The Cook Political Report‘s Dave Wasserman tells Axios that the most under-covered aspect of 2018 is that “a blue wave is obscuring a red exodus.”

“There are 43 Republican seats now without an incumbent on the ballot. That’s more than one out of every six Republicans in the House — a record in at least a century, Wasserman says.”

Said Wasserman: “There’s a bit of over-caution, perhaps, on the part of the punditocracy, after what happened in 2016. But if anything most media could be under-rating Democrats’ potential to gain a lot of seats. They could be caught being cautious in the wrong direction.”

Forget swimming goggles and running cleats. As athletes gather for Asia’s biggest sporting event in Jakarta this week, much of the attention will be on computer mice and chunky headphones.

For the first time, the Asian Games -- the Olympics equivalent for the world’s most populous continent -- will include computer game competitions alongside swimming and track-and-field. Contestants from Saudi Arabia to Japan will battle for national pride and bragging rights across six titles, including League of Legends and StarCraft II in a huge marketing coup for publishers like Tencent Holdings Ltd. and Activision Blizzard Inc.....

Critics say it’s about greed. The Olympic Charter historically stated that mental or mechanical-driven activities were not permitted as sports, one reason chess and car-racing were never included. But with Olympics attracting fewer viewers, especially among younger audiences, officials may be willing to bend the rules to welcome the $140 billion video game industry, which commands the attention of teenagers and millennials.

“They’ve got Olympic ideals and they use all these slogans, but at the end of the day this is a big money-making machine,” said Mathew Jessep, a sports and esports lawyer. “If the Olympics want to continue making the sort of money they’ve been making, they need to supplement the content. From a content play, esports is a definitive opportunity."

Four months after abruptly quitting Congress amid a sexual harassment scandal, former Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-Texas) still doesn’t think he did anything wrong.

In fact, the former GOP lawmaker says he “took a bullet for the team” by resigning. He insists he’s right not to repay $84,000 in taxpayer money he spent on a sexual harassment settlement. He ripped the House Ethics Committee for not caring about facts. And he blames “f-tards” and the Me Too movement for driving him out of a job.

Yeah, it’s a lot. And that’s just a sample of Farenthold’s comments in an Aug. 1 deposition he gave in a lawsuit over his new job at a Texas port authority. The Victoria Advocate, a local newspaper, sued the port authority in May for not giving required public notice that it was hiring Farenthold and creating a $160,000-a-year lobbyist job for him.

HuffPost obtained a transcript of Farenthold’s deposition, along with copies of his texts and emails submitted for the lawsuit. What’s clear is that he blames everyone but himself for his downfall and that his reasons for not repaying the $84,000 are bonkers. You can read 79 pages of his deposition yourself, here, or just read below for the bits we thought were particularly bananas.