Relative Apparent Synapomorphy Analysis (RASA) was recently proposed as a way to measure phylogenetic signal, choose "optimal" outgroups, find long branches, and eliminate long-branch attraction. In this paper it is shown with simple examples that RASA has several problems. The null regression model used by RASA to measure phylogenetic signal does not have a straightforward relation to phylogenetic information. RASA detects long branches, but does not discriminate between long branches that mislead an analysis and those that do not. Rooted RASA, which is used for "optimal outgroup analysis," is shown to be an inappropriate measure of "+esiomorphy content".