First things first: while this obviously comes from real code, the way you "anonymized" your code doesn't work, eg. `sys.argve` doesn't exist.

> I'm trying to make this code easy for someone to read and add more cases.

If you want Python developers to be able to read your code easily, please follow PEP 8 (using a tool such as [pep8](https://pypi.python.org/pypi/pep8)). That includes sticking to 80 columns, using `underscored_names` and using [`ALL_CAPS` variables for constant strings](http://legacy.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0008/#constants).

> Most of this code in the `if else` statements are very similar. I feel like I might be able to use a lambda to clean this code up but I'm not sure that will work. What is the best way of avoiding a lot of the repetition in this code?

Without having tried to improve your code yet, using list comprehensions and lambdas is a good way to *shorten* code, but **short code != readable code**.