helping an economy in free fall a year ago to grow again and shed fewer jobs than it otherwise would. Mr. Obama’s promise to “save or create” about 3.5 million jobs by the end of 2010 is roughly on track, though far more jobs are being saved than created, especially among states and cities using their money to avoid cutting teachers, police officers and other workers.

“It was worth doing — it’s made a difference,” said Nigel Gault, chief economist at IHS Global Insight, a financial forecasting and analysis group based in Lexington, Mass.

Mr. Gault added: “I don’t think it’s right to look at it by saying, ‘Well, the economy is still doing extremely badly, therefore the stimulus didn’t work.’ I’m afraid the answer is, yes, we did badly but we would have done even worse without the stimulus.”

In interviews, a broad range of economists said the White House and Congress were right to structure the package as a mix of tax cuts and spending, rather than just tax cuts as Republicans prefer or just spending as many Democrats do. And it is fortuitous, many say, that the money gets doled out over two years — longer for major construction — considering the probable length of the “jobless recovery” under way as wary employers hold off on new hiring.

But there are criticisms, mainly that the Obama team relied last winter on overly optimistic economic assumptions and oversold the job-creating benefits of the stimulus package.

Optimistic assumptions in turn contributed to producing a package that if anything is too small, analysts say. “The economy was weaker than we thought at the time, so maybe in retrospect we could have used a little bit more and little bit more front-loaded,” said Joel Prakken, chairman of Macroeconomic Advisers, another financial analysis group, in St. Louis.