My view on Paul Krugman is that he reaches his conclusions based on his political ideology. PK has already formed all of his opinions. It doesn't matter what economic numbers are released from day to day. He doesn't like George Bush. That's the only thing that matters to PK.
The GDP for the first quarter came in at .6%. Too slow to be sure. But indicating a recession? Lets go to Investopedia for the definition of a recession: A significant decline in activity spread across the economy, lasting longer than a few months. It is visible in industrial production, employment, real income and wholesale-retail trade. The technical indicator of a recession is two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth as measured by a country's gross domestic product (GDP).
Today, PK says "The point is that the official definition of recession has become delinked from peoples’ actual experience."
Ah, rationalizing a bit PK? Sorry if the actual numbers aren't jiving with your preconceived opinions on the economy. If we take PK's point of view, then someone has to go update the history books. There may have been thousands of recessions the past century if we just go on how people are feeling from quarter to quarter.