Harold Ford's recent night out at the Waldorf-Astoria took an apparently unwelcome turn. (Alt. headline: Harold Ford announces his intention to be New York's dog.) [TAP via Wonkette]

It sounded, this morning, like former imaginary Senate candidate Harold Ford really wished he was actually running for office. But that will pass, and soon he'll be grateful. Because now his life can go back to the way it was.

Harold Ford: Out. It is with great sadness we report that mediocre rich Tennessee person Harold Ford has pre-dropped out of the New York Senate race. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha...

This is the depressing state of affairs in New York, in 2010. The various monsters and morons currently running-without-running for statewide office include Andrew Cuomo, Harold Ford, Mort Zuckerman, and, yes, Larry Kudlow.

Wherever Harold Ford pays his taxes, he pays a lot of them. He makes soooooo much money! When he started in 2007 as vice chairman, Merrill Lynch "Guaranteed" Ford $2 million/year for his work getting government bailouts and stuff. [NYT]

Just for future reference, would-be candidates: if you're speaking to the Stonewall Democrats, you should know what Lawrence v. Texas is. Harold Ford did not. (Harold, that was the landmark Supreme Court decision that struck down anti-sodomy laws.)

Political genius and shadow Senate candidate Harold Ford has called on New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand to release her tax returns, but says he doesn't have to do the same because he hasn't "announced" his candidacy yet. It's the rule!

Harold Ford needs a better agent. He's got a plum gig speaking in Bermuda to a bunch of tax-dodgers next month, but in April he goes to Vegas to talk about chickens. As long as the check clears, right?

Who exactly does Mayor-for-life Mike Bloomberg want to be our next Senator? First we're told that his influential friends convinced a bank-loving conservative Democrat from Tennessee named Harold Ford to run. Now, suddenly, he wants million-year-old hack publisher Mort Zuckerman?

After six glorious days, the festival of incompetent flackery that was the "Harold Ford Doesn't Pay His Taxes" story is over. Ford's spokesman has finally told us, on the record, that Ford filed New York returns in 2007 and 2008.

We reported this morning that Harold Ford had never filed a New York tax return because that's precisely what his spokeswoman Tammy Sun told us. Now she's trying to backpedal, and, we hear, lying to other reporters about our story.

While we wait for Harold Ford to explain how he's avoided filing a New York tax return while working in New York, he's preparing to jet off for Bermuda. To address a group that lobbies for tax evaders, er, avoiders.

When it comes to his shadow run for Senate, Harold Ford is a New Yorker through and through. When it comes to paying taxes, though, he's still a Tennessean — he's never filed a New York return.

Harold Ford has defended himself against carpetbagging by saying "I pay taxes there, and once you pay taxes there, you feel like a New Yorker." So why won't he say whether he's ever filed a New York tax return?

• Suzanne Sheik, the jewelry designer and mother of singer Duncan Sheik, has dropped the price of her 7,000-square-foot townhouse at 132 East 62nd Street. The five-story building, which Sheik bought from the estate of late socialite Phyllis Cerf Wagner for $8.5 million in 2007 and first listed for $17.5 million last…

Harold Ford may or may not remember where he lives, but he certainly knows when he's home—because his eyes are assaulted by a garish array of yellow and turquoise walls. No wonder he's trying to sell it.

Maureen Dowd's column yesterday was a predictably amusing interview with would-be Senator Harold Ford. The funniest line was his bizarre assertion that Eleanor Roosevelt opposed Bobby Kennedy's Senate run from beyond the grave.