From JSC by way of spaceref

It's a load of crap buck probably hoisted by the special interests miffed by being left out or those that don't want an HLV in order to hamstring any effort to get to Mars.

The key issue which so many ignore as pointed out in the article is cost. NASA is not trying to leverage technology it already has in rder to minimize the cost of rturning to the Moon and going on to Mars. The problem with 3 decades of no direction is that you most certainly will not have any technology optimized for any destination. It's just plain stupid to claim another architecture is better unless it performs better, costs less, and can be done sooner. 2 out of three probably would be an improvement, but not with a major lapse in the third.