So you bring up some good points, I admit I am a little saddened to see my comment downvoted though and hope to clear a few things up. First the point I was making was about my experience, I understand I do not have deep functional programming experience. I don't perceive Python as being better than functional languages for functional programming, but rather I see it as offering the good functional qualities I personally have seen while still being good at other paradigms, I imagine if you desire pure functional programming it probably does not stack up to pure functional languages.

My experience is an AI class in Lisp and TA-ing a class that taught students Scheme and a lot of Python experience, so you are right, perhaps I should check out Haskell or ML for better readability. Although I think Python discourages functional programming itself, from what I've seen it heavily encourages functional features, between lambda functions, functions as first class objects, and list comprehension which offers mapping, filtering, and reducing. I know there are other functional features that I haven't been exposed to, but as far as the techniques taught at a college level class, I feel Python incorporates functional features beautifully, and I now find myself using functions as objects, lambdas, mapping, filtering, and reducing nearly every day I program. I know the "pure-ness" of functional languages isn't there as Python encourages side effects, but as far as giving average programmers functional power while maintaining readability, I like Python's adaptation of functional techniques.