The audio clip issue is now managable but the midi is still out to lunch. I dragged 2 midi clips  4 measures in length into my midi track, separated by 1 measure. I have comping turned off and have not selected to create lanes on overlap. As soon as  the 2 clips touch each other I end up with 9 different take lanes of different lengths, with different start and stop points, extending for about 40 measures. The only analogy that works is 2 balloons full of confetti hitting each other and exploding.
 
WTF!  This has to be a bug, and since I hardly use midi it's unlikely I've discovered something new. Assembling drum tracks using midi patterns is completely broken on my system. IS this a known issue?

Is Preference > Customization > Editing set to "Slide Over Old to Make Room"? If so, try one of the other two settings.

I think I've killed the gremlin. I did as you suggested Scook and I had it selected to slide over. I changed it to "Replace old with new" and turned off non-destructive editing. Now the 2 clips seem completely unaware of each other and it seems great. I can drag the clips around, push them into overlap and still cleanly pull them apart. Whew! It's good to be back in the '90's.

Does anyone know if there's any CWBRN's regarding non destructive midi editing? It seems to have popped up in another thread recently.