Uninspiring NASA Mission to suck on a rock!

What the fuck happened to the "stepping stone to Mars" mission we were promised?

It seems it went from :

• Send astronauts to the asteroid belt to investigate an asteroid ..., to
  
• Send a robot probe to the asteroid belt, capture an asteroid, bring it to lunar orbit, send astronauts to the asteroid to investigate it ..., which became
  
• Send a robot probe to the asteroid belt, capture a large bolder via some gravitational tractor beam shit, bring that to lunar orbit where astronauts can investigate it ..., but apparently now its
  
• Go somewhere not very far away, suck some dust of it, wait for earth to do a drive-by, at which time we'll poop the sample out of the spacecraft and it'll hopefully hit the ground intact.
  

I mean sure, I imagine this mission allows some interesting science for a lot less money than the other options, but my hopes had been built up for a deep space escapade! Let's take a look at what I thought we would be attempting this year: