Am I confused about standards or is the W3C?

Looking at the proposed HTML 5 specs and resulting commentary has me confused. I know there are issues with strict XHTML but that doesn't strike me as a reason to completely abandon the goals of encouraging stricter syntax and maintaining a strong separation of content and presentation.

I keep seeing arguments being made for keeping the barrier of entry to web design low by continuing to allow for poor syntax. Doesn't being overly forgiving of sloppy syntax make it harder for everybody to debug? And isn't the "what-did-you-really-mean" guessing game that goes into browser development one of the big things standing in the way of cross-platform compatibility? And how does sloppy coding do anything but harm accessibility?

How does the introduction of highly specialized tags for things like headers, footers and asides maintain a strict separation of presentation from content? And if "barrier of entry" were a real concern, why would we be adding all these new tags in the first place?

Granted, with the rather absurd 10-15 year implementation schedule, this spec is likely vapor html, but does anybody else find a W3C-backed proposal this far off the mark a bit disturbing?