What an entertaining thread! And I just read the first 10 pages. Spicy.
Waste of time. Aside from the fact one credit pull is all but meaningless, existing creditors can pull your credit whenever they want, and the law makes no distinction between a hard pull or a soft pull.
If JTZ should admit he's wrong on the letter of the law, you should admit your advice is bad, because you explicitly state that it's a "waste of time" to bother minimizing hard pulls since FI's "can pull them anytime". Sure, they CAN pull them anytime, but they never do. So it is still worth it to minimize HP, no?