They could have made the spec a subset of HTML, but decided that having "control" was more important. Too bad, could've been neat.
I think this is an important issue because the HTML spec is crazy long and it would be awesome for new technologies (say a new desktop GUI library or whatever) to be able to say "we allow and will interpret this subset some HTML" without committing to the entire byzantine spec.
We need a name for this and since it's HTML5 with stuff removed we can call it HTML5--, so HTML4 ;)
I'm thinking more of cases like letting people write some HTML in a local notetaking program or something like that -- what's a nice subset of tags you should give them so they can make text look good, but doesn't commit you to supporting the lovecraftian being that's the entire HTML spec?
Also your last line made me laugh. Nice delivery=)